I’ve been wondering the same recently. I’ve used the Michele Thomas CDs to learn enough German to get by as a tourist. I like the concentration on spoken grammar, I can formulate remarkably complex sentence structures now. My girlfriend teaches German at high school and was surprised at how fluid my German was after about 6 hours, although my vocab is quite lacking as I haven’t used the word trainer CDs yet.

The Rosetta Stone approach looks really interesting, especially the speech recognition stuff. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has tried them both, which did you find stuck better and which was the best value for money (both are pretty pricey)?

Paul

Still waiting for them to release a Norwegian version. Heard good things about the Italian version from a family member.

I should hope that they work well based on how much they charge, although based on some of the other language software I’ve tried I can’t imagine that they could do worse.

livemocha.com

It will blow your mind and save your wallet

I played with the Spanish version for an hour or so and always meant to go back to it as it did seem like a good way of learning the language. It kind of dives right in learning the words and sentences, not spending a lot of time on the alphabet or grammatical structure like you get in a regular class.

I doubt it. To learn a language like a native, you need access to … native speakers. The extent to which Rosetta (or any other method) can emulate this brain-to-brain contact is going to determine its success.

I tried the Spanish version, so I could communicate with the in laws… I can get by with it.

We subscribed to the online Italian course. It worked great for us in preparing for three weeks in Tuscany this past summer. It’s like anything else. You need to invest time to get the benefit. I jumped around in the program to spend time on things I thought would be most useful.

Rosetta Stone worked better for me than other foreign language courses I’ve taken including “teach yourself” (Swedish) and Barron’s “Mastering French”.

I used rosetta stone for a while; but kinda lost interest in learning language before getting fluent.

It did put language straight into my brain, which was odd. There are bits of vocabulary which I “Just Understand” without thinking about a translation. I played with Pimsleur at the same time; which was a lot more like rote learning of responses.

The voice recognition stuff is pretty good, most of the time, but can be a little frustrating when you can’t figure out why you’re saying something wrong.

Which Rosetta Stone commercial are you talking about? The one with Michael Phelps? Can anybody tell?

I asked a friend about them, who tried them out and found them poor, boring, and very much learning by rote.

She also sent me on this:

http://www.meadowparty.com/blog/?p=384

I’ve been doing the Italian lessons. I was learning very rapidly. As others have said, though, nothing beats immersion and speaking with a native speaker. My wife speaks Italian fluently so the combination has been very successful.

I would definitely go with edufire (http://edufire.com/).

They seem to have the best model and tools right now. Given the nature of language learning, interaction is key. No software can critique pronounciation like a native speaker. Likewise, some pronounciation issues can be solved when the teacher sees how you are forming the words which is another argument against a software package like Rosetta.

I’m with Matt. It might help to get started, but you won’t be truly conversational until you spend a significant amount of time around native speakers. I’ve studied Spanish in a traditional classroom setting and with workbooks and audio (Pimsleur), but I didn’t really learn Spanish until I immersed myself in the culture (and took 2 weeks of intensive Spanish in Nicaragua).

I understand that this might just be a question based in curiosity due to the admittedly effective advertising of the Rosetta Stone folks. If it isn’t though, what keeps you from going to another country and studying? My primary jealousy of 37S is your ability to make kick-ass products without ever “seeing” each other. Why not code on the shores of beautiful Lago de Nicaragua?

I’ve been working through the Italian 1 lessons and really enjoying it. The Mac version works great which was a concern I had after reading some other reviews. I’m also able to use the embedded microphone without needing the special headset.

I’ve taken a break from it to finish up some other work but definitely want to continue leading up to our trip there next year.

I think a key limiter is to really immerse yourself as much as possible. Rosetta recommends putting postits on everything you can around your house, talking with natives, and just trying to absorb as much as possible.

Overall I do believe the software’s approach is right and that I’ll get there if I stick with it.

ps – Going to check out livemocha as well… thanks for the tip.

