Rosetta Stone Software?

[Napster921]

I've heard radio advertisements about the "Rosetta Stone Software". I researched it and found out you can use it to learn Japanese. Does anyone know if this is a good program? It's very expensive.

[Bueller_007]

I've heard radio advertisements about the "Rosetta Stone Software". I researched it and found out you can use it to learn Japanese. Does anyone know if this is a good program? It's very expensive.

I have it for Vietnamese and French, but I rarely use it.

Not promoting piracy, but it's not worth the money. If you can find a copy for free somewhere, it might be worth your time.

Also, it doesn't really help you out much with reading/writing. It assumes you already know the writing system of the target language when you start.

[seanolan]

Yeah, I have to agree with Bueller_007 (this is becoming a frightening trend which we need to do something about!) I "acquired" the Rosetta Stone software and its Japanese module and it was, IMHO, not worth the "money" I "spent" on it. For beginners, I'd recommend the Instant Immersion stuff, as well as Human Japanese (excellent beginner course; you'll have about 400 words and basic grammar down in about 3 weeks if you go with Human Japanese and practice about 2 hours a day, 10 hours a week, I'd say) You can usually find those programs bundled together, with an AWESOME Japanese dictionary called JQuickTrans for your computer. For intermediate, well, I'm still looking myself...if anyone has some good programs for intermediate, recommendations are welcome...

Sean

[Napster921]

asd

[Nate]

Cool information. I hadn't heard of either of these programs. I will check them out and see if they help me.

I have found the RS cumbersome. I did pick up some vocabulary, but not much help in reading or writing Japanese.

Nate

[stonemirror]

I actually like the Rosetta Stone software (although it's admittedly expensive). RS uses an immersion approach, and this works well for a lot of people--it works well for me--but not for everyone. I wouldn't use it as my sole approach to learning Japanese, but I think it's really helpful used along with, say, JapanesePod101 and a decent basic text book.

It's definitely possibly to learn to recognize a bunch of kanji using Rosetta Stone, but you have to do a little more leg work: the printing in the RS textbook is small, and the choice of screenfonts is occasionally hard to read for very dense kanji. A good kanji dictionary, like Kodansha's, is indispensible here (but t should be anyway, if you're trying to learn to read Japanese)...

(And, as a professional software developer, I don't encourage the "acquisition" of software. Go to the mall, there's usually an RS kiosk, try it out, or try out a friend's copy or something...)

[ssocko123]

___

[kessler]

Rosetta Stone is just okay, not worth the money. In addition, my wife is convinced they use non Japanese Speakers. Even I can hear a difference in the accent. I have it, but rarely use it.

[bshock]

The Rosetta Stone software is based on the idea of building your vocabulary and grammar the way a child would do so, from the ground up, associating images with sounds. While this is interesting, I don't consider its effectiveness a foregone conclusion. As an adult, I use very different learning strategies from those I had as a child. Further, I'm fairly certain that I am incapable of learning things with the openness and intensity I had as a child.

[jaypunkrawk]

I had them send me the demo of Rosetta Stone...which actually features quite a lot for each language. However, I found mistakes in the Japanese lessons. The text said 女の人 when the picture and the audio were clearly 女の子. That made me decide it wasn't worth my money. Such a stupid mistake. I'm gonna stick with the Japanese Pod 101 podcasts and my Japanese For Everyone textbook I received way back in high school for taking 2nd place at the Japanese speech contest. Does the CIA really use Rosetta Stone? Seems like they'd have something better up their collective sleeve.

[Nakor]

Well I'm still really new to Japanese, but I find RS to be very useful. I find that it doesn't help me at all with reading or writting, but with listening and speaking it helps a great deal. As with anything new you are learning, you should never limit yourself to one single resource.

[Outkast]

I had them send me the demo of Rosetta Stone...which actually features quite a lot for each language. However, I found mistakes in the Japanese lessons. The text said 女の人 when the picture and the audio were clearly 女の子. That made me decide it wasn't worth my money. Such a stupid mistake. I'm gonna stick with the Japanese Pod 101 podcasts and my Japanese For Everyone textbook I received way back in high school for taking 2nd place at the Japanese speech contest. Does the CIA really use Rosetta Stone? Seems like they'd have something better up their collective sleeve.

Government offices primarily just hire native speakers to teach their employees. If they're saying that they use Rosetta Stone, then it's probably just an advertising ploy...

[Nakor]

Government offices primarily just hire native speakers to teach their employees. If they're saying that they use Rosetta Stone, then it's probably just an advertising ploy...

Or maybe they mean that they use the same technique (but not nessicarily the program itself.) I'm not sure though because I was looking at http://www.rosettastone.com/en/government/ and it says "Rosetta Stone is the #1 language-learning software program in the world. It is used successfully by the U.S. Special Operations Forces, West Point, NASA, and the U.S. State Department, as well as millions of people in 150 countries. " so they do seem to clearly state that it's used by them. I'd doubt it's used in any important capacity however. Probably this is how they do early training, or training of people they don't care about as much. Then again this is pure speculation on my part.