Rating: 
Summary: Simply an excellent program
Review: This is a great program. Previously I bought another Russian language software program and it was pitiful compared with this one. Anywhere in this program you can right-click on a Russian word and bring up its grammar characteristics. An example might be (noun, feminine, 1st conjugation, possesive case). This is important to know when you are learning what ending a word needs based on that information. You can also hear words pronounced by Russian speakers at full speed or half speed and have the word repeated as many times as needed to imitate it. The only things this program lacks are a dictionary (you can download a free Russian/English, English/Russian dictionary off the internet from Russlang) and a "back" button to go to a previous training sentence. You can tell the program to go to a specific sentence and word (i.e. sentence #202, word #5), but without a printed-out sheet of all sentences how are you to know what sentence #202 says? Even so this is an amazing product and a great deal of work obviously went into developing it and it shows. One piece of advise though. You should also buy a good Russian language textbook to complement this program. Either one without the other will eventually leave you confused somewhere down the line. Just be aware that Russian is a complex language and the more reference tools you have at you side, the easier it will be. I have 3 books and often must read the same topic in all 3 to fully understand it. I give this product 2 thumbs up. If your local library has the book/tape series "Modern Russian 1" printed by the Georgetown University Press. I highly recommend you check out the book for a few weeks. It is a great reference tool. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Nice, but not my style...
Review: I find this system too confusing for me. The explanations of the cases are too mind boggling for me to understand what it is that they are talking about. The voice part of the software is nice, however, it's definitely unreliable when it comes to telling you how well you are at pronouncing a word. I should know; just for fun, I said a word in english and it gave me a WOW for my "russian" pronunciation. What a joke! The movie "The Adventures of John Stevenson," although incredibly entertaining and fun to watch, didn't do a thing when it came to teaching me the language. I'm more of a visual learner and I prefer to be taught a language through pictures. This system just didn't help me at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Good way to learn Chinese
Review: This is an amazing software.
I can enhance my vocabruary and correct my pronounciation through recording my voice and compare with the native pronounciatin on the PC. This is very helpful to learn new language. And also, my version came with bonus CD which includes multiple languages word processor.
Considering the price, this has very high cost performance and I strongly recommend this software to lean Chinese.
Rating:
Summary: Great New Product!
Review: I received my copy of this new product today. First impression is very positive. I have bought most all the CD-based products for German and this one is way ahead of the rest. For my money, the others are toys with no depth at all. What makes this one effective for language learning is a design and technology that makes use of concurrent inputs: sound,text,and visuals. And these three sensory inputs can be slowed down and/or repeated as desired. It's not perfect, but it is clearly better than the rest.For this reason, I give it a 'relative' rating of 5.
Rating:
Summary: Very nice program
Review: A good thing about this program is that it introduces you to the alphabet, pronouncing the letter sounds and the letter names themselves. Too bad they don't have that feature for numbers or counting. For that, you'd have to look them up or happen upon each number during dialog lessons.
I wouldn't completely rely on the 'Advanced Speech Analysis' feature in helping with one's accent, which basically has an arrow which points to one of three areas depending on one's accent ability: Keep Practicing, Good, and WOW. Though, it still is nice that I can play my voice back to back to back with the native speaker, determining how I need to improve myself. One doesn't need a meter for that.
The program will also allow one to type Russian characters and letters on a standard English keyboard. Nothing has to be reprogramed for it to type Russian.
The program also exercises listening comprehension along with the reading and writing. They have a dictation game, in which one will hear a Russian native speaker dictating sentences and the player will, in turn, type it in Russian.
The grammar tutorial is also very nice, giving you lessons in conjugation, etc., as well as a short but interesting history of the Russian language itself.
They have these dialogs for several situations that gives you examples of how words are used. They give you over ten-thousand words, all right. They're not made up into vocabulary lists, however. Instead it's made up of every single word for every single sentence in every single piece of dialog in the dialog sections.
Also included is a multilingual word processor, so one can type in their new language outside of the "Russian Now" program.
The only thing I don't like (and is the reason I knocked off a star) is the fact that it is a bit difficult to navigate through. One could get lost without a way to get back to where they started.
Rating:
Summary: For Intermediate Conversational French
Review: I really enjoy using this program and I highly recommend it. This program has very good conversational skill levels. You practice speaking and it rates your pronunciation. It helps you to improve your listening skills as well. It has word games, grammar tools and vocabulary building. The real life videos are average. However, it would be difficult to use this program unless you have learned some grammar. I recommend this program to all intermediate french learners.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for speech study, though not the friendliest program
Review: How does a person rate a piece of software like this? It has some amazingly innovative design to aid a person to speak with a good accent. It also has some attrociously designed ease of use features.
Ultimately, if you can get through the tiny buttons that you have to get your mouse over to go to the next phrase or play the current one, with no real keyboard equivalent of being able to go back a phrase and play, or go forward one phrase and play, then you'll probably really like this software. This whole program is plagued with buttons about a quarter the size of a dime that you have to get your mouse over so you can access the feature. Those little buttons are annoying, what can I say?
Is the software buggy? Yes. Badly? No. If you happen to be on a newer mac with OS X, you'll note that there isn't OS 9 on your system. So, since the kana syllabery is only OS 9, that won't work. And the grammar word processor only works on PCs, so you might start feeling like all the extras went out the window... and they did.
On the other hand, maybe it's just me, but it seemed like they took the little back a phrase button out of the version 9.0. Since, OS X runs 8.1, you'll have the little back a phrase button if you're on OS X.
The good news is that it works with the iBook internal mic. Isn't it nice when language software works with internal mics on laptops? It just makes things so much easier.
If you are just starting to learn a language, I'd suggest you wonder over to Eurotalk Talk NOW series. And if your willing, immerse yourself into a World TALK afterwards. This Transparent software does work, and they did spend time on innovative methods towards accuracy in testing inputted speech. The problem is that they didn't spend time on making their software simple and a pleasure to use on a daily level. Eurotalk stuck to the basics. They just tried to make easy to use software that was a pleasure to use, using proven methods. This software has bells and whistles and bugs. Eurotalk doesn't have bells and whistles and they don't have bugs. I'm into the bugless one at the moment. I've bought both and installed both and use both. It's just the Eurotalk is so much less annoying.
In reality, you should probably own both. Eurotalk series will help you understand the language much quicker and more efficiently than Transparent series will. However, Transparent series will make you understood better in your own speech than Eurotalk series will. Still... better to understand what they are saying, than the other way around. Both is the best though (-= .
Rating:
Summary: Best product I've found
Review: This language software is far and away the best product I've found for learning Japanese. I am currently in Japan and this software has helped me much more than any of the books I had bought. The interactive aspect as well as the opportunity to listen to native speakers has made it indispensible. My only criticism is that it doesn't give you the written Japanese to look at as you learn the words, it just shows you the romanji which is of no help over here when it comes to reading the language.
All in all, it's a bargain given the results you will get from it.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthless. Absolutely worthless.
Review: Save your money. The interface is god-awful, buggy as hell, and the program clearly was rushed out for production. Little thought has been put into this program. The games are cheesy, stupid and boring. However, one cool feature was a section with extremely short video segments with the corresponding Japanese (in romaji) scrolling on the left side. I would pay good money for a program that did just that in more extensive amounts. Hope this helps prevent people from wasting their $39.99 on this program. -sev
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