I call BS. The Rosetta Stone method is all based on the principle that kids learn language by association, so we should do this as well.

Guess what? We, as adults, are capable of understanding much more complex abstraction than toddlers, and we really should leverage this. I don’t see why we should stick to basic image associations.

I want to hear Michael Phelps speak Chinese. Proof is in the pudding.

I tried Pimsleur/Italian about 6 years ago and thought it was great.

It doesn’t make you fluent, but I think it puts you in a position where becoming fluent is substantially easier.

There are elements of it that are “rote”, but the gist is to force you to break-down and re-build conversations to the point where you eventually can ‘instinctively’ use the pieces to construct your own thoughts.

What I found remarkable was that when I went to Italy shortly after completing Pimsleur I & II was that I could almost always hold a conversation with people on just about any topic. I stumbled and sputtered a lot, but I had a good foundation and could feel myself getting better rapidly. And when I couldn’t understand what the Italians were saying, I could ask them to rephrase and (more often than not) I could understand.

Don’t know about rosetta, but my guess is it’s a similar approach.

I was really put off purchasing rosetta stone because of the extremely restrictive licensing – you are not allowed to sell your copy second hand. Google for “rosetta stone doctrine of first sale” for more details.

I’m fluent in several languages, and I studied many others in school. Every once and awhile I like a refresher.

For me, the Michel Thomas system has worked well for this (as a refresher), at least for Germanic and Romantic languages. I can’t honestly say I started (i.e. learned) with them, but I do use them as refreshers before trips etc.

I don’t know about Rosetta. Hope this isn’t off topic.

For this topic I defer to Tim Ferriss. He speaks a bunch of languages and recently said in an interview that he doesn’t think Rosetta Stone works.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn-but-not-master-any-language-in-1-hour-plus-a-favor/

Was pretty happy with using Rosetta Stone to refresh on some Spanish and learn some things I hadn’t before. I like the association thing and it felt like it helped me commit things to memory better, and my memory isn’t too bad as it is. I will definitely use Rosetta again to start learning a language soon that I haven’t touched before. The online version is cool too and worked well on the Mac, it just all costs so much money.

On a completely unrelated note. I seem to read too many svn posts and comments, because a few weeks ago, I had a dream that GeelWonder was actually Jason Fried’s cousin. WTF!

Personally I didn’t like Rosetta Stone at all… It’s too primitive (you will be able to find your way around town but that’s about all) and I found quite a lot of errors in it (expressions that aren’t commonly used etc.). It’s a really fun “game” but definitely not a good learning tool.

I would suggest you to use the money on the great Primsler’s language learning CD’s and combine it with the free http://iknow.co.jp/ which is a really cool language learning community.

Lean 1000 words on your own. Then get with the natives.

The best resource for me has been the Instant Immersion CD series, but they have a limited selection of languages, so it’s frustrating.

I’ve been through Spanish, French, Italian, and German, and learned quickly and thoroughly to become conversational in a manner of mere weeks. But since they don’t have resources for Portuguese or Russian, I’ve struggled much more with lower-quality resources for those languages.

One important tip, though: While good audio materials are the most important and useful tool, one needs to have basic understanding of spelling and grammar, which requires at least one or two books. You have to do the hard work if you want the easy work to, uh, to work. ;-)

My aunt works for the NSA. Yes, the CIA and NSA really do use those programs to learn new languages and find them effective.

I was annoyed by an earlier version of RS, and lately by their price range… and then came across Before You Know It – www.byki.com/org – whichever.

BYKI works on a very similar principle as Rosetta, but comes with a light version which is free – completely and utterly free, and a PRO version which is somewhere 50-60 $. In any case, a good alternative! I started with the pro version recently and am quite happy… so far…

Rosetta Stone is excellent. It really is learning a language the way you learned your first language, no need for a supporting language. This enables you to truly know the language on its own, not just as translations of your mother-tounge.

I learned more French in two days with Rosetta Stone, than through all of middle-school. And it is highly addictive.

