Customer Reviews

Romanian, Basic: Learn to Speak and Understand Romanian with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a woman who recently bought this to prepare for a 2 week trip to Romania. I have no problem with the method, and in fact the things I learned did stick with me.

However...it's important to know who this was designed for. As far as I can tell from the dialogues, it is designed for a man traveling on business who wants to pick up women and get them drunk.

I have to say that I am slow to be offended by content. Yet, the dialogues were so slanted towards this dating goal that it came to be hilarious. Except that I seriously needed more practical knowledge for my trip, which made it exasperating instead.

Sample text (restaurant scene)
Man: Would you like something to drink?
Woman: I'll have water.
Man: I'm going to have a beer.
Waiter comes over.
Man: 2 beers, please.
Woman: No, I wanted water.

Another text:
Woman: I'd like something to drink.
Man: How about at your house?
Woman: No, not at my house.
Man: OK
Woman: I'd also like something to eat.
Man: LATER. (In other words, she's only allowed to drink, not eat.)

One lesson after the other harped on this topic of "would you like a drink? How about a beer?" I actually could not believe my ears when I got to the higher levels and it was still on this track.

So, in Romania, I was never thirsty, but I lacked basic phrases and words like "When does the train come?"

Get a different program (unless you want to seduce Romanian women. Actually, not even then. It will help you get to a bar with a woman, but you will have totally run out of vocabulary once you reach that point, so good luck.)

Apparently, this brilliant product sailed over the heads of some other reviewers.

First, the heavy accents of the Romanian speakers are deliberate, as is the lack of written material.

They are forcing you to learn language like children do, via call-and-response. They are teaching you to pronounce words properly, and keeping you from lapsing into Americanized speech habits. If you are in the frame of mind where you think you know enough to criticize the accents of people speaking a language you obviously know almost nothing about, I don't see how you expect to learn anything. Find your beginner's mind.


Second, the bizarre dialogs are obviously supposed to be funny... and very cleverly played in my book.

For instance, in Lesson 9, the guy asks a married woman out over and over again, a dozen different ways, too dumb to take no for an answer, until she finally yells at him for obviously not understanding Romanian. (My Romanian friend laughed and said the woman would have hit him over the head with something long before that). There is also a dialog where a couple orders a wine and beer each, at the same time... huh?

I think what they are doing is trying to make learning more fun. Even better, by not telegraphing the jokes, they are allowing you to discover for yourself that you are not just mindlessly repeating phrases, but you actually understand what is going on in the conversation - enough to know that something is amiss and maybe even have a laugh.

This may also be an introduction to a typical Romanian sense of humor, though I am not sure. Since the weird dialogues are all dating-type situations with the guy often offensive, dumb, or both, it appears they are poking fun at the intended customers for this program - traveling businessmen. While it's true that there might have been room for a broader vocabulary otherwise, a vocab core-dump is obviously not the purpose of this course.

Finally, I took French for years in HS and college and couldn't speak a word when I went to France directly afterward. I tried German in college and quit. I've tried to pick up other languages using other self-programs, including Rosetta Stone, and always quit in frustration. The problem is that most instruction gives you language pieces and analysis, like they are trying to teach you physics or math.

Instead, the Pimsleur method is carefully designed to teach you real speaking skills. It seems based more on a model of learning to play a musical instrument. I was addicted after just a few minutes. In less than two weeks, I've learned more about actually speaking a new language than from all the other classes and materials I've ever tried in my life, combined. I'm looking forward to lessons 11-29.

I purchased this product and began listening to it immediately. I have a small advantage being that my girlfriend is Romanian so I was able to practice on a daily basis. She found that this program taught the basics very well and was excellent in speaking properly. I listened to this program every morning on my way to work and usually listened to each disc for two days before moving on to the next disc. This program will teach you and will help solidify words and common phrases through repetition and use in conversation, but much more extensive knowledge and practice is necessary to be fluent. I am looking forward in moving on to Comprehensive Romanian which is next in the Pimsleur study program. This is the first language I've studied in my adult life and I am excited to learn. I have not listened to a CD in over a week but the knowledge I obtained has stuck with me.

Overall I would recommend this product as a good foundation to learning a second language.

This is the first review I've written of a product. First, I agree with the other woman that the dialogue is most certainly skewed towards business men visiting Romania and chatting up the local women. So, as a woman, not the most useful phrases but it did help me pick up the basics and I see where they were going with this. I just think that it does get frustrating for women who want to learn a language to have to deal with almost every language tape made circa 1990 being geared towards men. I don't mind that I get called "Sir" throughout the entire CD, as long as when I'm in Romania the same doesn't happen.

As for accent. I find it an odd comment. Why would anyone complain about the accent of a native speaker? I speak a few languages and accent helps a lot in being understood. Without the proper accent in almost any language, you might as well just speak English most of the time. If the person doing the dialogue sounded like an American trying to speak Romanian, I would have thrown the whole lot in the trash long ago.

The one thing I can say is that if you are looking for a CD to help learn some Romanian, especially if you are a man, this is a decent language program.

