Verified answer

No. It is useless and will be a complete waste of your money.

Programs, software, books like Rosetta Stone are useless at teaching you Asian languages such as Japanese or Chinese.

The only way is to take classes to start off for about one year. One or two nights per week. After this, you will be able to understand the building blocks of the language, but don't expect to understand what they say, as they speak too fast for you to distinguish words.

You'll need to spend 2 hours every night writing the words, and memorizing them. As well as learning sentence structure.

Then you can start singing their songs, Karaoke! Reading the words and learning them.

Find some Japanese friends online Skype, and practice with them and teach them English for trade.

If you keep these efforts up, in 3-5 years, you will be able to:

I. Speak clear sentences normally, but not perfect

II. Listen to them no problem.

III. Read a little.

IV. Write a little.

If you want to master reading and writing, give yourself 6 - 8 years.

Come on man, you can't learn one of the most complicated languages on Earth via a few tutorials....maybe if you want to say "where is the train station?" yeah, but when the Japanese girl starts yapping, you will be clueless!!!

Let me preface my answer by saying this: there is no method out there that will make you fluent on its own. Hopefully no one is that naive to believe that. Secondly, Rosetta Stone is a half decent program if you know what you are getting. Most people have no idea what they are actually buying. Yes, Rosetta has an amazing marketing machine yet most people know little about the product. Rosetta doesn't teach you the language. It teaches vocabulary. There's a big distinction. Rosetta is certainly not the method I would recommend to a beginner that hopes to SPEAK the language. Rosetta Stone, like other flashcard based methods (digital or not), helps expand your vocabulary base but they will not teach you the core of the language or conversational skills. Knowing many words doesn't mean you can speak the language. I usually recommend Pimsleur to beginner students. If you want a method that focuses on conversational skills, Pimsleur is the reference imo. It's a real confidence builder, which is essential for new students. You will learn to train your ear to understand natives (an essential part of early learning often overlooked by other methods), develop very good pronunciation and acquire the core structures and grammar of your new language (exactly what RS fails to do.) It's also almost half the price of RS (check Amazon.) Once you are finished with Pimsleur, that's when a vocabulary builder method such as Rosetta (there are cheaper alternatives though like BYKI, Babble, etc.) has its place. Daily conversation in the language after completing Pimsleur is really ideal. Good luck.

I tried rosetta stone for Spanish. It does not have any translation, grammar or conjugation instructions so it will be very hard to go beyond the basics with it. It is good for the basics as it is pure memorization. There is no way to be fluent with it. Their program is based on the same thing where you see these 4 pictures over and over again. I was disappointed especially for the price I paid.

My college uses tell me more. My goal was to become fluent so it was perfect for me and I bought their individual version. It has a lot of different activities: picture/word association, videos, dialogues,..., includes also grammar and conjugation. It has also more content than any other language software. Their speech recognition is great so you can have a dialogue with the computer. You can contact them to get a free demo and also ask for a Rosetta Stone demo to compare, visit independent reviews websites(About.com, ...).

The best way to learn a language would be through immersion, visiting these countries. Learning a language will require some time. In addition to software, you can have books which are useful as well. Audio CDs like Pimsleur for instance might help you out but you cannot get any feedback on your pronunciation so I did not like it so much

Some good and bad advice here. As far as sitting in a classroom to learn it, I think a classroom is the worse environment you can learn a language unless there is no 'grade' in the class, and the focus is on actually learning and not tests and homework.

I myself got the chance to use Rosetta Stone Japanese, I started from the first cd / lesson, and it right away has you learning useful information.

Read the reviews (ps, amazon sells it for less than anywhere else):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001AFFYSW?ie=UTF...

However, Rosetta Stone is pricey, so if you are looking for something much more affordable, I suggest:

http://abclearnlanguage.com/url/rocketjapanese/mai...

some other alternatives:

http://abclearnlanguage.com/url/japanese/nihongo

http://abclearnlanguage.com/url/japanese/readfast

It is not bad, but rosetta stone will not teach you the alphabet, or tell you what anything means in english, so would be pretty difficult to learn much more than speaking and associating written words with pictures from it. I would recommend learning from an established teacher who speaks and writes fluently. Good luck!

Yes

No.

The only good program is sitting in a class with a fluent-speaking teacher.

Not at all.