I’m thinking about taking up a language. either Spanish, Italian, or Latin, usiing one of those programs on disk. My question is if anyone can recommend which brand is better: Berlitz? Rosetta?, etc. Any comments, recommending for or against a brand, will be much appreciated.
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who learned a language without taking lessons with a teacher. (Emphasis on that I’ve met.)
For Berlitz, at least, I think that the tapes are meant to be a supplement to class-room teaching. They had me listening to them as homework when I was first learning Japanese.
I learned Spanish with a do-it-yourself kit with book and CDs, but it was a German edition, and I can’t recommend anything for native speakers of English. Later on, I took Spanish courses, but it seemed that my skills were fair enough to keep track with others who had spent several years at lessons with teachers. So it does work, and it’s not even too much workload - if you keep working on it seriously for about half an hour every day, it should be enough to enable you to make considerable progress over time.
I couldn’t believe that there are those language learning packs for Latin - Latin is a dead language, which is still taught in schools (I had nine years of Latin in my curriculum), but it’s not a living language in which conversations take place. But apparently, some of the brands you mentioned do offer these products for Lingua Latina. Amazing. Coincidentally, I read today that the Roman Catholic Church is thinking about lifting the prohibition of holding masses in Latin (Times Online).
Moved to IMHO.
samclem GQ moderator
I’m interested in the responses here too. I intend learning French in the coming months and have been wondering what would be the best approach under current circumstances.
I did learn Swedish some years ago, but it was essential as I moved there and took a job where it was essential to read, write and speak both conversational and technical Swedish.
I had a lot of help from the Swedes who were universally encouraging and always pleased to assist.
That won’t happen now, I have no intention of relocating to France.
Thanks. I wasn’t sure where to put it.
Me three. I want to bring my basic Spanish back up to snuff. I took four years in high school and worked in an industry that has lots of native Spanish-speakers, so I used to be able to get along swimmingly, at least where food-related conversations were concerned. It’s been 14 years since I NEEDED to be able to speak Spanish, though, and I am now reduced to present-tense subject/verb statements.
My dad swears by Rosetta Stone. He is native spanish speaker learning french (fluent in english). He had previoulsy tried other methods with ho-hum results.
I’ve used a few different systems, just to compare, I used them for romance languages. Berlitz was nice, but mundane and a little difficult. Definitely a solid 2nd place. I’d use them again if I couldn’t find #1. #1, without a doubt, was Rosetta Stone. I got to use it for both Portuguese and for their elementary Chinese (Mandarin) courses, and I have to say they kicked butt over Berlitz. I did the Portuguese as a surprise for my wife, who is fluent, and she couldn’t believe it. I did the Chinese as a control for the experiment. I was able to listen and get by with the speakers in my office, but couldn’t read it that well, which is where Berlitz has the advantage. I’d recommend either, but if the language does not use letters that you’re used to, go to Berlitz. If you’re going on vacation to France, use Rosetta.
Great. This is just the kind of information I was looking for. Thanks.
I like Pimsleur for spoken language. I’ve done (and successfully spoken) lessons 1-10 of French, Italian, and Vietnamese. I’m now working on lessons 11-30 of Vietnamese. I like Pimsleur because it’s entirely auditory and uses dialogue training. I can spit out useful sentences in Vietnamese and actually be understood. You can search for “Pimsleur” on the board for previous discussions.
First we’d need to know where are you starting from.
An example: when I had to learn German (a college requirement), I went to a local academy for one year, then a second year at Berlitz.
I might have learned more getting chemistry journals in German and a dictionary 
The Berlitz method is completely centered around a certain perception of the student. Students are assumed to know no grammar at all, not even for their own language, much less comparative grammar. They’re supposed to know no other languages than their native language.
In one of the first lessons, the teacher explained Dativ and Akusativ. We stay silent for a few seconds and one of my classmates says “ok, are they the same usages as in Latin?” Ah, the teacher didn’t know Latin. Oh. “Is Dativ for the Indirect Object and Akusativ for the Direct Object?” Ah, the teacher didn’t know what IO and DO are, we had to explain.
Everybody in that group was already fluent in at least three languages, some in four, plus we all had 1-3 years of Latin, some of us 1 year of Classical Greek. Definitely not the target group for Berlitz! We did comparative grammar in our sleep. The teachers were unable to adapt to our needs. We needed to build vocabulary; instead, most of the exercises were “fill in the blank” grammar exercises where you didn’t have to think about vocabulary at all.
So if you don’t know what a Direct Object is or what’s the difference in emphasis between the Active and Passive Voices, Berlitz may be good for you. Otherwise… I’d choose another one.
I’ll speak only for learning Spanish. I’ve tried Tell Me More, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, Teach Yourself and Learn Spanish in Your Car.
Rosetta Stone
Lots of hype around this program, but in my experience, it’s really not all that great. I went through the CDs and then went to Spain for a month. I didn’t feel like I learned anything conversational from the CDs and it was pretty evident to the locals as well. There’s a review on Amazon about the tenses, etc and it pretty much sums up how I feel about Rosetta Stone. Grade: C
Tell Me More
Very immersive program. Steep learning curve and the interface takes some getting used to. Like Rosetta Stone, there are reading, writing, listening and speaking components. It’s much more conversational. Grade: B
Pimsleur
Audio CDs that you follow and repeat. Simple, straightforward but it’s purely aural. Active listening is the method they use. Grade: B+
Teach Yourself
I found this 2 tape + book set in my sister’s junk box (they have it on CD now). The book complements the tapes very well. The lessons are centered on becoming conversational in Spanish. I learned alot from this set and was able to use what I learned when I was in Spain. Grade: B+
Learn Spanish in Your Car
I don’t think I even finished this because the monotony was just too much. I can’t give this a grade.
