Customer Reviews

Rosetta Stone V3: Swedish Level 1-3 Set with Audio Companion [OLD VERSION]

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

 

 

I bought this product as a gift for my husband. He wanted to learn Swedish and being Swedish (born and raised) I know that it can be a tad difficult to learn.

Firstly - The activation policy is horrible. I spent almost $600.00 on this program (now I can get it for less, but whatever) and you only get TWO licenses. My husband had it installed on his laptop and his desktop. His desktop crashed and he went to install it on his new computer. Of course he couldn't do it since he had already registered it twice. He could not deactivate the license since that specific computer no longer worked. He called the Rosetta Stone, nope no help from them... He needed proof of purchase since he bought it from Amazon... Thankfully Amazon keep records of your purchases... He hasn't called them back yet, but let's hope they will give him another license since it was purchased under my name?

Secondly - I speak fluent, proper Swedish... The program does NOT teach my language properly! Most important is that it does NOT teach the two neutrals with every word, which is something that ALWAYS has to be included in the learning process since there are no rules for this, it just is... Neither would it hurt to have some type of work books included. Some people have Auditory memory and some have Visual memory, but those with Motorized memory are being left out in the cold. My husband is one of them. Also the voice recognition software is HORRIBLE!!! I tried it, and like I said I speak fluent Swedish with no specific accent. My words did not even remotely come close to being anything similar to what the software claimed it should be! Yeah, pretty bad! How can someone that does not speak Swedish know this? They can't, they think they are learning the language properly, but surprise you have been cheated out of your money!

Bottom line is: If you want to learn Swedish there are better programs for free, On-Line from Swedish Universities...

[...]

Rosetta stone language programs are effective. However, the new version 3 licensing requirements make this a questionable purchase. The program now must be activated through Rosetta Stone to work and, if you want to change computers, must then be deactivated again by contacting Rosetta Stone who will then reset your activation code to allow the program to function when re-installed on the new computer.

The issue here is, if you're like me, you'll go through a few different computers (or at least drives) before getting anywhere near the end of this thing however you're only allowed to activate it twice. Aside from that, I use several different machines in different locations and would like to install on a few of them. I can't.

This isn't a machine specific OS or productivity program. It's a user specifc learning tool and needs to be more portable than this. It is far too expensive for this kind of registration and copyright protection policy.

In short, unless you're quite certain that you'll only want this program to run on one single machine for the next several years I'd be carefull before plunking down several hundred dollars for it.

As helpful as Rosetta stone has been to me in the past I'm afraid that I'm going to have to say goodbye to them.

It's hard to doubt that the program is great as language tool (in my opinion, preferrably a supplementary one as I wouldn't try to teach myself a language with only Rosetta Stone). But a lot of factors really hurt the package. It would've been nice if my brother could've had it on his computer, but not their policy is, only one computer at a time. Okay, fine, that wouldn't be terrible if they would let me reinstall it least more than once! Isn't it shocking that for such prices, they only give you 2 installs per key?

Let me tell you, if these issues were fixed by letting you at least install it on 2 computer at once, and by giving you more than one reinstall. They are asking for $500 here, it's the least they can do. It's a shame that it seems for such a nice language-learning tool, to be owned by such... I don't even know the word but you know what I mean.

Anyway it is good at what it does, that stuff just needs to be fixed.

~~EDIT~~

I would just like to add in hindsight another thing to note. Most of this review is focusing on their draconian install-key policy, but there are a few things I'd like to point out centring more around it's abilities to teach you.

As I said before it's not good on its own for learning the whole language, you definitely need something on the side. But something I'd like to elaborate more on it's teaching method.

Rosetta Stone really focuses on getting the grammar down, which it does. It really does manage to convey the logic of how things like word-order and noun declining, which are the main things to get locked down in Swedish. The verb conjugation in Swedish is very easy, easier than English in fact which is considered to have a lack of elaborate verb constructions like in Spanish or even Italian & French to a lesser extent. One the flip side the way the nouns work in Swedish takes alot of getting used to, and there's tons of irregulars. There's also two "genders", common & neuter which also feels pretty unfamiliar. But the programme does a great job getting these things down pat, and drils them down eventually.

