Well I have acquired Rosetta Stone, and I would like to start learning a language.

To be honest the latin based, romance languages, bore me. They've simply never truly interested me.

I went through a few lessons on German in rosetta stone and that's definitely an option.

The Russian language has always interested me, but simply going through the introductory lesson is kicking my ass. It seems to be a mixture of the completely foreign alphabet and the pronunciations that go along with it. The funny thing is those are the exact things that draw me to the language. So, while Russian will prove very difficult, it is also an option I'm willing to explore.

Japanese also interests me, and it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to learn, having also done a few lessons in it. The reason seems to be that there is an option to use an english alphabet, and the pronunciation is very simlar.

So I've come to you all, suggest me a language to learn? I want something challenging, but not too discouraging. Definitely not a romance language, as they are too common and regular to me. I want to learn something different that not everyone really gets the chance to learn. (for instance, my highschool offers spanish, german, french, italian, and mandarin (as of last year).

tl;dr
Suggest a language for me to learn using the Rosetta Stone software that is not classed as a 'romance language'.

Greek and Russian use generally the same alphabet with a few exceptions...generally called "cryllic" and no, greek is not a "Romance" language.

I'd say greek

What countries are you interested in?

How about a Semetic language? Hebrew, Arabic or Aramaic (Although, i'm not sure rosetta does Aramaic)

If you want to use rosetta stone solely to learn a language i'm afraid you're going to have to go with one based on a latin alphabet, otherwise you're going to have to use other materials or sources.

Hope this helps, good luck, and, even if it is really REALLY hard, keep trying, you'll love it.

Thanks, I'll look into it. (and yeah, I knew greek wasn't a romance lanuage)

-altair

What countries are you interested in?

How about a Semetic language? Hebrew, Arabic or Aramaic (Although, i'm not sure rosetta does Aramaic)

If you want to use rosetta stone solely to learn a language i'm afraid you're going to have to go with one based on a latin alphabet, otherwise you're going to have to use other materials or sources.

Hope this helps, good luck, and, even if it is really REALLY hard, keep trying, you'll love it.

Well the languages I currently have available to me are germain arabic and russian. I don't see many others available for this versian of the program, though I'll look more later.

What other sources could I use to learn russian? I really do believe russian would interest me the most, if it weren't so horribly daunting. I can stumble aimlessly through the lessons but I don't feel I'm really learning anything.

Well the languages I currently have available to me are germain arabic and russian. I don't see many others available for this versian of the program, though I'll look more later.

What other sources could I use to learn russian? I really do believe russian would interest me the most, if it weren't so horribly daunting. I can stumble aimlessly through the lessons but I don't feel I'm really learning anything.

Pimsleur for conversational russian. And some books, proper text books from big bookstores for learning the cryllic alphabet and written russian.

Good luck.

I'd suggest Japanese or German. :D The Rosetta programs seem to be decent for both, although you might have to look for some outside sources if you really intend to get serious with 'em.

Japanese - at least to me - is the easiest asian language to learn, and if you manage to master the kanji, you'll be able to decipher meanings of anything written in chinese. The grammar is relatively straightforward and doesn't contain many exceptions, and you'll being learning everything in roman characters (or "romanji," as they say) for starters.
Once you've mastered some basic grammatical forms, you'll be able to start learning the writing! It's simpler than it looks, even though they have three character sets, and it's quite fun to mess around with.

German, on the other hand, I'd recommend because it's so similar to English. Plus it sounds cool, it's widely spoken, and yeah...I just love it. *cough*biased*cough*
I was able to pick it up rather easily, so I'll be daring and say it's a fairly easy language. The best thing about it is you don't have to learn a new character set.

Japanese - at least to me - is the easiest asian language to learn, and if you manage to master the kanji, you'll be able to decipher meanings of anything written in chinese.

I dont think so..
"managing to master the kanji" is something one can only do if you study in a japanese university or all through your high school life. Even then a sudden onslaught of kanji sends many people insane. Although it is possible, learning enough kanji to read a newspaper, in another country, is ridiculously hard, and you would need to contribute at least a couple of years practicing 6 hours in a day before you have any chance of reading kanji properly. But i guess saying this, you will be fluent in the language anyway if you took this approach. And japanese people can only ever understand the very basic ways of written chinese. For every single foreign word or name, chinese has a way of representing it in kanji, where japanese represents it phonetically. even myself, knowing quite a bit of kanji, cannot begin to understand anything in chinese even if i recognise all of the kanji in a word.
On the plus side. japanese is a really interesting language, completely backwards from english and the kanji is equally as interesting. But, as with any other language its alot of hard work, but if you wanna try it ill help you, or if you have any other questions :)

Romance languages are boring but they're so damn easy. That's not to say it doesn't take years of dedication to approach fluency but goddamn it's just so easy to copy a bit of french text into word then use the translator to check on words you don't know.

