Rosetta Stone V3: Latin  Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion

by Rosetta Stone

Product Features

• Rosetta Stone teaches you a new language naturally, by getting you to think, live and breathe the language
• Innovative solutions get you speaking new words, right from the start
• Rosetta Stone moves forward only when you're ready--you drive the pace, you set the schedule
• With Rosetta Stone, you'll discover a foundation of key vocabulary that you'll use to build into a whole new language
• Audio Companion lets you take the Rosetta Stone experience anywhere: in the car, at the gym, or on-the-go

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0027ESKNG
• Item model number: 22085
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 23, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #747 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #1 in Software > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Latin
  • #26 in Software > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Universal Translator
  • #57 in Software > Language & Travel

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Rosetta Stone Personal Edition contains everything you need to give the voice inside of you a new language. The method used recreates the natural way you learned your first language, revealing skills that you already have. This approach has won numerous awards, and has been adopted by countless organizations, schools and millions of users around the world. Join the language revolution today. Only with Rosetta Stone.

The comprehensive language-learning solution that fits your life.

Learn Naturally
Learn your next language the same way you learned your first language. Dynamic Immersion empowers you to see, hear and comprehend without translating or memorizing. You already have this ability. Rosetta Stone simply unlocks it.

Engage Interactively
Get feedback to move forward. You learn best by doing, and you'll apply what you've learned to get to the next step. Rosetta Stone adapts to your individual needs and skills, because you drive the program with your progress.

Speak Confidently
Start speaking immediately. From the very first lesson, you'll speak. You'll begin with essential basics, which form the building blocks of the language. Soon you'll create new sentences on your own, using words you've learned.

Have Fun
Best of all, Rosetta Stone is addictive. With every entertaining activity, you'll feel success. You'll want to use Rosetta Stone to have that next moment, that next breakthrough. So you'll keep using it, and you'll learn more!

That's language-learning success.
That's Rosetta Stone.

No translation or memorization required.

The most effective way to learn a new language is to be surrounded by it. When you were an infant, your parents taught you this way, by intuitively associating words with images. That's the ultimate language lab, but most language-learning programs completely ignore this.

Think about all of the ways you've tried to learn a language: classes at school, tapes and cassettes, even software that uses your native language as a base for your next one. What do they all have in common? Translation and memorization.

Instead of taking a "direct flight" from your brain to your new language, translation and memorization connects you to your old language. You always have to "fly" from your brain, to your native tongue ... and then translate what you've memorized to communicate.

That might work for a few words, but what happens when you get to a sentence or phrase? When you have to change tenses? You're going to make a lot of "connecting flights." That's why those other methods are so frustrating ... and why they fail.

Enter Dynamic Immersion.
This method encourages you to think like a baby. You'll pair words with vivid, real-life images and make connections between things you know and the new language. Soon, you'll be thinking in a new language, stringing words together into phrases that you create.

Innovative technology.
Rosetta Stone places this Dynamic Immersion method at the core of a suite of software that works with you to develop your skills. The simple, intuitive interface helps to keep you engaged in the solution, while advanced speech recognition technology makes certain that you're speaking correctly and accurately. Best of all, Rosetta Stone never leaves you behind. You'll only move forward when you're ready, when you've become comfortable and confident.

Communicate and connect with the world: Level 1, 2 & 3 Set.
Rosetta Stone Level 1, 2 & 3 Set will take you on a journey from the basics to a whole new level of sophistication. You'll build a foundation of fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure. You'll quickly gain the confidence to engage in social interactions. Say "hello" and "goodbye," arrange travel, order food, go shopping and more! From there, you'll share your ideas and opinions, express feelings and talk about your life, your interests and more. You'll discover a voice. In a new language.

Audio Companion
With Audio Companion, you'll enhance the Rosetta Stone experience wherever you go. You'll learn new skills on the computer, and then reinforce what you've learned with Audio Companion. Simply play the CDs on a stereo or download them to a MP3 Player. Each Audio Companion activity corresponds to a lesson in the Rosetta Stone software, so you can turn your travel time into productive language-learning time.

Inside the box, you'll find:

• Version 3 Personal Edition CD-ROM software for Levels 1, 2 & 3 (Windows/Mac)
• Headset microphone
• User's guide
• Audio Companion, a multiple-CD set to play or download to your MP3 player

Product Description

Connect with the world around you. Build a foundation of fundamental vocabulary and essential language structure. Quickly gain the confidence to enjoy social interactions such as greetings and introductions, travel, dining out, giving and getting directions, shopping and other recreational activities. Learn to share your ideas and opinions, express your feelings and talk about everyday life, your work, your interests, current events and much more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good SUPPLEMENT, April 23, 2010

By 

Danielle Skjelver - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Latin  Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion (CD-ROM)

For years I have spoken Latin where possible, but 'where possible' usually means 'where I am alone'. :-) With Rosetta Stone, I hear it spoken and get to speak it back. The pronunciation is classical, not medieval, which is a nice surprise.

RS reinforces in a friendly way what the Latin student learns from a good text like Wheelock's, for instance.

RS alone will not equip a student to read or write Latin with any relevance because most Latin read scholastically is not conversational. I also don't approve of the profusion of pronouns which would not be present in classical Latin. A plus this profusion offers, however, is that pronouns are reinforced.

