Customer Reviews

101 Languages of the World

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A few years ago I bought 31 Languages of the World by Transparent Software and I was impressed by the number of languages, games and activities. When I saw that they had released 101 Languages of the world I couldn't resist!

As someone who works with 4+ languages on a daily basis, I also enjoy studying languages as a hobby. It was fascinating to see some of the lesser studied European languages and variants such as Asturian, Provençal, Basque, and Catalan.

The games provided are great for reviewing or brushing up on vocabulary and grammar. Recording conversations and completing dialogues was also very helpful to get a feel for phrasing and pronunciation.

It is refreshing to see a software company taking the effort to enlist native speakers and record unusual languages, such as Blackfoot, Quechua, Hawaiian, Welsh, Xhosa, Wolof, and even some that I was not familiar with.

The important thing to remember is that no, using this product will not make you fluent. It will introduce you to grammar, pronunciation, culture, and common phrases. Native speakers are a plus, but I did not like the fact that languages that made use of symbols rather than letters were Romanized, such as Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, etc. In the long run it is much more difficult to pick up the symbols after learning the language.

Still, this is a great product at a reasonable price for anyone with an interest in languages, either learning for the first time or for reviewing. Give this software a try, have fun, and good luck!

When I first got this product, I had several hopes for it. First, that--due to the ability to hear the language, and compare my pronunciation with it--I could get the "feel" of many languages I hadn't been able to grasp before, due to lack of contact with native speakers.

I wanted this, NOT so much to become fluent in the languages, as to be able to use common phrases of meeting and shopping when visiting other countries or when entertaining foreign visitors--both of which happen frequently for my husband and myself. I had noticed that if I simply TRIED to speak their language, most people would switch to English to accomodate me, but do it cheerfully. In most cases, they would have done it anyway, since I couldn't speak their language--but not so happily. This changed everything.

I mean, a realistic Croat or Lithuanian won't expect most Americans to speak their language, but a few words of friendly greeting--a mere attempt--make all the difference in their feeling respected, welcomed, and "at home" with us.

Second, I wanted the benefits of understanding more about the world's cultures I might never be exposed to otherwise. For example, working with the language of a people helps when you read their history, as well.

For instance, just after studying the segment on Basque, I bought a volume of Basque history, and was amazed at how much more I understood due to this language program. Family names, city names, and so on are words in the language, so you have a much more vivid impression of the place and people.

It's like knowing that a place-name like "Bear Mountain" is a mountain where there were bears, rather than just knowing the sounds of the name, such as "Boca Raton" which means "mouse's mouth" only if you know the original language (Spanish).

It's wonderful for my grandchildren to use, as well, since they see learning the words and phrases as a game--and they pick up languages, and the correct pronunications, faster than adults. And they get used to the idea that there are a lot of other languages, instead of believing that "everyone" speaks English.

Why didn't I say "five stars" for this product? Because NOT ALL the languages on it have the pronunciation features that allow you to hear and copy and compare various aspects of your speaking with the native speakers. But most do, and for that I am grateful. Thank you, Transparent Languages!

For less commonly learned languages such as Bengali, Basque, Urdu, etc. there are few language learning resources available. If you are serious about learning these languages, I highly recommend adding this to your language learning tools. For more commonly learned languages such as German, French, Arabic, Spanish, Hebrew, and Italian you might find software dedicated to your language of choice more useful.

Don't depend on this software alone to learn. 'Learn to Listen & Speak. Guaranteed' is a little exaggerated. For any language you will need to get a good grammar book and a dictionary to develop vocabulary lists. I recommend 101 Languages of the World because software is far superior to tapes when working on pronunciation. With tapes its hard to constantly back up to master the pronunciation of a word or phrase. With this software you can click a word or phrase as much as you want to practice pronunciation.

The software contains numerous common words and phrases and there are several games that reinforce what you are learning. You can also export words to a vocabulary building program that comes with the software. One problem I have is that 101 Languages uses romanized letters instead of script. But otherwise its a great program and worth buying.

The claim of 'learning to listen & speak guaranteed' is a little loose here. Yes you will if you work at it, but only on a beginner's level. That being said, for what is program is worth, it is very fun! Think of this as a interactive phrasebook. For most languages the same list of phrases is given. Things such as what you would say at a bank, hotel, etc. A few of the languages have cultral notes along with the phrases. Please note that (as I see it) only 76 of these languages have any sound related to them at all. The other 25 are in a flashcard format which make it hard to memorize, understand, and get a feel for the language. If you want to delve deeper into a language, check out TL's language now! series, Vocabulearn, or Pimsleur.

