I was considering investing in Rosetta Stone to learn another language. I know english (though it can be doubted with my grammar, har har ) and I know a little Spanish and french. I would love to be fluent in Spanish and also learn Italian. My Spanish consists of asking for more beer, where the bathroom is, and several colorful indecent words. I can read French better than speak it. The program is fairly expensive from what I hear so I don't want to try them without having real people testify to their awesomeness.

While I don't have it. I do hear some good things about...and some bad things. Some good things is it does happen to be more of a 'self' study tool that works nice. That said some of the languages (such as Asian ones) I hear are not so good, at least not alone they are not.

Then again, I would look at reviews all over (not just Roestta stone's site) for the language you are wanting to learn.

I haven't tried it yet, but I've been wanting to to learn Spanish. It really is expensive though. Like $230 per level.

That is why I haven't gotten it yet. It would help boost my resume a great deal to claim more than two languages though. No one cares about French!

The program has its uses, but the biggest question is 'do I want to blow 230 bucks to try and learn a language?'. In my case - hahaha, no. Too poor. So I had two options - get them via my military boyfriend or just pirate them.

The V3 discs definitely teach you a lot of vocabulary. It's been 3 or 4 months since I touched my last Italian lesson (Level 1) and I can remember most of the numbers, colours, a bunch of nouns and phrases. I'd probably be able to recognize words vaguely in reading, but speaking it? No way. The only thing that's going to give you speaking fluency is immersing yourself. Rosetta Stone tries this as much as it can by leaving you to piece together the mechanics of the language yourself. Whether or not that's a good thing is largely up to the user - if you took language classes in high school, did you pick it all up easily? Or did you have to have a conjugation sheet in front of you to get anything done?

Personally, I picked things up really quickly, but having a concrete description of the mechanics just sped the process up, though I still don't remember the variations on l'uomo or the more awkward masculine/feminine endings. Rosetta stone won't give you that sort of thing. You pick it up as you go and make assumptions that grow into further (hopefully correct) assumptions - word X seems to apply to this single object based on this picture, but word X with ending Y is that same picture but plural, so ending Y seems to indicate plurality!

Lastly, the actual content is structured somewhat obscurely - it sets a default 'path' for you based on your skills, iirc, and it sends you through lessons in writing/speaking/vocabulary/grammar/etc etc etc. I tended to skip past lessons that I already excelled at (Why do I want to take 10 minutes for each of 3 reading lessons when I'm great at it?), but when I finally came to the final exam there was some Italian woman asking me questions that I could even begin to guess how to answer because that question just happened to be covered in the reading section. Because of that the final exam became more of a 'oh btw you missed this' ordeal more often than not.

Edit: Hopefully that helps. :X

Rosetta Stone really isn't any better educationally than the cheaper alternatives out there, but it is far more interesting to do. That doesn't mean that it's not worth the money. Holding your interest is important, because if you're bored or annoyed, you'll probably stop, unless you're a fairly disciplined person. Plus, in no case is it better than actually taking a language class (which will undoubtedly cost you more than Rosetta Stone).

No helpful info from me, but... I thought it'd be much more useful to learn a language I know a little of than one that I have no knowledge of from something like this. I've planned on buying the full gaeilge(Gaelic) language since I had been taught a few things from it and it's basically my native tongue(The Irish choose to speak English cause it's easier and not as convoluted). I know some Spanish as well as Latin, so... any Romantic language would be easy due to that.


Just stick to the stuff you were taught already! Learning a brand new language out of the box without any real person to person interaction is quite hard. Or just move to where you want to learn the language.

I think military (and dependents?) might be able to get it for free.
Unless that had to do with my dad's position. >_>


Anyways, it teaches a little differently than the classes I have taken, but it definitely works good.

Edit: For the record I've found Japanese to be easier than Latin, which is easier than German, French, and Spanish. I never tried my school's Mandarin class. And I have some relatives that agree, but they added Russian in there.
No, I can't speak those.

I'm a huge fan of Pimsleur, which I am using to learn Italian. (And PS - If anyone wants to practice Italian on Skype then send me a message.)

If you learn better by listening and speaking then that's the way to go. If you need visuals then go with Rosetta Stone.

Here are pluses to Pimsleur from my experience:
* They teach you the most common words used in a language. After the first 10 or so lessons I felt comfortable enough to be a tourist in Italy and be able to get around (order food, ask for directions, locate the bathroom, etc.). I tried Rosetta Stone v2 and was learning useless words early on like horse and elephant. Maybe v3 is better.
* The inventor studied how often you need things repeated to memorize them naturally and paces the repetition of words like that. For example, maybe you need to hear a word 3 times in a row. Then you don't hear it for another 2 minutes. Then another 10 minutes. Then another 2 days, etc. I found that I retained the words in Pimsler better than I retained words from Rosetta Stone.
* Much more speaking than Rosetta Stone v2. (Again, maybe v3 is better.) I also like how you can have conversations or respond to questions. For example, I will be prompted to say in Italian, "Where is the telephone book?" (Dov'è l'elenco telefonico?) And then an Italian will respond, "È lì con il giornale." And then I am asked to thank the person, etc. It also had some fun exercises with math where the speaker verbally asks you basic addition: "Sei più sette fa?" (6 + 7 =?) And then you respond "Tredici!" I don't think Rosetta stone has that.

Cons:
* Even though it's audio, I actually don't hear Italian as well as I'd like. I think the reason why is I can't stop the tape and have it play the phrase over and over. Rosetta stone can do that, so I'm guessing that you will hear the new language better with Rosetta Stone. It's funny how the brain works: I can hear a sentence and not understand it, but if you were to give it to me in English I could instantly say it in Italian. without a second thought!
* Obviously not the best if you want to learn how to read. It does have reading exercises, but it's rather primitive. Rosetta Stone is great for reading.
* No good way to test your pronunciation. Though I've chatted with Italians and they usually don't have trouble with my pronunciation even though I have a clear American accent. I didn't have much luck with Rosetta Stone's v2 voice recorder tester thingy, but I heard the v3 one is much better.

http://www.livemocha.com is also a nice site. Primitive, but very cheap. It has lots of free stuff. Some of the free stuff is hard to find, so if you dig deep then you should find more. The pay stuff is very cheap. You can also use it to find speakers in the other language. They grade your work and you grade theirs. You can chat with them, etc. Tries to use social media concepts like Facebook and MySpace and apply it to language learning. I think it is nice if you already are speaking the language a little bit and want to find others learning English but fluent in your new language, then chat on the Internet. Though the timezones can be annoying if you're not learning something spoken south of the border.

Roark speaks!

I'm not sure who told you this, but having spent a decent chunk of time in both Ulster and the gaeltacht, I'm pretty sure that this has very little to do with who speaks Gaelic and who doesn't in Ireland.

Besides, English is way more convoluted. We do win on things being pronounced more phonetically, though. I sometimes think Gaelic was specifically designed to screw people who learned to read phonetically.

To echo Roark, a friend of mine also raves about Pimsleur.

I've been trying to teach myself a language (Japanese) for about half a year now, and agree with Pimsleur being really good. It eases you into the basics of grammar and formulating sentences, and you acquire lots of useful vocabulary too. I've never tried Rosetta Stone, but it's probably a useful tool similar to Pimsleur if you combine it with other things. In my experience, the best method of self-study is using a cocktail of different grammar textbooks, websites, and audio tapes, plus some reading material once you get fluent enough.

Language learning can be frustrating, but it's the best feeling when you keep at it and slowly start to see yourself improving.

Awesome, thanks you guys! Especially Roark!