Additionally, there are vocabulary errors, and the grammar is not spot-on.

Still I would recommend it as a supplement. But it is not a stand-alone course.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars NIce but just as good alternative cheaper ones available., May 17, 2010

By 

GangstaLawya (TimBuckToo) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Latin  Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion (CD-ROM)

Try "Language Learning Latin SE - The Interactive Course" by "LP Laser Publishing Group" which is just as thorough and probably more detailed for a mere $11.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Supplement: Yes! Main Course: No., December 14, 2011

By 

David Quentin Dauthier - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rosetta Stone V3: Latin  Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion (CD-ROM)

A friend of mine recently gave me a lovely present: Rosetta Stone: Latin 1, 2 & 3. While it is never proper to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially such an expensive one, I would like to put forward a review of this software.

Before I begin my evaluation, let me qualify what I say here. I am not a beginning student of Latin. In fact, I am a life-long student of this language, and I currently teach it at university level. The reason my friend got me this software was because it is hard to get Latin materials where I live, especially of the multimedia sort, and he thought it might be helpful to me. (If you happen to be reading this, I am really grateful!)

Over the past week, I've worked my way through Level 1. This was my first time using Rosetta Stone software, and I must say that I am quite impressed by the approach. I can imagine Rosetta Stone would do the job of teaching a modern colloquial language quite well, but it is my opinion that Rosetta Stone leaves quite a lot to be desired in its attempt to teach a classical language like Latin.

The direct method used by Rosetta Stone is to be commended. Linking images directly to Latin words without the interference of a "third wheel," meaning the student's native language, is refreshing. However, the content of Rosetta Stone's Latin course fails to take into consideration a beginning Latin student's long-term needs.

Generally speaking, a student who takes up Latin will be unlike the student who takes up a modern language in that he/she will often have an uncommonly well defined set of goals in mind. I mean it would be rare for, let's say, one to take up German only because one wants to read Goethe's Faust. More often than not, one will take up German because one wants to visit Germany--to order a bit of bratwurst in Bavaria. Latin students, however, very often have as a long-term goal the ability to read the Vulgate, for example, or Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War. So, in evaluating Rosetta Stone's Latin course, one must ask: how far is Rosetta Stone able to get the student toward this kind of goal? The answer is, well, not very far.

It is apparent that Rosetta Stone was designed for teaching modern languages, and it seems that what they have done is to develop a Latin course based upon the vocabulary and grammar that one would need to use in learning a modern language. This is not necessarily bad, but it doesn't really prepare the beginning student for what the vast majority eventually want to do with their Latin. For those few who, as a hobby, wish to learn some modern colloquial Latin, it is very nice, but Rosetta Stone doesn't make any of this clear. In fact, Rosetta Stone doesn't even appear to be aware that there is a difference between the two.

To give a reverse example, imagine a student in some non-English speaking country picking up--at very high cost--a software package that promises to teach English. Now, imagine that the software in question taught the student the English of Chaucer! You'd end up with the student making phrases like "thay myghte noghte" for "they might not," all the while totally unaware that all but a highly-trained few in the English speaking world would even know what he/she is talking about!

To give a few examples, in Rosetta Stone Latin I, the student is taught that the Latin word raeda means "car." The sentence "vir raedam gubernat" (the man is driving the car) is taught matter-of-factly. Of course, in modern Latin raeda can certainly be used to mean "car," but if one were to come across this word in Cicero, it would mean "wagon" not "car." The student is not made aware of this fact.

Furthermore, the student is taught that the Latin for "sandwich" is paniculus fartus. Overlooking the fact that the modern concept of a sandwich didn't exist for the Romans. (they would have understood meat and bread, even stuffed bread, which is what is meant by fartus--get your mind out of the gutter!) That being said, the folks at Rosetta Stone don't seem to realize that the modern Latin phrase for sandwich is actually pastillum fartum--at least that's what it is according to the Vatican where the official language is Latin. Inappropriate vocabulary to one side, there is also a small issue concerning pronunciation.

The pronunciation used in Rosetta Stone's course is, as far as I am concerned, quite alright. The one point I would raise, though, is that they teach the reconstructed Classical pronunciation without mentioning that this is only one of two systems currently taught today--the other being Ecclesiastical or Italian pronunciation. The difference would be comparable to the differences between American and British English. I don't say one is necessarily better than the other, but the student should be made aware of the differences in any case. Now that I have said that, there are a few places in Rosetta Stone where the Classical pronunciation isn't followed. In Rosetta Stone, the adjective magnus (large), for example, is pronounced mag, as in magazing, and nus, as in n+us. In both Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin, when "g" comes before "n," it is pronounced "ng," as in sing, so the proper pronunciation should by "mangnus." Of course, that is a minor detail; nevertheless, you would expect Rosetta Stone's Latin course to be more carefully prepared, especially given the premium price.

While I don't think Rosetta Stone is a good starting place for the would-be Latinist, I do think it is a nice way for the established Latinist to get his/her feet wet in world of Living Latin despite the courses occasional deficiencies.

In closing, I hope Rosetta Stone will continue to develop their Latin course and begin marketing it as a "modern colloquial Latin course," which it is, rather than marketing it as a good way to study Classical Latin, which it is not.