The pronunciation of Swedish is very difficult for many as well with its huge amount of sounds and the spelling can be, like English, very inconsistent with the pronunciation (lots of silent letters and strange spellings to get used to at times, like all the dropped t's, d's, r's, & g's). But it drills this down pretty well too.

But on the downside, the vocabulary instruction here is a joke. No kidding. This is exactly why you need a supplementary source to help you learn, a couple books atleast. For all of Swedish 1, you are basically going to be learning colors, a couple of very basic foods, a few animals, dog, cat, horse, and not much else. They just keep throwing the same flash cards up over and over repeatedly, and while this helps drill the grammar down, I am left unsatisfied, and wish I learned more words to express myself.

But overall, bottomline, if you want to learn the language taking this course will help you, no doubt. It has shortcomings but it really getting a lot of basic stuff down that you can expand upon after you're done with it.

For those familiar with Rosetta Stone, it's important to know that this set is MILES more sophisticated than the previous version. While other versions may have felt a little spend-y, this version matches penny for penny in what you can get out of it. The program is fantastic and leaves nothing behind.

I have been learning Swedish for a few years but I decided to start at the very beginning level when I received this. The program was fast enough that I was able to complete previously learned material in a reasonable amount of time. I was also impressed by how it had you learn the grammar, which is so important in any language. I could go on and on about this program, so just suffice it to say that it should be bought at your earliest convenience!

Oh, and the headphones are pretty awesome too.

I bought just the level one several years ago - at the time there were no other levels in Swedish. I did not get the audio companion either, but it was still almost $200. I regret not having returned it on the 6-month money-back guarantee they offered at the time.

Rosetta Stone is a nice little "stone" in the building materials and tools of learning a language, but that's all it is, a rough stone at that. More like a glorified giant-sized Sesame Street language program for kids, but to say that is berating Sesame Street a bit, which does a much better job. You still very much need to use grammar books and dictionaries, lesson books, etc. if learning a language from "scratch" and while you are using Rosetta Stone. There are no language-specific built-in appendices, no dictionary, no language translation guides of any kind, no footnotes pointing out grammatical anomalies etc. (of which there are many in every language.) Nothing. Zilch.

There are just phrases in text accompanied by the audio (if you select audio accompaniment) in Swedish, to fit the pictures, and you have to guess, either, or, depending on your choice lesson. But none of these many preferences is more than just a quiz game. THERE ARE NO OTHER LEARNING TOOLS.

It seems the creators/programmers of Rosetta Stone made the same basic program template of photo pictures for all language suites they sell, and they just changed the voice and text for the different languages. What a money-maker! And what a rip-off! I would bet they spent more on marketing this product than creating it.

The best use of this product is to develop pronuciation and brushing up, if you already know the language from studying it in books, which are not that great at teaching pronunciation. This program does not translate anything, but there are words in this program (probably verb forms) I cannot find in the dictionary.

Rosetta stone is more like a "test" than a learning tool. It takes forever to load.

This product is a very elaborate product in one way. It offers pictures with text and audio and gives you a number of ways to guess which way the text and/or audio audio goes with a multiple choice of pictures or vice versa. There is no "answer" section or appendix to tell you exactly what is said/written in English.

You still need a dictionary to look up the words. There are no grammar explanations or anything else. Nice to get the right answer but you often don't know what words mean or even how the grammar works. This program does not help that way at all.

Apparently Rosetta Stone was designed to use the same picture and program structure for every language it offers - it is pretty obvious all the software dsevelopers had to do to go from one language to another, was change the text and audio for the given language, but use the same pictures and everything else for every language. What a boon. They must have made a bundle on this product, with little work past the basic program design.