I have experience with rosetta stone.

I was taking a 2 week trip to germany with some friends. We all used rosetta stone to learn as much german as we could. One friend of mine used it every day for 1-2 hours per day for almost 6 months. Got through all of them, including the advanced levels. I, on the other hand, procrastinated until a few weeks from the trip, then studied it for a week, got very bored, and quit.

I then got some german cds from iTunes (the ones with some music in the background, Rapid German, I think) and listened to them non stop for the remaining two weeks. I also got 2 phrasebooks, lonely planet and one other that had some variance in the included phrases.

Basically, between my new understanding of how to kind of pronounce and read german words, my basic sentences, and my phrasebooks, I was able to converse much better than my friend who only used rosetta stone.

Also, it’s true that the US military and other government uses rosetta stone, but that’s only because they give it to all military personnel free of charge. So, rosetta stone kind of “bought” that endorsement.

That said, I did not really learn “conversational” german, but neither did my friend who jumped all in. I agree that immersion is the only way to really get there. For that reason, livemocha.com looks great and I will definitely use it when I need to learn a new language next time.

Also check out www.fourhourworkweek.com. Not only is the book fantastic, but there’s good stuff on language learning as well.

I’ve tried a few language learning systems, the latest being EarWorm, which was interesting and easy to swallow, but didn’t really stick. That said I wasn’t very dedicated.

On another note, you might be interesed in Universed, a project which gathers together language resources from around the web and organises them

I’m not a native English speaker but I consider myself fluent in English now. I believe the only way to achieve that is by investing time and effort at first with something really boring like formal teaching, Rosetta, Pimsleur.

When you reach the level that you can understand anything from writings or audio programming directed to native speakers, even if hardly so, you should jump ship to doing that full time for a while. You will be amazed by yourself.

For me, I listened to Voice of America every day in my way to and from college for a couple of months and this was by far the most significant contribution to my English skills.

For the initial phase, I tried formal teaching for English, Rosetta to learn some German and Pimsleur to learn some Italian. I think Pimsleur was by far the best. The great thing about it is you don’t need to be at the computer. I just put the whole thing on my iPod and managed to finish all of level I in a couple of days mostly during my commutes in the car.

I think it is the easiest route to reaching your goal of being able to learn by consuming materials directed to native speakers.

Great topic! I have been considering purchasing some of their software as well but not jumped in yet.

We have found RS to be an effective way to build foundational language concepts in a large southern CA adult ESL program. After building that foundation, we begin to engage students in authentic language – reading, listening – to continue the acquisition process, slowly increasing the difficulty of the input as their language skills improve. Output – e.g., conversation – helps build students’ confidence and comfort in using the English they acquire from their reading and listening.

Our investigation into the various methods suggests that RS more closely adheres to the current research than Pimsler et al.

In learning Italian, I’ve found LearnItalianPod.com more effective (and way less expensive) than RS.

After learning Vietnamese from a professor and two trips abroad, I picked up Pimsleur to check it out. The pronunciation was spot on, but I have to say that beginners really should not rely on software to teach them the most important aspect of language, which is verbal communication (I know that’s debatable, but speaking is the quickest way to get a message across).

I live in Viet Nam now and am amazed at how much false confidence software gives someone. Pimsleur is amazing, but it feels like one tenth of one percent of real, practical learning that you can use on an every day basis. I had the great fortune of being taught by an excellent professor, and also lacking any shyness about making mistakes, that things have turned out quite well for me. Occasionally I will listen back on a Pimsleur tape out of curiosity, but not to learn anything.

Find real people; it’s the only way to learn a language. Software, textbooks, and beginner level courses that shove you in a room with twenty other students are worth very little when it comes to achieving a deep understanding of a language.

Of course, wanting to learn a simple hello and goodbye is another matter altogether.