French is a beautiful language by the way. A pain in the ass maybe, but it's still great.

[QUOTE=sgaltair;10117153]

Japanese also interests me, and it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to learn, having also done a few lessons in it. The reason seems to be that there is an option to use an english alphabet, and the pronunciation is very simlar.
QUOTE]

I have been doing this to everyone who wants to learn Japanese- LEARN KOREAN.
It's very similar to Japanese, but far less people seem inclined to learn it. Because it's not as "cool,' I guess. I don't really know.
I don't know any Japanese but I'd say that Korean is not that hard to learn either. Watch : http://youtube.com/watch?v=laZEH0ozrMw&feature=related
Be inspired.

I went through a few lessons on German in rosetta stone and that's definitely an option.

the rosetta stone program for english got a mediocre rating in germany, so maybe it´s not good enough to learn german with it in english ..

I've opted to learn russian, as it was my first choice anyway. I've done some looking around on the internet and found some things that will help me learn the alphabet first, which will make things alot easier. I've also got pimsleurs russian lessons. Honestly, though I'm interested in speaking russian, I'm more interested in reading/writing it.

So far my progress has been good and I've learned alot.

тотси

I dunno if that's right, but phonetically it should say totse. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

-altair

Good choice, Russian. I'd like to study that once I can make room for it. Cheers for making this thread different then what I thought it would be, I was waiting for a "what's easy?" type thread.

Good choice, Russian. I'd like to study that once I can make room for it. Cheers for making this thread different then what I thought it would be, I was waiting for a "what's easy?" type thread.

No, I didn't want to know what was easy. Most people would say spanish or german. I was far more interested in something unique.

-altair

Spanish (Growing fast in the US, plus it's used in most of Latin Amer.)
German (English's crazy cousin)
Russian (Just so you can say you know it)

I 'll prefer you French language as its quit hard to learn and very interesting too.I find learning vocabulary as the toughest part in this language.
It's a bit hard to explain, so I'll give you some examples.
Manger (to eat) conjugated in the present tense (the first type of tense)
Je mange
Tu manges
Il/elle/on mange
Nous mangeons
Vous mangez
Ils/elles mangent



Pretty easy. Most verbs that end in -er have identical endings for present tense.

But then there's things like the passe compose, the general past tense -
J'ai mange
Tu as mange
Il/elle/on a mange
Nous avons mange
Vous avez mange
Ils/elles ont mange
(each of those 'mange' should have an accent going up and to the right on them)
As you can see, the verb itself does not change at all. It's the preceding word which changes, the equivalent of the 'did' in "I DID eat" in english. The "eat" doesn't change for the pronoun, but the 'did' part does.

Je suis assis dans la chaise
I am sitting in the chair (word for word)

However, I guess if you add in some extra things it can get muddled. For example,
Je ME suis assis dans la chaise
I myself did sit in the chair (word for word again :p)
That should translate to "I sat myself in the chair", so I guess the orders of things aren't quite identical.


The verbs are pretty simple once you get used to them (they are seperated into catagories: verbs finishing in er, verbs finishing in ir,...), but the participle, especially with the verb to have (avoir), is a real pain in the ass (legend says that the grammatical rule was created after a monk misprinted a word, so you know that it can't be very logical ).

Consonants are often doubled, but there is much less use of illogical letter groupings than in English (like the word "laughing"). French also uses the following letters: é, è, ê (becoming extinct and being replaced by è), ô, à, â, î, ù, û, æ, oe (but stuck together like æ) and ç.


http://www.learningfrenchcritic.com/

Quick French question. Are the markings over the French letters pitch accents?

Quick French question. Are the markings over the French letters pitch accents?

They change the way the letter is said.

For example from an Ahh sound to an Aay sound.

I 'll prefer you French language as its quit hard to learn and very interesting too.I find learning vocabulary as the toughest part in this language.


I found French to be much easier than the other languages I tried, and I'm a native English speaker. It's not so much the vocabulary that is hard, it's all the goddamn tenses!! I mean, that's true in every language but... ugh, passe compose, futur anterior, plus que parfait, passe anterieur, imparfait... they took me forever to learn and I still get confused.

They change the way the letter is said.

For example from an Ahh sound to an Aay sound.

How disappointing.