You're right! I bought this software, excited because I want to learn vietnamese, french, tahitian, russian, and polish up on portuguese and spanish. 25 of the languages have vocabulary glossaries only (not that 76 languages isn't alot). But there is really no guideline to follow, there is a long list of phrases, some practical to repeat and good speech recognition software, but I was lost. I found the alphabet to print out and practice, and this software kept my interest for only a couple of days. It is easy to get frustrated because you don't feel like you're learning, just repeating phrases you hope you can remember, but don't seem very practical. I would recommend this software for polishing up already learned skills, maybe, and introducing yourself to a new language, but don't buy the hype that it is all you need to learn "guaranteed."

I am very glad I bought this program. While it is true that the instruction is strictly beginner's level, and the native script is missing for most non-Latin based languages, this is still a great tool if you want to sample a large number of languages and decide which ones to take further with a more detailed course. This is also great for people studying a more exotic language for which there aren't any stand-alone audio programs for you to practice pronunciation.

But the biggest bonus for me was the included Global Writer word processor which allows you to type in all kinds of scripts, including Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Hindi and many, many others. This program alone was worth the twenty bucks! No more playing around with Unicode or fooling with special characters in Word. This is the best software value I've found in years.

If I had one complaint it would be that some minor languages are included, like Breton, Galician, and Quechua, but some major languages, like Cantonese, spoken by over 50 million Chinese, and many languages of India are not included.

Caveat Emptor, as usual for these types of products. Learning a foreign language well is a major undertaking that takes a lot of work and time. This product claims to allow you to explode through the language barrier for any of these languages. I never believed the hype (I hope no one does!), but I did want to be able to hear some Bemba language and get a few words of bemba vocabulary - too bad for me, AFTER opening the package you find out that 76 languages are included in their interface with audio and phrases, 25 languages only have vocabulary flash cards ("vocabulary of the world") and no audio! Bemba, that I couldnt find in other language learning aids, was, unfortunately for me, one of the unspoken languages. If you are interested in learning a major language, such as Spanish or Thai, there are better products. If you are considering getting this product because you are interested in getting some exposure to an obscure language like Bemba, Maori, Samoan, make sure it is one of the "Languages of the world" and not one of the "vocabulary of the world" langauges, because these scammers make it so can not tell until you open the package.

This is truly an amazing product. It supplies audio pronounciation for 76 langues, and essential vocabulary for 25 others. These 76 languages are Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Basque, Belorussian, Bangali, Brazilian, Breton, Bulgarian, Canadian French, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, Flemish, Galician, Greek, Guarani, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luxembourgish, Malagasy, Malay, Norwegian, Pidgin English, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romanian, Russian, Scottish, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Somali, Sotho, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Thai, Tswana, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, and Zulu. The other 25 are Asturian, Aymara, Bemba, Blackfoot, Cebuano, Chamorro, Cornish, Ecuadorian Quechua, Faroese, Frisian, Inuktitut, Kongo, Macedonian, Maori, Maya, Mohawk, Nahuatl, Papago, Provencal, Romansch, Romany, Ruanda, Somoan, Sepedi, Shona, Sicilian, Sorbian, Swazi, and Tongan.

I want to learn 26 languages, but why not learn 101 Lanquages instead? This program makes it easy for you to understand how to speak,listen and learn new languages. It is also fun. It has lots of games to help you along. If you are ever lost, dont worry just click on a word and it will help you along. The best buy I have ever made. :)

I am a native speaker of Polish and my wife is American. We tried the speach recognition feature in our native tongues. We barely made it in our native languages into the beginnig of yellow and sometimes not even that. This feature one has to take with a grain of salt.
The program only has 76 languages with pronounciation. The remaining 25 are only vocabulary collections without any speach recordings.
There is some translation mistakes in Polish version but not very many.
The lessons are a little bit chaotic in their structure. I suspect they made an abridged version of their more extensive single language programs. In general it is not a bad tool for somebody planning a trip to a country and would like to acquire some basic vocabulary along with spelling and different alphabets. I would not get depressed if one cannot get the pronounciation right - even native speakers are unable to accomplish that. And for the price of under 20 bucks, one cannot ask for perfection.