EuroTalk Interactive - Talk Now! Learn Armenian

by TOPICS Entertainment

Product Features

• The "intelligent" software feature remembers words you get wrong and targets your weak points
• Extensive basic vocabulary, from first words, food, colors, phrases, parts of the body and numbers, to telling time, shopping and countries
• Each of the target languages for Talk Now! has help available in an additional 102 languages ? simply choose the flag of your native country in the beginning of the program & EuroTalk?s Talk Now! Program will provide instruction in your native language
• Each topic contains listening practice, an easy game, a hard game, a printable dictionary as well as the opportunity to record your voice and hear how you sound in comparison to the two native speakers who tutor the user throughout the Talk Now! course
• Each question that is answered correctly increases the user's score - get an answer wrong and points will be lost. There are 1800 points in total to gain from the disc. A full score earns the user a 'Gold Award'

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00117QZ5K
• Item model number: 51500
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 15, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,430 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)

Product Description

Talk Now! is the world's best selling language learning CD-ROM series for beginners, used by more than three million people to date. Designed for newcomers to the language, Talk Now! is the perfect method to access a wealth of comprehensive fundamental vocabulary and accurate pronunciation in one user-friendly plan packed with useful words, a picture dictionary, and quizzes. Anyone over 10 years of age will find the program indispensable for improving listening, understanding and spoken language skills.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not really what I wanted., June 18, 2008

By 

K. Stewart (CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: EuroTalk Interactive - Talk Now! Learn Armenian (CD-ROM)

I was imagining a software that would have a veritable dictionary of phrases, with some kind of orderly lesson plan for how to proceed from one set of vocabulary to the next, a progression that lets you learn Armenian.

The product description states: "Extensive basic vocabulary, from first words, food, colors, phrases, parts of the body and numbers, to telling time, shopping and countries." The "from ... to ..." suggests that there are other categories as well. This is not so. The vocabulary mentioned: first words, food, colors, phrases, body parts, numbers, time, shopping,countries, include essentially ALL the vocabulary available in this product.

The mini games and speakers (they have both a man and woman native speaker giving words) do a reasonable job. The games especially help you learn the vocabulary. There are several things about this software, however, that made it essentially useless for me.

1) Western/Eastern Armenian.

I bought the software because my fiance is Armenian and I wanted to be able to converse with her family, who speaks in the Western Armenian dialect. This software seems to be an inconsistent mix of Western and/or Eastern without distinguishing between the two. (For example, the word "five" -- "hing" as is taught in the software, is actually pronounced "hink" in Western Armenian.) My fiance also found a considerable number of mis-pronunciations and mis-spellings, even beyond the Eastern/Western mixing.

2) I wanted to learn to speak Armenian in a more day-to-day setting. This software is clearly heavily geared towards travel, however. Out of the "basic phrases," things you should think would be very commonly used phrases, there were phrases like "where is my passport?" "where are my suitcases?" etc.

3) There is absolutely no explanation of sentence structure / verb tenses /etc. I realize this is beginner's software, and grammar can get complicated, but just picking up an Armenian dictionary (in paper form, not computer software), the very first sections explained that, for example, adjectives preceed verbs (unlike English) (example: a literal translation from Armenian would have you say "American I am" instead of "I am American." Knowing grammar structure like this right off the bat helps a LOT in learning the language, because it makes it possible to learn the patterns of speech more easily.

The concept, having native speakers quiz you with mini-games, etc. would work well. But in this case, the Western/Eastern inconsistencies, and lack of relevant vocabulary (unless you're learning in order to travel)

made this software mostly worthless to me.