The Stone is a broken part of a bigger stone slab. It has a message carved into it, written in three types of writing. It was an important clue that helped experts learn to read Egyptian hieroglyphs (a writing system that used pictures as signs).
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On Napoleon's defeat, the stone became the property of the British under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria (1801) along with other antiquities that the French had found. The stone was shipped to England and arrived in Portsmouth in February 1802.
Champollion inscribed this copy of the published paper (see image 'Tableau de Signes PhonÃtiques') with alphabetic hieroglyphs meaning 'Ã mon ami Dubois' ('to my friend Dubois'). Champollion then made a second crucial breakthrough, realising that the alphabetic signs were used not only for foreign names, but also for Egyptian names. Together with his knowledge of the Coptic language, which derived from ancient Egyptian, this allowed him to begin reading hieroglyphic inscriptions fully.
I wanted to reach out to you from Rosetta Stone. We appreciate the enthusiasm about our product. The current price for TOTALe Version 4 currently ranges from $179-$499, depending on which level set you are interested in. We also have a free traveler app, offered in several languages, which we'd like you to try, review, and incorporate into your post. This mobile app includes the option to include translation if you would like. We appreciate your time and look forward to hearing from you. Listening to bloggers and customers is important to us. If you're interested in reaching out to me, I can be contacted directly at dlaplante@rosettastone.com.
The foundation of my course was GRAMMAR. Drills EVERYDAY. As an adult learner, you are fighting your mother tongue - the intuitive understanding of grammar, we saw and heard this day after day in our class. Learning about the process and how our brain translates provides a very valuable insight into how a fluent mother-tongue speaker absorbs a new language. I cannot understand how you can pick up a foreign language without the cornerstone of grammar. Understanding the fundamentals, (UNLESS you are a small child say 2?) is essential, and this is where I see this product failing to fill an important gap, you see images, but you are never shown anything at all about the nuts and bolts of grammatical underpinnings. Therefore I have a mixed opinion about Rosetta Stone's methodology.
Thanks for a very interesting article - you are right in your analysis of the strengths of RS and, as a languages teacher, I agree with your recommendation to use a variety of resources.
Personally, I use Skype with native speaker friends, originally contacted through the excellent old LiveMocha.
I'd be very interested to read your comments on the "new" LiveMocha which is encountering widespread hostility from LM users because of its limited options, design, instability, quality of lessons and pay-to-learn model. There appears to be an exodus from the site.
I think your balanced approach is just what's needed on this new product. I'd be interested in discussing some of the features which caused me to leave after 3 great, productive years.
As for the cost, I took the first year for a modest $120 through a local university online, which got me through all of level one, and about half of the way through level two. Not too bad. I am now looking at a seller of software that would be very similar to the university offering, but without the time limit, all for about $100. At that price, I can play around with it for quite a while and get my money's worth. I am hoping to get good enough to be able to converse with the students I tutor, sharing the difficulties of learning a second language and creating a rapport - it is no easier for me than for them. I just have the advantage of not being totally dependent on learning the second language to function in every day life.
Well I am one of those learners that has done really great with Rosetta Stone. I do know that learning a new language takes commitment of time and practice practice practice. The other thing learning a language takes is some responsibility to do some extra activities in conjunction with the primary program. I purchased a grammar book to hone in on the rules for example. I joined a chat program where I speak with native speakers at least once a week. I utilize all the perks of Rosetta Stone Totale, the group Studio lessons, the games, the reading exercises and private Studio sessions. I am 53 years old and I can carry on a decent conversation in Italian which is my new second language and only after using Rosetta Stone for one year. My speaking is considered an A2, which is pretty good having no prior experience in Italian. This is the one thing that I know. There are many types of learning styles and everyone has a unique style. If you are visual and enjoy figuring things out then Rosetta Stone is a great choice. If you are lazy and don't want to commit to speaking, practicing, doing exercises then yeah, Rosetta Stone is not a good investment for you. For me, it is the best program and I have tried many.....
