Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Hours, days, weeks of fun - not be torn apart by purists October 23, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this because I'm interested in languages, and to learn a few basics of the less commonly offered European languages covered.
OK, it is written by Americans for Americans - the Spanish offered is Latin American Spanish, but most holidaying Brits mis-pronounce it anyway! And there is a plethora of Native American languages, while 'other' Indian languages, such as Punjabi and Gujerati, spoken by tens of millions of people, are omitted.
But so what? What other piece of software can let you read and hear so many basic (but useful) phrases in so many languages? AND have a device for s-l-o-w-i-n-g down the speed of the audio part so you can keep up with it. AND have a grammatical breakdown of every phrase.
For the price, it's a bargain, an absolute gem and fun to use. Purists should save their criticism for more 'high-brow' courses costing ten, twenty times this price. Enjoy!
Useful, but.... May 28, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a great CD-ROM for learning basic phrases for holidays (sorry, you won't be fluent), and just for pleasure. One slight gripe is that seeing as there are far superior courses for languages such as French and Italian, the publishers could have concentrated more on languages such as Slovak or Hungarian, for which there are no Pimsleur/Michel Thomas - style courses available from public libraries. It's still a superb product though.
excellent value for money but room for improvement February 22, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
The software offers a wide and varied selection of the world's languages. It gives you a concise course for the most popular languages: French, Spanish etc to enticing samplers of the more exotic tongues such as Tahitien or Quecha.
One of the few criticisms I would have would be in relation to the vocabulary lists of about 25 languages. Of the languages in question such as Cornish or Romansch, there are no pronunciation guides or sentence or grammatical structures to assist the user further. Also, I found the information on Provencal inaccurate. This language within the Provence region is not considered a dialect of Occitan and the spelling on offer is not a system recognised in this region. I may seem to be splitting hairs but this is a very contentious issue in this area.
Lastly, some of the languages such as Breton have no reference grammars unlike for instance Arabic or Chinese which would be of interest to those of a certain approach to language learning.
However, for the price and the selection on offer it is a good enough method to start off with and it has given legitmacy and space to the many languages under threat in this day and age.
 Best value for mony in the language market July 18, 2004
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
This is the best value for money I have came across. It can have the whole of one language spoken normaly or a word at a time. It can have them at a phrase, at a time or a word, at a time. You can also controll the phrase or word by clicking for it to be repeated you can click for the last phrase or word spoken again. It is geared up for absaloute beginners and the oppositie in fluency. If you print out a major language you have 20-24 A4 sheets of one language and may be, 6 in a less important language, like Scottish Gaelic. I would say this is more than enough. Price, lets say 30, but two languages are 15 and you could break this down. I have paid 20 on one language with less ability than one of these.
It is great to even have the ability to greet a person in various languages so it may be worth it here alone.
Hours of fun and well worth it! February 23, 2003
32 out of 35 found this review helpful
Still discovering all the goodies in this amazing package. There are all kinds of interactive features to help you with the mundane stuff like vocabulary learning and getting the spelling exactly right. Suddenly, learning a bunch of words doesn't seem that boring any more, when you can fill in crosswords and play other little games.
Just a couple of things puzzle me. There's a separate facility for Canadian French and European French, and also for Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese. But there's only one learning track for English (for Spanish speakers) and also for Spanish, despite these being major languages with distinct European/American varieties....why??
Also, why do I only score "good" and not "wow!" when testing my pronounciation of my own native language??? (OK so I didn't really need to do this...)
Despite the above comments I think this is a fantastic buy, worth every penny, and unlike all the teach yourself language packs I have bought in the past (which just got stuck on the shelf collecting dust), I am actually using it and learning from it. Highly recommended!
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