The problem I had is, strangely, I'm not sure the product I received is from Pimsleur or if there is someone making copies off the CD. The first disk is labeled as Hungarian. Lessons 3&4 turned out to be a copy of 7&8 and 7&8 turned out to be 3&4. Lessons 9&10 say it's Croatian. I speak quite a bit of Serb/Croat and could tell it wasn't but this might confuse people. And while the speakers say they are speaking Romanian, I can only hope this is the case or when I get to Romania things are going to get very confusing. Essentially. It sounds like I got Romanian but the formatting of the discs are awful and misleading. If I bought this as a pirated copy off a street vendor for dollar I wouldn't care but I expect a little quality control and discs labeled properly from something supposedly produced by Pimsleur. I don't have time to buy a new series right now so luckily I speak French and German as well, which many in Romania also can speak, so if I step off the plane speaking Hungarian, I should still be able to get around but I will be quite irate.

Romanian is a difficult language to find language materials in and the reality is, this CD, if I am learning Romanian, is pretty decent. Not great when compared to the plethora of language programs out there in other languages and if the option was there, I would get something else. But with Romanian, it seems the pickins' are slim. I would recommend getting a few other learning aids (books, travel phrase list from the internet, etc...) in order to really flesh out things you will need outside of a cafe. As the one writer mentioned, maybe this was their way of teaching through humor. But I guess I have a different sense of what's funny. Picking up women as a man is something I don't really find all that humorous and I'm not looking to be a stand up comedian while I'm there, but I did learn the basics from this CD (I hope) and I guess that's what's important. So, as they say in Romania, "Hi miss, would you like to get a drink with me?"

If you already have some knowledge for a given language, the pace of Pimsleur lessons will drive you nuts. On the other hand, for a totally unknown language, such as Romanian, you can't beat Pimsleur. After listening to the first CD three times, I endured a trail-by-fire by exchanging pleasantries with some native Romanians. They were amazed at the accuracy of my pronunciation and complete lack of an American accent. You may not learn a ton of words with this CD, but you can be sure that what you do learn, you won't readily forget.

I bought this for a friend who has some Romanian friends. I was quite impressed when two weeks later he was speaking Romanian in sentances.

The first thing I noticed about these CD's was how heavy the speaker's accents are. It is very difficult to undertand what they are saying. However, once I used it several times, I got a little more used to it but it is still tricky! The lessons are helpful to learn the language but I need to see things written as well as hear them spoken. I purchased an English to Romanian dictionary that has a bit more about the language and use the 2 products together. If you're wanting a more complete course (or you're a visual learner) I'd recommend purchasing this and a book.

I have no real complaints about the language-learning program here at all. I enjoyed using it, and I think that as a method for encouraging some decent uptake for someone who's going to need to speak the language at a very basic level in short order, it's a good place to start (obviously this set isn't comprehensive, but it isn't intended to be). The conversations really are hilarious, in their way, but of more interest to me was the way in which the program's designers set these (often absurd) conversations up to demonstrate several different uses and grammatical structures at a time. I often found myself going back to make note of some of the patterns in their presentation, and it turned out to be very useful for dealing with novel situations. I've learned German, Japanese, Ancient Greek, and a bit of Latin over the years (for reading knowledge, not for speaking), and I found this program immensely useful both for speaking and for encouraging thought about the structures of the language.

If I have any complaint at all, really, it's about the discs themselves. For reasons best known to the good people at Simon & Schuster, the various discs for the program all seemed to have incorrect metadata for iTunes. The content was all as advertised (basic Romanian, 10 units); the track listings and album titles, however, were not.

Discs 1 and 2 were labeled "Hungarian"; disc 2's tracks were incorrectly labeled Unit 07 and Unit 08 (instead of 03 and 04 of Romanian, which is what they really were).

This is, I suspect, rather funny to a Romanian. Or possibly to a Hungarian. Or possibly insulting to either or both. I have no idea.

Disc 3 was labeled "Comprehensive Pashto", and had the same track numbers as disc 2 (although the actual tracks were for Romanian Unit 04 and 05)

Disc 4, if the labeling is to be believed, ought to contain units 07 and 08 of Pimsleur's Croatian instead of those same units in Romanian.

Disc 5, in a crowning bit of comedy, claims to include Units 09 and 10 of Pimsleur's Eastern Arabic III.

I suspect there are some quality control issues at Simon and Schuster that really do need a bit of attention...

I have purchased this set as a gift for my husband, because he really wants to learn how to speak romanian. The set seems to be very effective , it is a nice method to understand a language. He is just at the 1st part but he loves it.The set is a nice to set up the structure for the new language, it is very clearly spoken, and if it is not enought vocabulary as some people reviewed it is ok , i am romanian so I can help him with learning more.
I will purchase the next parts too, as my husband has a long commute to work. It is convenient and he can learn in the car in his spare time.

Came in the mail fast.. good ship time.
Product worked great (first disk) easy to learn with. I'm enjoying it so far/so good. listended to the CD 2 times to be able to repeate things well (for me)
Second disk would not work in my car for some reason, but It would work in my husbands car.. so I don't know what the issue was. I took the disks and downloaded them to my computer so I could use them in my ipod/car. So far so good. rated 4 stars because of the invonvenience of the 2nd CD not working in my car.