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Rating: 
Summary: False advertizing
Review: A crappy program which makes misleading claims. Only 16 of those 61 languages actually have audio samples. For the rest, all you get is a picture, the word in English, and in your chosen language. None of their ads tell you this, not even on their own website! I thought something was wrong when I couldn't hear the Icelandic words. The manual doesn't have a troubleshooting section. Their listed website says the help section has been removed! The 1-800 help line listed in the manual led me to an operator who said there was a new help line for this product... one where I have to pay long distance fees... and when I called it... I was put on hold with an expected wait of 15 minutes. I hung up and tried reinstalling, and this time checked the box to see the readme file, thus learning that this software is practically useless to me for learning Icelandic. I also ordered EuroTalk Interactive's Talk Now "Learn Icelandic", which is much better, friendlier and more fun to use. I'd recommend them any day over Easy Langage's. Not that there's much choice. They are the only two I've found that *seemed* to have sound clips of the language. As it turns out, there's really only one, and that's Euro Talk. Too bad there's nothing beyond beginner level available.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: Easy Language 61 is an okay program -- when it works! I'd only used it briefly a couple of times at first, and it worked fine. It's a very simple interface [sometimes to the point of being a little confusing], and it helps you learn a few words and phrases by displaying pictures of items with the word in both your language and the word in your target language; you can hear the word spoken in your target language by clicking on the picture. Since in my case I was trying to learn Greek, I could toggle between the word written in Greek, and the word written phoenetically with a 'normal' alphabet. Well.. later I sat down to do some serious learning, and I found that although I could still see the word written phoenetically, the word in Greek was inexplicably replaced by a bunch of "? ". I tried restarting the program and my computer several times, but the Greek seemed to be gone for good. One of the selling points of the program was a nifty-sounding feature that will allow you to record your voice and compare it graphically with a native speaker. Well.. it's not as nifty as it sounds, as it turns out. The graph has no identifyers or explanations whatsoever, and is just a very simple sound-wave graph. There isn't even any explanation of or reference to this feature in the 19-page "User's Manual" [actually just a jewel case insert booklet that contains very little useful information]. Their customer support URL is listed in the User's Manual, but after visiting the URL the only thing I found was a mailing address for the company and a 1.800 number. I loathe talking on the phone, so the lack of online customer support was pretty disappointing. Also, inside the software box was an insert stating that Navajo was not available on my version of the program, but that I could visit a URL and recieve further information on how to receive "both" languages. Well, as it turns out, it's the very same URL as the "customer support" page. So, I couldn't download a patch -- by now I was kind of expecting something like that -- but there wasn't even any instructions on the site on how to get my Navajo upgrade! Talk about bloody frustrating.. To make matters worse, after about a half-hour of using the program [without my words written in Greek, but I figured I could do without that feature if I had to] the audio fritzed out and I couldn't hear the spoken word anymore. My computer then proceeded to lock up. My computer's fault, or the software's? At this point, my bet's on the software.
Rating: 
Summary: frustrating!
Review: Easy Language 61 is an okay program -- when it works! I'd only used it briefly a couple of times at first, and it worked fine. It's a very simple interface [sometimes to the point of being a little confusing], and it helps you learn a few words and phrases by displaying pictures of items with the word in both your language and the word in your target language; you can hear the word spoken in your target language by clicking on the picture. Since in my case I was trying to learn Greek, I could toggle between the word written in Greek, and the word written phoenetically with a 'normal' alphabet. Well.. later I sat down to do some serious learning, and I found that although I could still see the word written phoenetically, the word in Greek was inexplicably replaced by a bunch of "? ". I tried restarting the program and my computer several times, but the Greek seemed to be gone for good. One of the selling points of the program was a nifty-sounding feature that will allow you to record your voice and compare it graphically with a native speaker. Well.. it's not as nifty as it sounds, as it turns out. The graph has no identifyers or explanations whatsoever, and is just a very simple sound-wave graph. There isn't even any explanation of or reference to this feature in the 19-page "User's Manual" [actually just a jewel case insert booklet that contains very little useful information]. Their customer support URL is listed in the User's Manual, but after visiting the URL the only thing I found was a mailing address for the company and a 1.800 number. I loathe talking on the phone, so the lack of online customer support was pretty disappointing. Also, inside the software box was an insert stating that Navajo was not available on my version of the program, but that I could visit a URL and recieve further information on how to receive "both" languages. Well, as it turns out, it's the very same URL as the "customer support" page. So, I couldn't download a patch -- by now I was kind of expecting something like that -- but there wasn't even any instructions on the site on how to get my Navajo upgrade! Talk about bloody frustrating.. To make matters worse, after about a half-hour of using the program [without my words written in Greek, but I figured I could do without that feature if I had to] the audio fritzed out and I couldn't hear the spoken word anymore. My computer then proceeded to lock up. My computer's fault, or the software's? At this point, my bet's on the software.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: I bought this software to practice Hindi. It wasn't until I read the "Readme" file after installation that I learned that there's no pronunciation for Hindi and the Devanagri script is not displayed, despite the fact that L & H's web site says "you can see each language's International Character Set." It turns out that only the major languages (e.g. French, Japanese) have sound associated with the words and when I did listen to these the sound was simply terrible. Granted, I'm listening on a laptop with less than wonderful audio, but it has never sounded so bad. In my estimation Easy Language 61 is a complete waste of money. Fortunately it comes with a 30-day money back guarantee; I plan to take them up on it.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: I bought this software to practice Hindi. It wasn't until I read the "Readme" file after installation that I learned that there's no pronunciation for Hindi and the Devanagri script is not displayed, despite the fact that L & H's web site says "you can see each language's International Character Set." It turns out that only the major languages (e.g. French, Japanese) have sound associated with the words and when I did listen to these the sound was simply terrible. Granted, I'm listening on a laptop with less than wonderful audio, but it has never sounded so bad. In my estimation Easy Language 61 is a complete waste of money. Fortunately it comes with a 30-day money back guarantee; I plan to take them up on it.
Rating:
Summary: Great if it worked
Review: The promise of the software was so much more than it delivered. We have had similar problems with the software crashing the computer almost every time we attempt to use it. The sound works only occasionally and not at all for languages like Icelandic and Czech. Switching from one language to another almost always crashed the computer and most times we were unable to even get one language to switch from one activity to another. We bought the program because we have young children who are gifted in languages and naturally curious about and this seemed to be the perfect resource for them to explore many different languages on a superficial level until they found one they were interested in studying. The program proved so frustrating to use that we all gave up on it.
Rating:
Summary: Great if it worked
Review: The promise of the software was so much more than it delivered. We have had similar problems with the software crashing the computer almost every time we attempt to use it. The sound works only occasionally and not at all for languages like Icelandic and Czech. Switching from one language to another almost always crashed the computer and most times we were unable to even get one language to switch from one activity to another. We bought the program because we have young children who are gifted in languages and naturally curious about and this seemed to be the perfect resource for them to explore many different languages on a superficial level until they found one they were interested in studying. The program proved so frustrating to use that we all gave up on it.
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