Why I buy this one ?
- This powerful 2-CD set of learning tools will adapt to your personal needs and impart a strong foundation in a new language
- With this award-winning method used by NASA and the Peace Corps, you'll learn the way children do -- by associating words and phrases with the world around you
- Participate in over 200 lessons where you'll interact with fluent Italian speakers to build speaking & vocabulary skills
- Get a full tutorial in speaking and syntax skills
- Graphical speech recognition displays your voiceprint and compares it to native speaker to help improve pronunciation

What our customer's say!

"Italian", I bought this for my daughter on her way to Italy. Loved it! She thought it was great!

"Learning Italian Behind the Wheel is Better!!", As I have stated in other product reviews, Rosetta Stone is clearly overrated but solid.
The problem with the overall approach is that it requires that you spend your learning time in front of a computer, which is where you do everything else. Lot's of competition.
I prefer to do my language learning during my otherwise wasted downtime while I drive. If I study a language while driving, I win because I use otherwise wasted hours. I, like most Americans, spend more time driving than ever before. When I get home, I want to do other essentials.
My favorite car Italian course is Behind the Wheel Italian 6 CDs. Free up your computer and learn ItalianBehind the Wheel Italian 1 Revised/Complete 226 Page Illustrated Text & Audioscript/Answer Keys/6 One Hour Multi-Track Audio CDs while you drive is my recommendationBehind the Wheel Italian 1 Revised/Complete 226 Page Illustrated Text & Audioscript/Answer Keys/6 One Hour Multi-Track Audio CDs

"You may be able to get this for free.", Before you pay a bundle for this product, check your local library. My library cooperative, in Hillsborough County, Florida, owns a licence for the whole shebang, every language and every level. Maybe yours does too: it won't hurt to check. I found it quite by accident in my library's online catalog. I registered by entering my library card number, loading a plugin that was provided, and creating a password. Now I can access it at home online and use any set of lessons I want, for the cost of a library card, which I had anyway. Actually I spent quite a lot of time on the French module, but when I got to Paris I had very little opportunity to remark that the children were about to jump off the table. I pretty much agree with the remarks of reviewers who awarded the minimum number of stars. (I plan to cross post this to other language modules.)

"Rosetta Stone Italian", This is a no-pressure approach to learning a language. Top notch!

"Rosetta Stone - Learn Italian", Because I am just starting to learn Italian, I did not find the Rosetta Stone very helpful due to the fact that there was no English translation whatsoever. Although pictures were shown, I was not certain that I was getting the correct meaning of what was being said. As for me, I prefer the classroom setting with a professor to learn and get some personal feedback on my progression. Maybe if I was further along in the language, the Rosetta Stone would be helpful, but at this point I did not think it was a beneficial tool.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Rosetta Stone - Italian", We found the program to be easy to install and the lessons easy to retrieve. The lessons are presented in a variety of ways to accomodate one's learning style. The accompanying text is not difficult to understand and is very helpful in explaining the basics of the program. We appreciate the repetition and the spiraling effect used as one progresses through the lessons. So far, we are pleased with the materials and have felt quite successful in learning some basis phrases.

"Laptop Users: Be Warned", The Rosetta Stone application requires that the language CD be present in the harddrive, and it *continuously* spins up the CD disk while the program runs. This unfortunate design will quickly run down your laptop batteries, making this application unsuitable for travel. My repeated requests to Fairfield Technologies, the Rosetta Stone software company, to remedy this problem were declined. Considering the substantial price paid for this software, it should *behave* like software, and not a DVD. If the application could be installed and run like normal software, it would not uselessly drain you laptop batteries.

"Install Errors !!!", I bought this as Christmas present for my daughter who will be traveling to Italy this spring as part of a College course she is taking, and she will be spending a semister there next year as well ... She just called me for school to help her resolve an ERROR in the installation: The install reaches 100% then states it has encountered an ERROR, and quits. It remains uninstalled and is thus far UNUSABLE. An awefully expensive piece of plastic that does NOTHING. As a Senior Software Engineer I'd have been fired for less ... The RosettaStone WebSite/Knowledgebase offers NO information on this.

"Good Language Learning Package", Drills are excellent, vocabulary has good variety... Picking up the grammar from the application without explanation is tough for me, but I guess that's the way kids learn any language.


"Good - but you will need other products", I do not know any Italian. I bought Level 1 of the Rosetta Stone about 7 weeks ago from off their radio adds. I have put in nearly one hour a day for approx four days a week. I am disappointed in this product. There is value, but you will need to purchase other software or books to supplement as other reviewers have stated.

Here are some of my issues, though there are others: No explantory text. You see 4 pictures and the voice says it in Italian and you must choose 1 of the 4 pictures. While this has some value, the lack of explantory text would be extremely helpful. I have no idea if I said "The Boy is jumping" or "A boy is leaping". While I get the idea he is jumping/leaping, it would be helpful to know what I am saying so if I ask something in Italian, I start the sentence structure out correctly. The other negative is how they use the word Bambino vs. Ragazzo vs. figlio. All three mean boy or male child. Specifically, Bambino can and does mean "baby" while figlio means "son". Rosetta Stone does a poor job of distinguishing this "at" times in their pictures. Thirdly, there were many pictures where you really can't identify if it is boy or girl (those of you who have gone through this one know what I am talking about).

So, while I think there is value, just know you need to have some supplements to your learning Italian. For the money, I would pass.