Rosetta Stone Review

Why did I even Choose Rosetta Stone?  Well a while back (4 or 5 years ago), I had some friends that said that Rosetta was great for the Language that they were learning, (not Japanese) and they would say things like this is what the Government uses, this is what NASA uses.  All I heard was Blah Blah Blah.  I had no real desire to pick up any languages, I took Spanish in High school, and 3 intensive Spanish courses in college, and still I am not a master in the language.  Mostly due to the lack of motivation to practice.

Then maybe 2 years ago, nearly 3 maybe, I got Rosetta Stone Spanish, it was good, I was at it hardcore for 3 weeks, and then Life came.  And I never came across it again....ever.  Not even today, I may check it out in the future, but I'd like to see this Japanese thing through.  So one August Morning, I woke up and decided, I'm going to learn Japanese, and went and got Rosetta Stone Japanese.  It was kind of random, I hadn't watched any anime in over 2 years.  And even during my Anime watching I never considered learning the Language.

It was more like a friend had showed me the week before some some really derelict and abandoned Japanese countryside homes.  And I thought shoot, that would be cool to fix those places up.  But seeing that requires quite a bit of knowledge, it definitely wasn't up to me, so I left it for a week, until the morning I literally got out of bed and Got Rosetta Stone Japanese.  I chose Rosetta Stone, because I had used it before, I liked the interface and it was really easy to jump into, and extremely intuitive.

On amazon.com there were several reviews, many of which recommended that you learn the Japanese alphabets of Hiragana and Katakana before doing a program like Rosetta Stone.  Yes that is true, if you do Rosetta Stone, you really should get the alphabets down, otherwise, you may be a bit lost for a decent part of the course.  I would check out my earlier posts on Learning the Kana and Practicing the Kana. I highly recommend as it will make Rosetta stone much easier to go through.

The first thing I noticed after completing the first section is that I needed to make a vocabulary list if I wanted any of this stuff to stick.  So on my second Monitor, I opened up a Google spreadsheet in Google docs.  I had 3 columns in my spreadsheet, one for the Japanese word or phrase, one for the word or phrase written out in roman letters, and the third column for the translation into English.  I highly recommend making a vocab list, it will prove to be extremely useful throughout your course and serve as a knowledge indicator.

It is here where Rosetta Stone has its first shortcoming.  Like Spanish, words have conjugations.  These conjugations have no definition depending on which dictionary you look them up.  I didn't spent any time learning the conjugations.  If any of you know or learned Spanish, you know how much of a royal pain in the ass this can be.  So many of my words went undefined in the beginning.  I mean, I could define them from the picture, but I was adamant about finding any definition that I could find from a dictionary to put them into my vocab list.  Later I figured out that certain words have certain patterns and I could change the words around to meet the dictionary form, for a definition.  Not an easy task, and I didn't realize this until much later in the course.

Another Glaring shortcoming in Rosetta stone is the "particle" or the linking word as I like to call it.  I didn't major in English and I hated the class; for every book critique I wrote was frowned upon.  I have a disdain for English Professors and the Nuances of criticism they claim as golden.  So these particles are things like TO and AM, as I AM going TO the store.  There are no real definitions to these kinds of words much like in English and Spanish, but they serve as a framework for properly constructing sentences.  Grammar if you will.  Rosetta Stone will not teach you SQUAT about grammar, you have to figure it out.  Of course adding these particles to your vocab list helps a little bit.

I didn't do any of the speaking exercises because Life kept me busy and at the time, I felt like learning how to speak Japanese is a waste of time, I just wanted to learn how to read and listen to Japanese.  It is here where Rosetta stone shines.  Your ability to read Japanese will approach perfection with the Kana, and fairly decent with the number of kanji (Chinese characters) they introduce throughout the series.  All the listening you will do, combined with your vocab list with do you well.  I practiced my vocab list every day using Anki, the flash card program.  You will be able to read and not understand the Japanese from a Kana only book.  But the Listening from whatever media you listen to, you should be able to pick up on many of the words you will learn in Rosetta Stone.

I should also mention that Spanish has many similar sounds in Japanese.  I found that I had an easier time pronouncing words.  I have been told that my pronunciation was quite good.  So my Spanish education wasn't a complete waste.

Word count?  In Rosetta stone I learned some 1000 words, 1001 is the tally that I have with my vocabulary lists.  Now that's a great vocabulary.  However, In Japanese there are levels of words, and there are words that certain age groups need to learn.  The fact that out of the 1001 words that you learn, there will be many that are deemed "First Grader" vocabulary are simply not taught.  WTF Rosetta, you cant have me finishing your language program, and a First grader knows more words than I.  Not that the first grader knows more words, but there are a certain number of kanji (again Chinese characters) that you should know as a Japanese first grade student.  But I guess Rosetta makes up for this with random Kanji from other grade levels.

I should mention that the Kanji, have two pronunciations, I Chinese way and a Japanese way.  Depending on the context, the two pronunciations could have different meanings, or if they have the same pronunciation, their placement in the sentence could change the meaning.  Not having Rosetta go through that fact with you, is not really a big deal to me.  I can always figure it out later

Rosetta Stone also has a writing section.  It starts off alright, there isn't any writing involved, it simply consists of you identifying various kana and then putting together a word based on the kana that you see.  Not bad right?  Well when you get to the end of the second Level (there are 3 levels) You are shifted into typing out what you hear.  Sounds great right?  NO  Rosetta seems to have chosen some random spacing between words that aren't consistent with the spacing in following sections.  So I had to memorize spacing between words to get things right, and then on the next unit the spacing would change.  So I started to skip these writing sections because of that.

Not only are spaces between words random (there are no spaces in the kana/kanji sentences in rosetta) You write (type) out the sentence you hear using the English letters on your keyboard.  AKA you type in Romaji, and not in Japanese kana.  Which is a little annoying.  Its hard enough to guess the spaces, but it would be better to see the kana appear before you.  As I said, I skipped all the sections like this, complete waste of time to try to guess the spaces.

Where Rosetta really shines is listening comprehension.  You will find that you can watch an anime, or japanese movie/drama, or even news clips and be able to pick up the words you learned in Rosetta Stone.  You will even find that if two people are speaking to each other, you will pick up words here and there, and you can pool together a somewhat elementary translation. This will lead to some idea of what can be going on in whatever you are listening to.

All in all, I'm happy with my foray into Japanese with Rosetta Stone.  I learned many words, an can listen in on some conversation and pick a few words.  I can read a book provided its written in kana.  The format was relatively easy to use.  It took me 7 months to complete because I've also got other things I do.  In reality one could be able to complete Rosetta in 3 months.  It does get a little repetitive, I guess if you dont mind this, you could complete Rosetta in a Month and a half maybe less.  Rosetta does require a significant time commitment.

As for the selling point of speaking a Language in minutes.  Yes you will be speaking Japanese in no time.  But since completing the Rosetta Stone, I put myself in front of some Japanese who dont speak much english and I cannot speak to them.  I cannot string a sentence together.  So with that, a lot is left to be desired.  And so my Japanese Study continues.

When I complete things I used to learn Japanese, I'll provide a review so you know what you will be getting into.