Customer Reviews

Rosetta Stone V2: Indonesian Level 1

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Quick and easy language learning methodology for the serious student; reliable and thorough software; can be addictive. More effective if used in conjunction with something else such as the LearningIndonesian podcast (free!) or a good pocket dictionary (Tuttle) to clear up the occasional confusion (there is no translation or grammar instruction) before it gets frustrating. Plenty of material in Level One to keep you busy for awhile. This is not the right product for people looking to quickly pick up some language skills to enhance their vacation/travel activities.

Face it- learning a language takes time and effort no matter how brilliant you are. The Rosetta Stone approach is geared for people who know only that they really want to learn the language thoroughly. I started with "Instant Indonesian" to learn some key phrases, but in a way this put me too far ahead to get what I needed from Rosetta Stone. I then got "Teach Yourself Indonesian" and found that it worked better for me because I wanted to get a functional command of the language rather than to learn it fluently. Rosetta Stone is also better for people who are disciplined enough to sit at the computer but not much more- it takes you along step-be-step and therefor it is quite easy and intuitive. But if you're more pro-active, like me, the "Teach Yourself" approach gave me the practical skills I wanted much faster.

I had heard great things about the Rosetta system so I went to their website and tried the demo. They didn't have a demo in Indonesian but the German demo impressed me both with the basics of the system and the slick presentation. I decided to splurge and order the Indonesian CD's. When I installed it I was quite disappointed. It looked like it was designed to run on Windows 98. Poor quality audio and low resolution photos. It runs in a tiny box in the center of your screen. The information is probably still valid but I can't justify spending $159 on decade old software. I'll be returning it and spending my money on something more current.

The Rosetta Stone product does what it does very well, leading the student through a series of well designed screens to gradually increase vocabulary. Well, most of the screens are well designed. A few are a bit ambiguous. I wrote to the company at the email address provided and got no reply about this. They are really missing a bet in not encouraging feedback to help them improve the product. I was also disappointed that the materials did not include word list and the text of each screen that the student could consult outside of the program.

Rosetta Stone is a great product, which I am finding out by using their online application. I ordered the CD version (the one depicted here) only to find that it does not work with my operating system (Mac OSX Snow Leopard). It took me 2 days of solo trouble-shooting plus 3 days of back-and-forth with Rosetta Stone's technical support department to figure this out. I had to send the CD back and opt for the online version. I would recommend the online version in the first place. You can access it from any computer with internet. The only downside is that you pay the same for 3 months of online access as you do to own the CD set.

The course is a simple way to learn a language. The only thing is some of the words are not in any dictionary and we had to ask indonesian people what those words did mean. With the purchase we were confronted with the extra tax for sending abroad and if we had known this up front we would have ordered it in the states but in Belgium because this way we could have saved some money.

I enjoyed using Rosetta Stone. You can use it for a few minutes or hours. It really did help me pick up the language.