Rosetta Stone

Ok, so /lang/, im currently learning german through a formal class, and im quite pleased at my progress. i retain everything quite well, and it's not difficult.

i am an aspiring linguist, and hope to major in it in college (not underage b&, senior). i have ineffectually tried to learn other languages, but my biggest success is coming from pirated dutch rosetta stone.

i want to learn a multitude of languages before my life is terminated, and i know that rosetta stone is billed by itself and others as a quintessential language-acquisition resource, but it is as good as it seems?

in short, let us discuss the pros and cons of rosetta stone compared to other conventional language learning methods and series, and which is more convenient, effective, potent, etc.

I've heard it's not as good as it's made out to be and you would need more to go with it. But I only have it torrented, haven't installed it yet. THE GAME

I found it pretty worthless, actually. You'll learn to say stuff like "The Boy is Under the Table" and shit, but when it comes to real world interaction you'll still be as useless as ever. If you can get it for free, fine, otherwise don't bother.

De jongen is onder de tafel!
Yeah, I'm finding out that it's pretty useless.

To put it bluntly:

Rosetta Stone = shit

/thread

Michel Thomas is all u need

I have it (from torrents) but haven't installed it. Is it even worth it /lang/?

Rosetta Stone is decent at teaching you words.

But not anything else, like, say, grammar.

>>8
okay I guess that's what I really need it for anyway

>>9
There are cheaper and better ways to learn vocabulary

>>10

I disagree with cheaper and better. Rosetta Stone is free, after all, just like Adobe Photoshop. And for free software, it does teach not only vocab but also listening skills very effectively.

Most of the complaints around RS come from douches who thought that they wouldn't need a grammar and dictionary to accompany it. It really isn't a whole package by itself, and to a language learner should there ever even be such a concept as a single package?

>>10
Cheaper than free? Shit hook me up. I got plenty of Pimsleur and other audio methods and grammar ebooks I just need a good way to learn vocab so RS should help

>>10

goto gigapedia.org, and you can get giant vocabulary workbooks for pretty much any language, along with dictionaries, and grammar books.. Free.

BUT, since they take up like say.. maybe 30mb for workbook for every language you could possibly want(since each ebook is only about 1mb or less..) then your better off than some worthless program taking up a bunch of space, in short my method is free and efficeint(pardon my english)

Gigapedia doesn't have any Cantonese stuff. Fail.

>>14
Move to Hong Kong or Guangdong or at least go to a Chinatown nearby and learn spoken Cantonese there, then learn characters. There are no other ways. Cantonese is a highly local language, in most occasions the 國語 would serve you universally.

Rosetta Stone is trash. It's a waste of bandwidth to download, and I really feel sorry for anyone who actually pays for it.

>>16
I don't, if you are stupid enough to buy anything from a commercial then you deserve to waste your money on it.

>>6

Seconded! His Spanish-language tapes were excellent. He breaks the language into digestible parts. It's like listening to a recorded lecture-- he has three students parroting him and figuring out questions along with you.

The man teaches French, Italian, English, Spanish and German as far as I know. He has one of those "citizens of the World" accents, cannot pinpoint where he's from, but it's sort of comforting to listen to.

wall of text...

tl;dr Go with MICHEL THOMAS, you WILL learn.

>>18
Michael Thomas is a good complimentary learning tool but you won't learn shit using it alone.

>>19
>Michel

fixd