+1 for Pimsleur – no idea about RS though, but I managed to pick up quite some Spanish quickly with pimsleur and no other tools (though the fact that I was fluent in 3 other different languages already and seriously studied 2 others helped a lot – I am not sure what’s the matter if someone has less experience).

@Peter: You caught the rub in my argument. Your exceptional when it comes to languages, so perhaps software like Pimsleur and RS are helpful to those who are multilingual and adept at picking up language quicker than others. But I do maintain that beginners should use real people.

Hilarious. I Googled “rosetta stone doctrine of first sale” — and the only return was this entry/comment thread.

Really? I get about 2700 results all which discuss the above commenter’s point.

Don’t include the quotes…

I’ve been using the French course from Fluenz.com. Try the free demo session online to see what the experience is like. They use video of a teacher who reviews everything and best of all, you have to write a lot in the program. I think the method is good.

It’s beautifully done.

I found Rosetta Stone good for learning a lot of French words, but not for learning how to speak French.

I am currently using the Michel Thomas CDs and French in Action on the Web to learn how to actually speak French.

Also very interested in a Norwegian version, but I’ve been waiting for years. The Rosetta Stone folks have told me that they have no plans to create one, and I have not yet tried their product. I have had very good experiences with Pimsleur’s audio courses both for Norwegian and for French, though I did not pursue either to the point of conversational fluency.

I like Rosetta’s approach to just learning words. While I’ve never really used it for more than 30 min. I have taken German when I was in high school and attempted to try it in college but failed. The concentration on grammar and sentence structure in schools is ridiculous. If you want to learn a language and want to learn it fast, you must learn words. Whomever your talking to will know what your talking about even if you have horrible grammar.

I’ve used RS and found it to be useful in getting started, but not enough to become conversational.

I learned both French and Russian fluently by living in those countries to immerse myself—not always the most practical, but a solid way if you are really into that language.

No, haven’t used Rosetta stone, but I will take this chance to plug http://www.fluentlingo.com/ for a friend. It is a new site that can teach Hindi. Remember, there are a billion plus people in India. Many speak English but you would look so smart if you knew Hindi. Use http://www.fluentlingo.com/ to learn Hindi.

A very interesting thread; I couldn’t resist jumping in. If your goal is to go to a foreign country and survive a few basic interactions, virtually any of the programs discussed will do the job, as long as you put in the time. However, if your goal is to well and truly speak your new language, you need more.

As someone else here said, you need vocabulary. More than anything else. And the extremely limited amount of vocabulary you will get exposed to in RS or Pimsleur or LiveMocha or any of the others is not going to get it done. Vocabulary is the best indicator of your language ability.

Many others have said you can only learn by speaking but that is not the case. You first need the vocabulary before you can practice trying to use it. We all know immigrants to North America who live and work in English all day but whose English has plateaued.

Fundamentally, you need to learn from the language itself. You need to read and listen to a flood of interesting content in your target language. You need a way to grade that content and an efficient way of learning the 1000’s of words and phrases you are reading and hearing.

Where I’m going with all of this is to my own site of course, www.LingQ.com. Now, before you discount what I have to say, let me preface it by saying I’m a long time Basecamp user and I very much appreciate and benefit from the extremely well thought out software. Without trying to sound too promotional…what Basecamp has done for project management, we feel we’ve done for language learning.

I should mention that I have used Rosetta Stone I and II for Japanese to very limited benefit. I didn’t know any better! And, I was living in Japan at the time. I have learned more Japanese in Vancouver using our methods than I did when I lived there.

I am an Ohioan who has lived in China for almost 3 years where most recently I run a tech start up. I have met many foreigners here who have conversational (or better) fluency in Chinese but not one has ever mentioned using Rosetta stone or any method besides traditional classroom instruction or study/living abroad.

It is important to learn the stuff traditional schools focus on. You can pick up vocabulary much faster if you have a framework for how the language works (grammar). This is especially true in Chinese where many words sound the same and even have the same tone. Without a strong basis in grammar and sentence structure you’re going to have a hard time figuring out if that “shi4” (shi 4nd tone) means is, try, room, city, etc.