But if you first teach me the above structure (in 1 minute) then have me memorize 15 nouns and 10 verbs, I will know how to make thousands of sentences. And when I hear sentences, I'll be looking for "nun, o, ida" which will help me separate out the other words, both ones I know and new ones.
Learning vocabulary require memorization, so is a great place for interactive repetitive games like selecting pictures to match. Just now I tried RE's free demo of the learning process. I always got the answer right (I picked which student is drinking tea) but had no clue what part of each 13-syllable phrase I was picking was "tea", "drink" so couldn't memorize individual words, and had no interest in memorizing whole sentences that meant vaguely "child drinking tea" without knowing which words are what. But the intro claimed that after each lesson I'd be practicing the things I'd learned with live other folks online. Huh?
Really liked this review, I felt like a lot of reviews online are unfairly against it and as someone who started Rosetta Stone Mandarin a month ago but had previous experience with the language (studied abroad in college for a semester and ended up taking 15 hours of Mandarin by graduation), I find a lot of the complaints laughable, particularly the "no explanation" complaints. As someone who has used Rocket French and Pimsleur Mandarin, I was SO relieved to not be hearing so much stinkin English banter the whole time. There have been a few times where a word seems unclear to me, and yes, if you wanted to you could probably get through the whole course without learning much (for example, not understand why you're clicking a picture except you heard the word for "man" and there is only one picture with a man.) However, if you're going to spend the money on Rosetta Stone (I bought all 5 levels of Totale Mandarin for 264 as part of their Christmas special), I would assume you would WANT to know what was actually being said and it wouldn't take too much inquisitiveness on your own part to either use google or a chinese dictionary app to clear up any confusion. The Totale components are a bit gimmicky, particularly the online games because nobody is ever online available to compete against, but the live tutoring sessions are pretty useful in my opinion even though they are a bit too-structured (I've found that if I'm the only one in the session, the teacher will go off script pretty often which is nice). If nothing else, you are being forced to comprehend a native speaker and produce a response on your own. There is no substitute for that besides living in the country of the language you are learning. I've also felt a bit of a boost in motivation after finishing a session, regardless of how useful the session might have been. Not too be a Rosetta Stone ad, I do find some things rather annoying. For example, the order at which they decide to teach you some of the words or phrases doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes. This is definitely a program aimed at someone who is in it for the long haul and has a lot of time to devote to the language, not for someone wanting to quickly learn some useful phrases for a vacation (you may never get too them!). I also think the speech recognition is quite faulty, particularly on Chinese where tones are so important. All in all, Rosetta Stone is my favorite purchase so far (Rocket French, Pimsleur Mandarin) if nothing else because it is fun and makes me want to come back and keep "playing" if you will, because it does feel a bit like a game. And after all, if you aren't motivated or sticking with it, it doesn't matter how scientifically effective your program is.
I tend to disagree as to whether informal or formal language should be taught first (Japanese/Korean). I learned formal Japanese first and, when I went to Japan and stayed with a family, I was told my Japanese was very "polite". I quickly picked up casual speech from listening to the family but I would not have wanted to wander around on my own, speaking rudely to clerks and train personnel. I would rather be too polite than not polite enough. If I were teaching very young children (up through 6th grade), I would concentrate on casual speech but anyone above that age should be speaking at the average level of speech which is what you speak with people outside your 'in-group' in Japan.
I feel completely BETRAYED by this company. I saved up my measly minimum wage paychecks so I could try to learn Russian for someone I love very much. 500$ isn't just chump change! The sales person said that was all I'd ever have to pay so very reluctantly I purchased it. So why are asking me for MORE money to access things I've ALREADY BOUGHT!?
This seems so sleazy and intentionally malicious and after putting such a high price on your product it seems completely unreasonable. I now view it as almost a personal goal or vendetta to make sure as many potential buyers of your product are aware of this as possible because there is no logical economic explanation for this greed after such a high initial product price.
Rosetta stone and affiliates, you have lost all of my respect.
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