I found French to be much easier than the other languages I tried, and I'm a native English speaker. It's not so much the vocabulary that is hard, it's all the goddamn tenses!! I mean, that's true in every language but... ugh, passe compose, futur anterior, plus que parfait, passe anterieur, imparfait... they took me forever to learn and I still get confused.

Try having to learn three entire tenses a day before your exam.

Try having to learn three entire tenses a day before your exam.

Oh, I do know.
Usually I just wore a skirt that day, wrote them all down on my thigh. Works every time....
Maybe that's why I still mess up on most/all my tenses.

So, OP. Any updates? Did you actually stick to it? If you respond with anything like "ive been busy, it was too hard, etc etc" you won't learn russian. Russian is a tough language, you have to study it every day for anything to stick. The verb conjugations are harder to remember. To top it off those of you saying french verbs are hard don't have to deal with changing the ending of the NOUN(featuring 3 genders, not 2) as well to match the verbs and adjectives, depending on how you use the noun in the sentence(whether it's at a noun, for a noun, to a noun, using the noun as an instrument(ie a pencil) etc) and the pronoun changes as well to match it. The vocab, save for a few words borrowed from english, is completely foreign to the point where even making mnemonic devices only gets you halfway. For example, mnemonics helps me recognize words from memory, but when it comes to reciting the word the link/image/key-word I use only gives me part of the word, like the verb for lift is "pod" something, I imagine someone lifting a pod. If I see the word in sentence I know what it is, but I just don't remember the rest of the word when it comes time to say it. It's fun though. Lot's of tongue twisting words and it sounds badass when you say it.

Oh, I do know.
Usually I just wore a skirt that day, wrote them all down on my thigh. Works every time....
Maybe that's why I still mess up on most/all my tenses.

I like your style, however, whenever i where a skirt to an exam, people look at me funny.

Might be because i'm a guy but who cares?

Spanish. If you live in the US. Spanish.

I 'll prefer you French language as its quit hard to learn and very interesting too.I find learning vocabulary as the toughest part in this language.


Yeah currently I just finished AP French Language/Composition and I'm taking Literature next year. I'm planning to minor in it.

For me I'm great with the grammar/writing/vocab but I'm complete shit with speaking it and hearing native speakers speak it. Hopefully that will come...

Pros:
-Sounds great
-Chicks dig it
-One of the six standard languages in the U.N
-Pretty widespread in Europe, if you learn French you can probably get around most of Europe (correct me if I'm wrong)
-I think France has a very interesting culture
-Lots of francophone countries (unfortunately a lot in Africa)

Cons:
-Hard to pronounce
-Some aspects of it are hard
-You think French people are gay?
-???

I initially really enjoyed RS, and I suppose it technically has quite a bit of vocabulary to offer, but the teaching method just doesn't cut it for me. Perhaps it's the amount of material in each lesson, but I find that many words simply don't stay in my memory well.

The design of the immersion learning system is also flawed, mainly because it lacks grammar explanations, and there isn't always a logical progression to things. For instance, I remember in RS Russian, they introduced sentences like "He has blue hair". In Russian that type of sentence would be "У него синие волосы". Without a grammar explanation, that's quite a difficult sentence to remember and understand. Furthermore, when a language's syntax is different from one's own, it can cause people to incorrectly define words. Someone might think У means "He" and него means "has".

I think in theory it can work well if you just stick with it, but I tend to find it tedious after a while.

To answer your original question: Learn what you want. In my experience, if you want to learn a language then you need to have a strong connection with it. You mentioned being interested in Russian, so I would go for it. There's an intimidating amount of grammar that you need to learn first, but you'll find that it's kind of like a pyramid. The first layer is the biggest (most difficult), and then everything else builds on that foundation. By the time you are comfortable with the 6 grammatical cases and the general structure of the language, you'll honestly find it easy. Oh, and make sure you learn how to write.

Furthermore, when a language's syntax is different from one's own, it can cause people to incorrectly define words. Someone might think У means "He" and него means "has".


Bingo. That's the detail right there. That's why RS fails hard. They claim you're learning "naturally" but that's just a bunch of bullshit because we ALL get our speech corrected when we're babies and as we get older it's all explained to us. With RS you will wrongly associate words because of their cookie-cutter approach. They have over 50 languages because they don't give a shit about the languages, they use the same crappy structure, same images and phrases, etc. I have a RS cd with 20+ languages, and if you click through the "advanced" courses for each one up through to the end, theyre all the same exact thing.

learn spanish ffs. all those papitos fuckin talkin shit in wal-mart and crap coming from puerto rico fucken killem