Rosetta Stone - language software.

Pimsleur software is considered to be the best in the business.

 

Nothing works as well as moving to the country and learning how to sprechen.

 

This.

In my case, when I took Spanish in school, I had the added benefit of having relatives from Cuba. My great-aunt could speak to me in Spanish and often did, going on as if I'd spoken the language my entire life. My grandmother could correct my Spanish, and frequently did. Plus, I'd heard them speak it so much that I had much more to draw from than many of my classmates did when I lived in Maine.

I'd gotten to the point where I even fooled native speakers while taking Spanish. I know I'm nowhere near that now, but I believe I had the next best thing to actually living in a Spanish-speaking country when I learned.

 

This is so true. I've had several hispanic friends tell me that they really didn't learn English until they came to the United States and basically was forced to learn the language or die.

 

I'd just like to know how many languages the hot chick in the red blouse on the TV commercials speaks. She's about as fine a MILF as I've seen.

 

I'm using the program to learn Russian (also to be able to speak with my mother-in-law) and find it a good (but hardly perfect) tool.

Learning it "like a child" does have its advantages. You don't really get bogged down in memorization. After a while it just "clicks" and all of a sudden you know the difference between "голубой" (light blue) and "синий" (dark blue). And so far the style of learning is not boring. Sticking with it and not getting discouraged is the key in any language.

It also has voice recognition to test how well you can pronounce the words and syllables. A little frustrating when my wife says "that was fine" to me and the machine says "no it wasn't".

However, I wish the program spent more time on writing and grammar. I find that I can recognize and say words . . . but when it comes down to writing them from scratch, it's sometimes difficult ("is the ending ы or и or ии or ий?") because it doesn't make you practice writing enough. It also doesn't really explain grammar (why "где" is "where" and "куда" is "to where . . . "), which is a shame for a language that has six cases (forms for each noun).

But I cannot complain. I got the program for free (wife downloaded it from some torrent), and my wife is all the motivation I need to keep studying and getting better.

 

That's my daughter hondo!

 

I am self-teaching french. I started out with a workbook from the library. I have bought a couple of elementary school books, a French-English reader and a dictionary. I also heard the Pimsleur method is the way to go, but am looking to avoid spending that much money.

The one thing I don't know about Rosetta is does it teach you verb forms and other grammar? French is one of the harder languages and something I'm having trouble with.

 

Eventually, you start to learn grammar and conjugation in Rosetta Stone. They don't just lay it out for you, they just start giving you sentences and paragraphs and let you work it for yourself.

It's a pain to put the work in, but I've made more gains with my French using it than with any other method. But repeating the same stuff over and over again for hours is maddening.

 

Bumping this from long long ago....

I just got the Spanish iPhone app. Paid $200.

Anyone else used it recently and have any thoughts?