Traditional classroom instruction is great for providing and throwing lots of new vocabulary and sentence structures at you. What it lacks is interaction with native speakers. Being able to learn something in the morning and instantly putting it to use in the afternoon does wonders for retention and real world ability to converse with other people. Our company is testing a product with several schools in the USA that provides just such native speaker interaction in a way that integrates with existing curriculum. http://attigo.us.

No, but then again, no software or self study course will ever allow you to speak with a native speaker. The only way to learn to speak with a native speaker is be there. Thats it. There is absolutely no other way. I took the six month Turkish course and I have to say it was great, and gave me an understanding of the structure, grammar and most importantly in Turkish, sentence and word order. Their system is good for reviewing and for associating visually and verbally with situations. However, having gone to Turkey twice this year, I could barely speak anything and the sentences I did learn to say were of no use practically.

To learn french I used:

Michel Thomas Pimsleur French and 2 books: Better Reading French, Idiots Guide to French

And in addition the nintendo DS game My French Coach.

I was shocked cos I was in french west africa two months ago (senegal, cote d’ivoire, gabon) and could have conversations and even haggle. People were saying “you are a good man” to me, so it’s a good system to follow.

Whatever you end up choosing try to buy the DS coach games. My French Coach, My Japanese Coach e.t.c

I learned basic conversational Mandarin using Pimsleur. For a non-western language, I suspect Pimsleur is better because it focuses purely on listening and speaking. There’s not much point in struggling with Chinese characters until you have some facility with the natural flow of the language. Also, reading romanized versions out loud is actually bad for your accent as you tend to apply your native language’s rules to the pronunciation. Native Mandarin speakers often tell me my accent is better than people who’ve spoken the language for years.

(Robert Downey's Mandarin pronunciation in Tropic Thunder is abysmal, I assume intentionally.)

Mango Languages is a simple remote accessible program that allows language learning to be convenient, and easy to use. It focuses on conversation that would be used while visiting countries for business, or pleasure. It provides interactive audio and visual cues to help build understanding and correct pronunciation. It also offers a variety of languages. I like it because I can access it when ever and where ever I like. I also noticed that they have a “Mango on the go” this is downloaded onto your Ipod or MP3 which means you can learn while you are at the gym, or even grocery shopping. They also have ESL courses available. All in all I think it is a great product and I have used a variety of language learning products for my job, and Mango has been the most successful by far. I recommend everyone that is looking to learn a language check out Mango Languages!

UniLang is a great community for language learning. Especially, it’s a very good place to meet speakers of other languages.

As a former RS employee I can say that while RS is available for free to army personnel (maybe other branches now?), it’s not because RS gave it away. Rather because the Army paid a huge contract for basically an unlimited site license.

Also, I haven’t seen recent commercials to know what they claim. However, internally while I was there the general consensus was that RS was to take place of a lot of the beginning classroom work and prepare you faster to get to the real conversational stuff.

Finally, note that the content and UI for RS changed considerably about a year or so ago. It really is a very big change between versions. Much higher quality photos, voice recordings, voice recognition, and pedagogy. When I left, only 10 languages and been redone in the new version; but they were rapidly working on expanding to the other languages.

I think Rosetta Stone’s audio clips and grading of your speech are invaluable for getting pronunciation right, especially if you don’t have native speakers available to you. It’s also pretty good for retaining vocabulary as others have noted. But there are two big weaknesses that I think make at least one other learning tool necessary (a fact that may be objectionable given the price):

- You never have to construct your own sentences, a vital skill to practice for conversation. - The set of sentences that describe pictures is too narrow. In the first half of level 1 I never saw a sentence in the first or second person.

I agree with previous comments that the idea that we should learn a language the same way children learn their first language is a bit silly for many reasons.

Lastly, it gets tedious to do the same exercises over and over again when a whole lesson might only contain a tiny amount of new vocabulary, and I found myself eventually tuning out to some extent.

