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Rating: 
Summary: You will really learn.. more than you realize...
Review: I've edited my original review since I've used this software for over a year now... see below... From my original review: you don't have to be a "rocket scientist" to learn with this product. It actually makes learning FUN, and you don't even realize you are learning as you are using it... and yet I find after using it, the retention of the things I've learned is excellent. It has a very intuitive interface, and you are given examples such as "The boy runs" and then shown a picture of a woman dancing, a man walking, a boy running, and a dog jumping... simply select the right picture... or shown a picture and you select the right phrase that goes with that picture... a chime or applause or "winning sound" indicates a right choice, a buzzer or a sigh sounds if you are wrong... you can choose which sound you want to hear, or let the program select the right/wrong sounds at random... Well, before you know it, you are actually learning using pictures and ideas... the same way you learned your own language way back when... Update a year later and three trips to Russia, a 4th one planned:
Since I first bought this product I've made 3 trips to Russia and made many Russian friends. They have all complimented me on how well I pronounce my spoken Russian. Also, I'll say that while this program did not make me ~fluent~ in Russian, it certainly gave me many words to use that helped me out in every day situations. And I did not even realize how MUCH of this software I was absorbing, until I was actually there IN Russia and speaking with Russians, and then the "images" associated with the sounds and the words and the dialogs in this program were just ~there~ for me. Yes, I've also found it is handy to have a pocket dictionary handy (on occasion) to look up some of the words when you first encounter them. However I totally disagree about needing grammatical syntax. That is the LAST thing you want to involve yourself in when you are first exposing yourself to a new language. Yes, once you begin to know a language, it's definitely important, but if I hadn't gotten the "head start" on learning how to speak and how to read and how to pronounce Russian, as I did with this product, then I wouldn't have made the progress I did. I notice that one other person prefers the Learning Russian Now! product instead of the Rosetta Stone. I bought that product too, and as a pure BEGINNER, that product was way over and beyond my abilities at the time. It was way too much to deal with as a beginner learning Russian and just totally frustrated me to the max. This product will give you a good sound basis to advance your Russian language skills from. Without having used this product first, a more complex or complicated product, such as one that introduces grammatical rules or complex series of dialogs, would have been way over my head, and would have only frustrated me. My advice? If you are beginning from Square One learning Russian, start with this product and then move up to more complex products only after you've achieved BASIC skills and abilities in Russian. And Rosetta Stone will give you those in a fascinating, addictive, FUN environment. A year later and it's STILL fun and I've learned many things going back over the earlier lessons I thought I had down cold. You learn more grammar and syntax than you are even ~aware~ of learning, and that's another reason why this product is so good!
Rating:
Summary: Great! Help me so much!
Review: It is a great way to learn or review. It makes you learn by seeing a picture and than remembering what it means. It works very well, I used this product at school and it's worked beautifully for me. I had been trouble remembering the pronocation or the spelling of the words, I used this for a couple of times a week. And it helped wonderfully for me. First its in sections with listening, reading, and translating by pictures or them telling you. The great thing is you can repeat it as many times as you want or you can just click the little icon on the right of the screen and see the answers so your not clueless. It seperated by units, like one unit would be food or going to the supermarket another unit could be what you do on the weekends like 'I like to sit home and read'. It helps you have conversations with the people and even helps you by testing you at the end of each unit. (And it has many many units ranging from just listening and reading or listening and seeing the picture and repeating it.) The flaw is that if you are a beginner it would be a Little challenging since it speaks to you a bit faster, hard to understand most of the words. But it makes up for it with some units by viewing the sentance from above. It's a great program, above much others.
Rating:
Summary: The ONLY worthwhile language learning software!
