Rosetta Stone and other languages.

Has anyone actually successfully learned another language using Rosetta Stone? I'd like to learn how to speak one or two foreign languages (I'm already OK in Spanish, but could use a refresher) and am trying to figure out the best way to learn them short of taking collegiate classes because I am well over my college days.

You mean the actual rosetta stone? iirc, wasn't that just greek, latin and ancient egyptian?

I started a RS but stopped. I need to continue it and see if it does indeed work.

I actually just started using the site duolingo a few days ago to help refresh my Spanish. I'm liking it so far, but I haven't been using it long enough to say how effective it really is in the long run.

No but i used Final Fantasy IV to learn English when i was 12. It worked reasonably well.

I would object to this method. Video games rely far less on language than you'd initially think! And this is coming from somebody who made it halfway through Thracia 776 without a translation of any kind.

Depends on the language. If it's a language similar grammatically to your native language than it's okay, but something entirely different it's completely worthless.

@video_game_king: Until high school there wasn't any mandatory English class. So during the summer between my last year of elementary school and first year of high school, armed with a copy of FFIV and a French-English dictionary, i learned enough to smoke everyone else in my class! I probably learned more with games than with actual classes. Of course this says more about the disastrous state of English classes 15 years ago in Quebec.

@pr1mus:

Yea, that makes my point well enough.

I know some military guys who have used that to lean new languages. I'm pretty sure that's one of the programs the US Government uses to teach linguistics That shit really works from everything I've heard..

Oh i understand that. I was not suggesting to ignore actual learning tools and replace them with games.

we should just all learn the same language and stop with this multiple language shit.

i vote for english cus its the only one i know and i did real bad in spanish class in highschool

Also, to correct you: if I remember correctly, it was Greek, Egyptian, and Egyptian rendered in Greek.

Of verbal languages that would help me not die if air dropped into a forigen country, I know English, and Im only half good at that.

Of languages that I could use to program a robot to find its way back to me, if air droped into a forigen country.

I know:

C++, C, C#, Javascript, Action Script, LUA, JAVA, BASIC, CSS

Also im not to bad in illustrator ether.

Actually it was Greek, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, and Demotic, an Egyptian written language (not using symbols like Hieroglyphs) that was mainly used to issue official decrees. It was a precursor to the Coptic language.

If you already know a Romance language, you can learn them all. If you already know a Germanic language, you can learn them all. If you already know an Iranic language, you can learn them all. However, I find Rosetta Stone absolutely useless if you don't know any language except your own beforehand. Watching movies in the language you intend to learn helps a lot. There are also a lot of lectures you can find on Youtube that teach almost every major language on the internet.

If you're actually going to buy a copy, I wouldn't say it's worth it. It's really expensive, and you'll probably get more out of free online lessons, penpals/skyping, and a textbook/workbook or two.

These kinds of things rarely work as effective as you'd hope, at least to me. I think you're better off taking courses with actual human beings, reading different websites and watching TV in that language.

I would recommend using Duolingo as a jumping off point. Take advantage of the free services before you gamble on Rosetta Stone!

If you learned English through Final Fantasy IV then... man. It's a miracle your sentence made any sense at all.

@seauton:

I completed the entirety of Rosetta Stone Mandarin Level 1. Yes, it works if you stick with it.

@aurelito: I disagree. I only know how to speak English and tried to learn French through Rosetta Stone. I learned quite a lot from it. The thing about Rosetta stone is it takes quite some time to learn to actually have a normal conversation and it doesn't explain masculine vs feminine words. But it'll teach you how to say phrases correctly and for you to naturally learn what that phrase means. 2 lessons of Rosetta Stone I learned more than the 3 years of French I took in high school. Granted I was really lazy in high school, but still.