Rosetta Stone?

* Tapping foot and waiting for a response *

Me too - I'm curious about the efficacy also.

Hi can I ask what is it supposed to be doing?
I have heard of Rosetta Stone but nothing else.
Thanks!

The actual thousand year old tablet is fine...
-although somewhat boring-

I'm sure they mean the learn-a-foreign language software.

I'd also like to know. Do you think it would help prepare me for a college course? I'm takin Spanish my freshman and sophmore year of high school, but I'll be a junior in college next fall. Does Rosetta Stone help with school, or just learning to speak the language? Thanks

Not sure the British Museum is keen on people sampling the Rosetta stone...

EDIT: Oh duh, software, not the artefact. Never mind.

I have a friend who took Welsh with Rosetta Stone. He said it was great, although we live in Vantucky where there isn't much use for conversational Welsh, so he could be speaking in Klingon and we'd be none the wiser.

The program is good, but requires a lot of time to work through each lesson. The sample will give you a great idea of the many ways the program teaches you. As with all things you will find a few downsides or annoyances, but it's still a good way to learn. They've worked in repeating the lessons for you so you can review.

If you want to learn a language and can afford the program, go for it. You can add other tools as well, many of which are free or in your library. Internet words of the day are also helpful.

If you put in the time, it's super. You have to work every single day. Certainly potentially good enough to test out of college language classes. Do supplement it with radio, podcasts, dubbed-in-the-other-language tv and films, novels, and Websites in the other language.

My deep secret for learning other modern languages? Star Trek and other really well-known films or tv shows in that language. Even just ones with captions, and classic kid's books.

Medievalist said:

...My deep secret for learning other modern languages? Star Trek and other really well-known films or tv shows in that language.

Click to expand...

That's how my mom, who is French Canadian, learned how to speak English. Back then, her main source of inspiration was soap operas. To this day, she still has a dramatic flair for the language.

And in a completely pointless aside, the real Rosetta Stone is frickin' huge. It's like six feet tall and could CrushCrushCrush you to a raspberry paste.

Anybody else see "Rosetta Stone" and think about how Sister's on a "small vacation" and sends everybody her love, fingerpaintings, and dust cloths?

Or am I that old?

I personally don't really like Rosetta Stone, although I am basing that on the older version. I haven't had a chance to try out the version 3 software and I'm told it is quite different to the older setup.

What I found was it was quite good for building vocabulary but not grammar or conversation. If you had a spare ten or fifteen years, it might well achieve that. It marketed itself on the fact that you 'learned the language the way a child would learn it' in the beginning and that may well have been the case, but you'd need years to get to any level of fluency with the old system. Like I said, though, the newer version might be of more use.

Having tried I think pretty much every language course system out there over the years, I have to say I've found Pimsleur to be the best. If you're looking for something that will enable you to have basic conversational skills within a few days, that's your thing. I've used several now, am currently going through the German and Italian ones in prep for a couple of holidays this month, and I've found I've done a couple of lessons and been able to go to the country and speak to people. I think they even used to use my testimonial about the Egyptian Arabic course on their site

I'm working my way through the Russian course at the moment - my experience is similar to Zelenka's. It's great for vocab, not so much for actual speaking. I still have no handle whatsoever on the various declensions. If you're not good at picking up patterns, it's pretty tough to figure all that out. That said, I think for something like Spanish it might be a little easier. The studio sessions are a big help with that though.

I'd be much happier with it if it came with the ability to turn off the pictures and practice that way.