Review: The Rosetta Stone series of language instruction software is "Pimsleur" level of effectiveness and unfortunately, Pimsleur level cost as well. The programs work on a total immersion basis, with no English used at all. There are several types of drills, ones where you hear a word or sentence and pick it out of a group of pictures, another where you read the text of the word and pick out the pictures, etc. There are also typing drills in your language to help you spell (without having to download special fonts), pronounciation drills that allow you to hear a word, speak it to your computer and hear your voice in comparison to the native speaker played back to you. This is the first program of it's type I've found where this feature actually works! I own both German and Russian 1 and 2. There is a LOT to learn here, especially if you do all the types of drills for each lesson. You learn grammar from inference, such as word endings when the subject is "in" something rather than "on" or "under" it. You see the same endings used, compare them with the pictures and you start to recognize patterns. But one of the best things about this software is the user interface. Since it's an immersion program, there's no English used and by it's very nature needs to be intuitive. This is how it should be done. I've used other types of language software that had a klunky, confusing interface with features that didn't work, etc. None of that is the case with the Rosetta Stone software. On another note, I switched to Mac about nine months ago and Fairfield Language Technologies sent me out a new Mac OS X systems disc for free, no questions asked. At this price level you'd think this would be commonplace, but it's not. Adobe allowed me to change from PC to OS X when I upgraded from Photoshop 6 to 7, but Macromedia wouldn't and expected me to buy all new software (I didn't). So kudos to FLT for their stellar customer service! Is it too expensive? I'd say yes, but this is a serious language learning tool for serious self students, and it's a lot cheaper than classes at the U. The axiom is true with both this and the Pimsleur method tapes; you get what you pay for.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent program with a few drawbacks
Review: This program is a fun and fast way to start recognizing Russian words and sentences. You learn by hearing and seeing written cues along with photographs that represent various concepts. Click on the correct photograph and get a rewarding sound and move forward. It is intuitive, and you will find that you recognize a great deal very quickly. There are a few drawbacks to the program, however. Because the program teaches using photographs, it is difficult to show that "I" am doing something or "you" are doing something. Most of the sentences, therefore, are in the third person. This is a challenge when you go to speak to someone and find that most of your conversation would be in the first and second person. The other drawback is that there is no explanation of the grammar, and no translation of new vocabulary. I use this program with a Russian/English dictionary at my side. I understand that the point is that you learn the word for a concept rather than a translation, which is a better way to learn. On the other hand, it is not always clear what the photograph is trying to convey. For example, a photograph of a 1950s vintage green car has a word you have learned to be car, and an adjective. I had no idea what it was getting at until I looked up the adjective to see that it meant "old." Occasionally you might get an answer wrong because you mistook the action in the photo not because you didn't understand the grammar. It's not a major problem, but you do feel a bit cheated when it happens! Also, it would be useful to have a function that would allow you to look up a grammatical rule behind new vocabulary so that you could not only hear that a certain ending is being added, but have an explanation of why it is being added. Overall, however, I would recommend this program for its ease of use. It makes you feel that you're making progress very quickly, which helps get you past some of the discouragement you can sometimes face with a text book full of declensions. I'd recommend using it with a good Russian/English dictionary and the book Master The Basics Russian which has good grammar charts.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent program with a few drawbacks
Review: This program is a fun and fast way to start recognizing Russian words and sentences. You learn by hearing and seeing written cues along with photographs that represent various concepts. Click on the correct photograph and get a rewarding sound and move forward. It is intuitive, and you will find that you recognize a great deal very quickly. There are a few drawbacks to the program, however. Because the program teaches using photographs, it is difficult to show that "I" am doing something or "you" are doing something. Most of the sentences, therefore, are in the third person. This is a challenge when you go to speak to someone and find that most of your conversation would be in the first and second person. The other drawback is that there is no explanation of the grammar, and no translation of new vocabulary. I use this program with a Russian/English dictionary at my side. I understand that the point is that you learn the word for a concept rather than a translation, which is a better way to learn. On the other hand, it is not always clear what the photograph is trying to convey. For example, a photograph of a 1950s vintage green car has a word you have learned to be car, and an adjective. I had no idea what it was getting at until I looked up the adjective to see that it meant "old." Occasionally you might get an answer wrong because you mistook the action in the photo not because you didn't understand the grammar. It's not a major problem, but you do feel a bit cheated when it happens! Also, it would be useful to have a function that would allow you to look up a grammatical rule behind new vocabulary so that you could not only hear that a certain ending is being added, but have an explanation of why it is being added. Overall, however, I would recommend this program for its ease of use. It makes you feel that you're making progress very quickly, which helps get you past some of the discouragement you can sometimes face with a text book full of declensions. I'd recommend using it with a good Russian/English dictionary and the book Master The Basics Russian which has good grammar charts.
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