Customer Reviews

Talk Now! Learn Finnish - Beginning Level [Old Version]

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

 

 

In New York Finnish language courses are hard to come by. I have been trying to teach myself to read, speak and hopefully write Finnish for years so I could speak with my cousins and grandmother overseas. It was a daunting task because books left me uninspired and tapes just don't work for me. Finally as a last ditch effort I took a chance on this program. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the program actually makes the process of learning language fun. The program and quizzes are colorful and engaging and manage to combine, listening, reading, understanding and speaking into one fun exercise. I have progressed with this program 100% faster than with the methods I've tried before. I definitely recommend this program to anyone who would like to start learning Finnish.
For those who are a bit more advanced or are anxious to get to the next level the Intermediate level for this program is World Talk Finnish.

After the glowing review I decided to try this product out. After only 3 hours this disc was useless to me. There is very little information on here let alone useful information. In no time one can complete the entire program. There aren't any pronouns included which I expected would have minimally been there. The disc also can't be run off of the hard drive so one has to wait for the program to load every few seconds while listening to the life of ones cd drive wear away. A great idea that has fallen horribly short. A simple phrase book would have been more beneficial.

I have used the program off and on for the last year, and feel that I have learned quite a few new words without getting bored. The total number of words on the disc is not so high (maybe a couple hundred), but then again, the price isn't either, and it definitely beats looking up words or listening to cassettes. You won't become fluent from this, but you'll definitely make progress. I'm now planning to buy the intermidiate version as I feel it's time to move up.
In reference to constantly using the CD, I use a CD emulator where the CD image is copied to the hard drive and then the CD is accessed virtually and best of all, silently. :-)
Also, now my 4 year old daughter thinks it's fun to play this and has also learned some Finnish.

I also got through the entire CD in just a few hours. It's good for starting to build a vocabulary of basic items--food, clothing, travel, numbers (1-20), time, body parts, colors. There are very few phrases, about a quarter of which deal with needing help--lost passport, feeling sick, etc.

The best thing about it is the ability to record my own voice (if you have a mike) to check my pronunciation against their speakers; and they provide both male and female voices that you can select individually. Plus, you're speaking at the same time you see the written text.

Good graphics, good sound, and some of the quizzes are pretty funny, especially the body parts one where you build a Frankenstein-like person.

I'd recommend this to someone who's just beginning with the language; but it's not for someone who wants to learn enough language with which to travel in Finland.

This program is very simplistic, and easy to use for all ages. It provides several good exercises and games for building Finnish vocabulary. It is fun, and easy for beginners.

Some might complain that there isn't much vocabulary included with this program, but for a beginner, I thought it was an acceptable amount of basic words. The overal presentation of the product is very simple, and basic; the interface, graphics, and animation are uncomplicated. It's easy enough for a child to use and understand.

However, this CD-ROM does NOT provide any instruction or lessons about the Finnish language itself. Any traditional learning about basic pronounciation, sentence structure, or grammar is NOT included with this product. The CD-ROM content is EXERCISES ONLY, no lessons. As such, it is probably best used as a companion to a Finnish language lesson book.

Furthermore, I found a couple bugs with this CD-ROM. For example, in the category about names of "Countries", in the "Word Practice" exercise, the program freezes for upwards of 2 minutes between each word. This bug only appears in that particular exercise, but it effectively renders that exercise useless. There is also one vocabulary discrepency in the "Shopping" category where one of the audio words differs from the corresponding written word. I have reported both of these problems to EuroTalk technical support.

Overlooking the few programming glitches, this is a decent product for children or beginners to practice a few Finnish vocabulary exercies, but fails to actually explain anything about Finnish pronounciation, grammar, or sentence structure. I would only recommend this product as an exercise companion to a Finnish language lesson book.