The end user does all literal translation work and grammar deciphering. There are no links or help references for what each word/sentence might mean or how the grammatical sentence structure works. Nothing at all like that. In my Swedish, for the audio, there were two voices, one male, one female. The male one of them talks too fast and is a very annoying voice. He is not always clear and it is sometimes better to look in a book with pronunciations explanations to see how a word is pronounced.

For proprietary reasons, I guess, the creators of this software decided to run it off the CD. (The CD will not copy to a blank CD) It does not install much on the hard drive. This means it takes forever to load. I put this program in my startup folder and it adds about 3 or 4 minutes to the boot time.

Buying the Swedish version just means you get Swedish words and text that, when using it, need to be connected to Rosetta Stone's "generic" pictures. Nothing Swedish about the pictures.

The "previous" button never works. You don't get the previous picture. The program just displays random pictures of that section, if you press it. After pressing many times, I always fail to find the previous picture.

The pronunciation tester really blows too. For this you need a speakerphone. It never gives you a good score or a true assessment of your pronunciation, no matter how you say it. So as a corrective device, that is useless, just another bell and whistle for promotional purposes, in my opinion.

A fair price for this software is about $50, and if Rosetta Stone had more competition doing something like this, it probably would be $50, and this company would still be making a bundle, for what they give you.

Ok. I am a little past halfway on the Second level. Need to hurry up and buy the third level so i can have it ready. But so far, it has been Fantastic! It is very fun, easy, and it Works! Yes, there are some annoyances along the way, like sometimes the voice recognition thingy is screwy, like it has me repeat a phrase like 25 times in order for me to pass it. I don't like that part, but that only happens once in a while. And as for the only 2 licenses that other people are talking about, yes that would be annoying, but i only use this on my laptop. which goes everywhere with me. And in the Swedish language it is Hard to differentiate between the two neutral words or whatever, but even my swedish friends couldn't explain that to me. It's just something you have to grow up with i'd say. I was in Sweden for one month, and i was on Level 1 moving to level 2. And it worked great for Me. I understood plenty, could speak some, and learned more. It is the Best program i've found for learning a language. Not saying much cuz i was only working on Spanish before that. But i did spanish with books and cds. Takes forever that way. Rosetta Stone is way easier, Definetely Funner, and much more expensive haha. but worth it. totally, totally worth it. And since i started college, i'm taking a russian course. And all i can say is Why can't they teach it like Rosetta Stone does.. like a little kid learns language. Cuz let me tell you, i'd much rather take a russian rosetta stone course than try and learn it in class. We're learning sentence structure and nominitive form and all that. And i'm still not sure what nominitave even means. Just give me R.S., and i'll be fine. (I'll prolly still buy it for Russian after the course)...

My daughter just returned from a trip to Sweden. She picked up the language so quickly on her own that she decided to follow through with this course. It is easy, straightforward, and really fun. Learn this stuff young, and you will enrich your life forever.

The Rosetta Stone language learning is done by emersion, as a young child would learn their own language. I like the way that I can easily go back and repeat a lesson to improve my skill level. Each lesson lasts approximately 10 min. so I can stop by my computer when I have time, and take a break to learn Swedish.

WHAT I DON'T LIKE IS AMAZON! I received my package in a timely fashion, BUT IT HAD SOMEONE ELSES PACKING SLIP INSIDE MY BOX! Mine was missing! So now I have someone elses name and address, and what they ordered (which wasn't anything like my order, it was a piece of electronics). Thank goodness It didn't have any credit card numbers printed on the slip. BUT WHERE IS MY PACKING SLIP????? So I immediately went to the computer and wrote to Amazon. That was a month ago, and NEVER HEARD FROM THEM! They are just now sending me this, "what do you think of the product". The product is great, but Amazon leaves a lot to be desired if they EVER want me to order from them again. If they had responded to my question, I would have been a customer again, but if they can't take the time to answer me, I can't take the time to order from them. I DON'T TRUST THEM!

I haven't gotten through all of the first lesson and I've already learned quite a bit. I like the method of teaching this product uses. If forces you to speak and understand the language from the start. Very challenging (in a good way).