Diane Baber had a question about Rosetta Stone in the comments on one of the posts yesterday and I thought I'd expand on my answer. Rosetta Stone is really a nice piece of software for attempting to learn a language. However it is really only useful if you are going to speak with other people for extended periods of time. For instance, the Army has come up with a "fluency" guideline for Arabic (and probably other languages) that to be "fluent" in Arabic, you have to have 1 year of schooling and 1 year of "in-country". That last section is the trickiest as I haven't been able to convince Miranda to move to Tunisia yet. Tunisia is the most "liberal" of the Arabic speaking countries but let's just say that it isn't up to U.S. level of permissiveness. There are 2 major languages there: French and Arabic. Anyway... I'm going off topic. Now I am very slow at languages since I don't have a natural ability at learning languages so your results may vary. If I was going to start a new language, I'd probably start with Chinese. Over 1 billion speakers (most of any language) and quite a few of them live in the U.S. We have 3 Chinese restaurants in Independence (I think) and we've ate at 2 of them. The one we ate at last night, the cashier was pretty much "right off the boat" and had a very heavy accent. So I think you could find plenty of people to talk to. So anyway, Diane that's my extended answer. If you are interested in German, I have some CD's that I would give you.
nc
1 comment:
I appreciate you taking the time to answer me so extensively! I have some Spanish and German language tapes, but have never really gotten into them. I've heard Rosetta Stone advertized and for sale in the mall, and was curious if they were worth what they were asking. Probably not for me. But if I do decide to try it, I'll probably go with your suggestion of Chinese to start with. I find it amusing to hear them talk, I can just imagine how funny I would sound! Thanks for your help!!
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