I should note here that I intended to learn Spanish for conversation. Your goals may be different so naturally, YMMV.
It helps to subscribe to a Word of the Day newsletter to build up your vocabulary quickly. About.com has some good ones.
Hm. Rosetta Stone is ‘#1 without a doubt’, or it’s a ‘C’.
I’d like to hear more opinions about Rosetta Stone.
I bought the Rosetta Stone Japanese 1 and 2. While I did learn a bit from it. It sort of leaves out the details a lot. What they basically do is give you a picture and a sentence in Romaji, Hiragana or Kanji (you choose.) A native speaker speaks the sentence describing the picture. It does various permutations of showing pictures/showing sentences/speaking sentences. You get to match the pictures with the sentences/phrases. At first it is bewildering trying to figure out what they are trying to say, but eventually you get the basic meaning of what they are trying to tell you (remember this is language and text which is totally foreign to you.)
What I didn’t like about it, is that sometimes it could get kinda vague as you have to start out guessing what the picture tries to tell you. For example, is it a NEW house or is it an EXPENSIVE house?
Also, there are slight details which they don’t go into. There’s a picture of a woman on a concrete cylinder, she is jumping. Another picture, a horse is jumping. I get that, and I recognize the ‘jump’ verb in both sentencese, but there is more to the sentence I don’t recognize. I later found out that the sentence of the woman was her jumping DOWN, and the horse sentence was the horse jumping OVER (for some reason I thought there might be a crazy conjugation for animals and for people.) I go pretty batty if I don’t fully understand something and I HAD to look at the english version. It was ‘the woman jumps’ and ‘the horse jumps.’ So I think the philosophy is pretty much what they say, you learn like you do when you were a baby. You learned stuff really generally at first and left a lot of the subtleties out.
In my opinion it has SOME value, but I would prefer to know exactly what I am learning and not just the gist of it.
I’ve found the Rosetta Stone courses I’ve tried to be geared towards those who need repetitive drilling on the simplest of phrases and words. I can’t see the advantage of these courses over buying several good books and preparing flashcards, except for the ritzy packaging and high price. However, you could pick some mundane words painlessly? I don’t know how to characterize fairly this software, other than to say it seems ill-suited to somebody who wants to efficiently learn the nuts and bolts of a language.
Pretty pictures of elementary-school-level stuff. That’s about it.
I wouldn’t buy the Pimsleurs at full price, either – although they can be fun to have around. I think at least a few of the Pimsleurs use the same dialogue, obviously translated into whatever language. Seems kind of weak, especially considering the utter banality of the scripted conversations. I bought the French (at a second-hand shop) for a girlfriend, who doesn’t know French. The highest level was simply so basic as to be an absolute joke – “Is it hot in January in New York?” etc. – this is my perception, since she didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on. If she did, however, she would have known far less than a dedicated first-semester college language student would have upon completion of a semester. They do seem to be well-recorded with competent vocal talent, however.
I could speak Japanese well enough as a kid to translate for my parents. I’d like to pick it up again. I did take a class at UCLA and got an A in it. I should have gone further.
I took a lot of German in high school and college. I’d like to brush up on that as well.
I’ve always wanted to learn French, and a friend has just started trying to learn it. So I think French would be good to learn now, since I’ll have someone to practice with.
And then there’s Italian…
I’ve never learned more than a few phrases of a language using the kind of materials you’re talking about (I dabbled in Italian and in German at various points; Italian was easy, because I was already fluent in Spanish and knew some French); I find that I like a more structured approach, at least at the beginning. Give me some grammar fundamentals, and I’m happy as a clam.
But my favorite enrichment techniques involve finding as much opportunity for immersion as you can; if you live near an area where your target language is spoken, go there and walk around and just listen to people. If there are news media and/or music radio stations in your target language, listen to those as much as you can, even if you’re only understanding a small percentage of what’s going on. But my personal favorite technique for picking up fluency quickly: fall head over heels for someone who speaks no English.
I like to work on languages during my half-hour walk to work. I’ve found the Pimsleur system to be perfect. I’ve done several languages (b3tour is right: the dialogues are very similar from language to language, but that can actually be helpful for learning.) The people speak at a normal pace, which I like much better than lessons I’ve heard with the people speaking very slowly. I think it’s important to get your brain used to hearing it at normal speed.
Rosetta Stone requires you to be at the computer and I always thought they were a bit basic and juvenile.
Learn in your Car are awful. It’s just one repetition of the word in English and the target language, good only for extremely basic vocabulary, no grammar or development of an “ear” for the target language at all.
Don’t forget the wonderful world of podcasts and Internet radio stations for endless learning material.
I had the Teach Yourself book and tapes for learning Esperanto, but I barely used them.
Instead, I started with a ten-lesson introduction by email, with each lesson being marked by a teacher. Then I had a ten-week class at a higher level; after that, I spent months and months just IMing with people. This was the fall of 1999, when ICQ had just appeared. I spent time listening to internet radio and trading emails, but even more, I spent time talking to people. And in 2000 I went overseas and spent a week living in Esperanto. That was in Finland, so there was little English in the surroundings to rely on as a crutch, unless you were ordering nuggets at McDonalds .
So I guess that I can’t really recommend an audio system for learning a language; it seems to be much more important to get person-to-person interaction.
I’d still like to try the ‘fall for someone speaking your target language’ thing, but so far that hasn’t happened. Or rather, the falling hasn’t been mutual. 