Rosetta Stone Version 3

Rosetta Stones new Version 3 has been out for many months already. At first, only the 'major' languages were released in the newer version. But, I see now that many of the other, less commonly learned languages, have also been upgraded.

I was excited to see that Farsi, Dutch and Swedish have been released in Version 3. And I must point out that all languages that are released in V3 are complete to all 3 levels. So that means that Rosetta Stone goes as far for Swedish as it does for German or French! That's a big deal, because all too often language learning products are produced for the major languages that go into intermediate and advanced levels of learning, but for those less commonly spoken languages barely get past the basics, if they make anything at all.

The only reason companies do this is because it is simply not very profitable to invest in developing a product that won't sell as much as another. And Rosetta Stone has been guilty of this as well. I found it infuriating that there was only a level 1 for Swedish, but 2 or 3 levels for other languages. Even now, they have not upgraded their Danish, Thai, Welsh and some other courses. It looks like they will upgrade those as well, but I haven't seen any information on that.

I still don't have a copy of a version 3 Rosetta Stone product. I'd like to get my hands on one in order to spend some time with it and do a proper review. When the opportunity presents itself, I'll share my experience with it.

Rosetta Stone Love it or Hate it

One thing I've noticed about people and Rosetta Stone is that they either love it or hate it.

The majority of people are in the middle ground somewhere, but with Rosetta Stone, there are an awful lot of people with an extreme opinion. Granted, people are more likely to be vocal about their hatred for a product than they are about their love for it. And these people seem to be very vocal.

Let me compare Rosetta Stone to Pimsleur. Some people love Pimsleur, others don't like it. But the ones who don't like it agree that it has its virtues. Most of the non-positive reviews of Pimsleur concede that Pimsleur is better at building pronunciation and conversation skills than any other method. It's just a clash of learning styles, or they feel it is a little too expensive for the return they may be getting. Fair enough. And that's just it - the negative reviews of Pimsleur are fair.

Back to Rosetta Stone. The positive reviews are absolutely glowing and the negative reviews are scathing. Rosetta Stone must really be rubbing some people the wrong way or the right. It seems like these super-positive reviews and harshly negative reviews are motivated. Smells a little fishy to me, on both sides of the fence. Any thoughts? Care to write your review of Rosetta Stone?