Easy Language 61 5.0

by Lernout & Hauspie

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00002S7KM
• Item model number: EL613000
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 10, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 1.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,986 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Now you can learn a foreign language at your own pace with Easy Language's proven interactive learning methods. Learn more than 2,100 words and 360 phrases in 61 languages. This is ideal for international business travelers, tourists, and students. Learn by playing interactive games to test your vocabulary and compare your pronunciation with native speakers.

Start learning in four easy steps. Step one is to select a language from one of 15 native languages and then select the language you want to translate to. In step two, learn essential vocabulary by learning individual words, key phrases, and basic verb conjugations. Learn words in context, hear phonetic pronunciation, and even explore the native alphabet. In step three, perfect your pronunciation by comparing your pronunciation to native speakers with the advanced record and playback feature (available for many of the languages). In step four, reinforce your new vocabulary by researching world cultures, exploring written languages, and playing interactive games as you put what you've learned to use.

Choose from these 61 Languages: Albanian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Creole (Haitian), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK), English (US), Esperanto, Estonian, Farsi, Flemish, Finnish, French, French (Canadian), Gaelic (Irish), German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Latvian, Malay, Navajo, Norwegian, Polish, Lithuanian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Iberian), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (Latin America), Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Yiddish, and Zulu.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

127 of 127 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Great if it worked, July 25, 2000

By 

P. Kearney "pkearney" (Peachtree City, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Easy Language 61 5.0 (CD-ROM)

The promise of the software was so much more than it delivered. We have had similar problems with the software crashing the computer almost every time we attempt to use it. The sound works only occasionally and not at all for languages like Icelandic and Czech. Switching from one language to another almost always crashed the computer and most times we were unable to even get one language to switch from one activity to another. We bought the program because we have young children who are gifted in languages and naturally curious about and this seemed to be the perfect resource for them to explore many different languages on a superficial level until they found one they were interested in studying. The program proved so frustrating to use that we all gave up on it.

125 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars frustrating!, May 15, 2000

By 

"silo1013" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Easy Language 61 5.0 (CD-ROM)

Easy Language 61 is an okay program -- when it works! I'd only used it briefly a couple of times at first, and it worked fine. It's a very simple interface [sometimes to the point of being a little confusing], and it helps you learn a few words and phrases by displaying pictures of items with the word in both your language and the word in your target language; you can hear the word spoken in your target language by clicking on the picture. Since in my case I was trying to learn Greek, I could toggle between the word written in Greek, and the word written phoenetically with a 'normal' alphabet.

Well.. later I sat down to do some serious learning, and I found that although I could still see the word written phoenetically, the word in Greek was inexplicably replaced by a bunch of "? ". I tried restarting the program and my computer several times, but the Greek seemed to be gone for good.

One of the selling points of the program was a nifty-sounding feature that will allow you to record your voice and compare it graphically with a native speaker. Well.. it's not as nifty as it sounds, as it turns out. The graph has no identifyers or explanations whatsoever, and is just a very simple sound-wave graph. There isn't even any explanation of or reference to this feature in the 19-page "User's Manual" [actually just a jewel case insert booklet that contains very little useful information]. Their customer support URL is listed in the User's Manual, but after visiting the URL the only thing I found was a mailing address for the company and a 1.800 number. I loathe talking on the phone, so the lack of online customer support was pretty disappointing. Also, inside the software box was an insert stating that Navajo was not available on my version of the program, but that I could visit a URL and recieve further information on how to receive "both" languages. Well, as it turns out, it's the very same URL as the "customer support" page. So, I couldn't download a patch -- by now I was kind of expecting something like that -- but there wasn't even any instructions on the site on how to get my Navajo upgrade! Talk about bloody frustrating..

To make matters worse, after about a half-hour of using the program [without my words written in Greek, but I figured I could do without that feature if I had to] the audio fritzed out and I couldn't hear the spoken word anymore. My computer then proceeded to lock up. My computer's fault, or the software's? At this point, my bet's on the software.

86 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't waste your money, June 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Easy Language 61 5.0 (CD-ROM)

I bought this software to practice Hindi. It wasn't until I read the "Readme" file after installation that I learned that there's no pronunciation for Hindi and the Devanagri script is not displayed, despite the fact that L & H's web site says "you can see each language's International Character Set." It turns out that only the major languages (e.g. French, Japanese) have sound associated with the words and when I did listen to these the sound was simply terrible. Granted, I'm listening on a laptop with less than wonderful audio, but it has never sounded so bad. In my estimation Easy Language 61 is a complete waste of money. Fortunately it comes with a 30-day money back guarantee; I plan to take them up on it.