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How far can Rosetta Stone v3 take you? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5821 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 49 of 88 01 August 2008 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Yes, but it is not that the IPA itself teaches the student to produce these sounds, it's that in order to learn the IPA the student must be taught phonetics. Again, this is another aspect of the IPA as a crutch: teachers are reluctant to get away from paper, and many students are determined that they must have documentary proof that they're learning. The IPA "buys time" by convincing the reluctant student that they are learning something, but more importantly it convinces the teacher that they are doing something. The other problem about the IPA is that it is universal, and so implicity encodes that all sounds are distinct can be pronounced, but one of the little niggles of language learning is that certain sounds are impossible in the language, and two sounds may merge so as to have a non-phonemic difference. For example, think of French. "n" sometimes makes a sound, and sometimes doesn't. But it always nasalises a preceding vowel. In the IPA, this nasalisation is made explicit on the vowel itself, and the student is not led to see it as an interaction. And if the N isn't there in the phonetic script... Basically, teaching the IPA distracts from the internal completeness and regularity of the language. Then we hit liaison -- a missing might suddenly start being pronounced -- the IPA cannot account for changes like that. The IPA for "beaux" ends in a vowel, but the IPA for "beaux hommes" includes a /z/ for that X. The IPA defines single sounds, when the pronunciation of any language is governed by transformations, mutations and continua of sounds. Edited by Cainntear on 01 August 2008 at 11:43am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5821 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 50 of 88 01 August 2008 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
No, IPA is not a first step for beginners, and you yourself have said as much. "I have tin ears, and could not get started without the introductory info on how to place lips, tongue, teeth, and so on." Exactly. The IPA does not tell you how to do this. The IPA is an encoding that you cannot use until you have learnt where to place your tongue, lips etc. Thus the IPA cannot be used until you know how to make the sounds that the IPA encodes. IE: in order to understand the IPA, you must first understand phonetics. And you have as good as said this. The music analogy is of limited validity. On a piano, you can play practically any pair of notes sequentially without one affecting the quality of the other. However, on a synthesiser with "portamento", the transition between two notes is expressed and made explicit. Classical notation can describe piano music, but it doesn't encode the characteristics of "portamento", so while you could sing by sight a very close approximation of a piano part, your rendering of a portamento piece would be limited by your knowledge of portamento, which goes beyond the limits of the written page. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Abik Triglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 5478 days ago 8 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Italian, English | Message 51 of 88 20 May 2009 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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| Abik Triglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 5478 days ago 8 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Dutch*, Italian, English | Message 52 of 88 20 May 2009 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I think the rosetta stone is very expensive, but after thorougly analyzing it, i think itv should be opened in a wiki kind of way in order to make any language community able to import their language and make it learnable to any other world citizen.
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| craigerymontoya Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 53 of 88 13 August 2009 at 2:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I've heard a lot about Rosetta Stone and I've decided to try it out. I borrowed copies of RSV3 in a few different languages. Before I started to use it, I would like to know is it a full fledged language learning system that help someone develop a basic fluency or does it drop you off at a certain point before that? Does that depend on the language you chose? Does RSv3 cover the grammar? the language's alphabet? Is it best used with a second source? Should I be looking up anything about the language I want to learn before starting Rosetta Stone V3?
Any help is appreciated Edited by craigerymontoya on 13 August 2009 at 3:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Reykjavik Triglot Newbie UkraineRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5397 days ago 15 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Ukrainian, Russian*, English Studies: Icelandic | Message 54 of 88 13 August 2009 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Generally, RS is a great tool for what it does — naturally learning the “hang” of language.
Version 3 performs wonderfully on the premise — learning the language like infants do, with images and sounds. It is the slickest and most thorough piece of language learning software I've ever seen — point me to a slicker one if you object. Yet, the premise doesn't work out that great sometimes. It's wonderful for grammatically and culturally similar languages — say, English and Spanish. Full completion will bring you to level you'll be able to jump off to native materials; yet, for languages that are very different from English, like Russian or Chinese, it can be quite frustrating. Still, it's very good for learning vocab; it's great for getting the “hang” of the grammar; but it won't replace everything else. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| craigerymontoya Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5392 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 55 of 88 13 August 2009 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Thanks Reykjavik for clearing the smoke out of the room! Edited by craigerymontoya on 13 August 2009 at 5:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Reykjavik Triglot Newbie UkraineRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5397 days ago 15 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Ukrainian, Russian*, English Studies: Icelandic | Message 56 of 88 13 August 2009 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I'll answer your questions even more specifically now :)
It doesn't, and RS curriculum is very uniform. Though there are different picture sets (one western, one eastern, one african and one Latin (as in Roman Empire, not as Latinamerican)), the curriculum itself is the same for every course across v3.
As been answered previously, only through comparison and contrast. -That- is actually very smart for all languages but for the most complex grammatically (like the same Russian).
No, but for non-Latin languages there's easy and quick swapping between native alphabet and romanization.
Yes.
Yes, it's true of any language acquisition source. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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