But I have to give them credit, it was very clever business to construct it such that the software and structure are exactly the same for every language, and all they have to do to have a new product is put the words in the GUI and record the audio clips.

I’ve been using it as the base of my Spanish training. I had a couple years of Spanish back in high school, so that helps a bit, but I’m essentially starting over. RS on its own, I don’t think is very effective, but I supplement with a translation dictionary, “501 Spanish Verbs”, a phrasebook, and www.spanishdict.com. This all helps to get a decent base, but I learn the most when I email or speak with my brother who is fluent. And fortunately, I live in Southern California so there’s always somewhere I can practice.

I’d like to learn Russian as well, but unlike Spanish, I don’t have much opportunity to use it in a practical situation so I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

As many commentators have said, if you want to learn to speak a language (i.e. be conversational) the fastest way is to learn with native speakers.

While there is value in the “self-study” methods, and Rosetta Stone does this well, there is a large gap between self-study with awkward voice recognition technology and actually being able to use the language. Years of language acquisition research tell us its the combination of self study and live practice that works best.

That’s the approach we’ve taken with http://www.studiochinese.com. And we see great results with our students.

Incidentally, Rosetta Stone is way to expensive – why would you pay that much when you can get the same learning experience plus trained live teachers on demand (such as what we do with our product)? I suppose that answer is that, as you say, their marketing is fantastic…

Ooops…the above was not supposed to be posted as anonymous coward!

The main point: in today’s connective world there is no reason to learn a language without real people.

I think most people have the desire to learn a language, but don’t have the motivation to study. That was my problem, so I made Popling…

http://www.popling.net

It’s Growl-like notifications + flash cards. If you aren’t busy, click the notification to answer the question on the flash card. If you are busy, ignore it and it goes away.

I can now speak ‘cave man’ spanish and learn a few new words every day.

Jason, would you publish a post sumarizing all the comments?

I´ve tried the english version with my dad and it looks like useful for very beginners.

Best, Miguel, from Brasil

I’ve always thought Rosetta commercials are not persuasive at all since the spokesman is speaking English virtually the entire time and their foreign language chatter is presented at a low volume.

If Michael Phelps pitched me on Chinese, I’d be persuaded.

cool stuff. great discussion Jason.

I’m impressed by this page: http://edufire.com/tutors/spanish?page=3&sort=top_rated

you can learn spanish for like $15 an hour. not too shabby at all. i like how you can use the web for such great education.

I brush up daily on my spanish by simply going to this page and listening to their daily 12 minute podcast: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/mh/

Dave http://davecraige.com

Dave

I recently used Rosetta to brush up on my French, which I learned French through all of elementary, junior high, and high school. The tool was useful to remind me of vocabulary and get me back up to speed for a trip to Paris.

However, does it help someone learn a language from scratch? No – I seriously doubt it could be used by itself by anyone to learn to speak a language with any kind of proficiency. It’s a good way to refine listening skills and augment other language instruction, but I can’t see it being useful to learn a language from scratch.

Before moving to Italy, I purchased about 10 different products to learn Italian from scratch, including Rosetta Stone. When people ask me how good Rosetta Stone is, I reply, “They have really good marketing.”

The main problem with it is that it is entirely in the native language. You can learn much faster when concepts are first laid out in your own native language. Rosetta Stone helps as a supplement, but it costs a fortune and is a poor value for the dollar.

For Italian, I ended up learning from “Italian Verb Workbook” by Dansai (superb, 100% recommended), “Italian: A Self-Teaching Guide” by Lebano (excellent), and “Behind the Wheel Italian” book and CDs by Frobose (good practical content; poor book and CD production).

My advice: order 10 products from Amazon, try them out, keep three or four including at least one audio CD set, and return the rest. Study every day at home, then go to the country and spend a couple of weeks in a small city (away from hoards of English speakers) in an immersion language school. I had good luck in Castiglioncello. Buona fortuna!