Others say...

"Can't possibly teach you how to speak in Thailand"
I'm going back to Thailand for vacation and wanted to learn a little more Thai this time around. I've tried several different things and Rosetta Stone was the worst.

Learning Thai from scratch requires a base knowledge of sentence structure and tonality rather than just vocabulary. Take tonality for example "maa" said three different ways, it can mean three different things. It can mean: to come, a horse, or a dog based on a slight tonal difference.

Thai sentence structure is "backwards" from most English, so I don't see how they could teach that either. For example in English you say "Is this your house? in Thai you would literally say "house you isn't it?" Asking and answering questions is simply different than how we speak English and this program doesn't teach those things.

Even plain vocabulary is difficult with this program. The local speaker speaks so quickly, it's difficult to catch on to what they are saying. A lot of the vocabulary is useless for day-to-day tourist interactions if you're just planning a visit there. So what if you learn "the man is riding a horse", or "the boy is under the table."

Thais also seem to shorten what they are saying and don't make long complete sentences like we would.

Pimsleur audio is another alternative, but after repeating what I learned on the CD to a friend living in Thailand he laughed and said, people don't talk like that here! Way, way too formal.

What's worked for me is Thai for beginners book, with the CD (I don't see how you could do it without the cd) as a guidebook. I then hired a thai tutor living in Thailand to teach me via voice chat online. Her hourly rate was very inexpensive, and I got loads more practical language skills than any software program.

Bottom line, don't waste your money on this program if you're wanting to learn for travel.

I do agree with the other positive reviewer in that if you are planning on studying Thai indepth, possibly to live there this may help build your vocabulary.

"Did Not Work For Me"
We both tried it. Too obtuse an approach. We believe in immersion learning but had no idea what the words were we were learning. The photos show too much activity and conflicting items/images. Some of the speakers were slower and more distinct in their diction than others. We gave up. Instead we will proceed to Thailand and live with a non-English speaking Thai family for three months while we are in language school. However, we can now say "hello" with the proper hand and head bowing greeting thanks to the Buddhist monks in our local wat.

 

Buy Cheap Software Now!
  Rosetta Stone V2: Thai, Level 1

List Price : $219.00
Our Price : from $197.00

Why I buy this one ?
- Rosetta Stone helps you understand everyday language through our proficiency-based listening and reading activities
- You will pronounce words correctly after practicing with our proprietary speech comparison tool
- Find the words you need when you need them Connecting new language directly to real-life images means the words spring to mind when you're in everyday contexts
- Rosetta Stone teaches you to spell and write accurately Language-specific keyboards and drag and drop tiles perfect your writing skills
- Learn to communicate by quickly combining words and phrases into complete sentences and dialogue



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What our customer's say!

"Mixed", The speaking and the vocabulary building are nice. Where this product fails is in the writing area. If you were studying the writing independently, the program would reinforce it. But, if you buy the program to learn Thai speaking and writing you're only getting half of what you paid for.

"Experienced only need apply", This program assumes that you can already read Thai script. There is nothing that teaches you the individual characters and sounds; you are presented, from the gitgo, with whole words and phrases (Thai script does not uses spaces between words). For the first two lessons, this approach is OK, as you associate sounds with pictures. However, the third lesson expects you to associate sounds with written symbols, which cannot be done without a prior study of the characters and some sense of what they represent.

To use this program, you will need a dictionary and some kind of guide to the alphabet to begin reading. This is not exactly an easy task, as many dictionaries either use phonetic transliteration (using Roman characters instead of Thai), or have very small print.

Before buying this program, learn the alphabet, if you can find a good book. Printing out Wikipedia's page on the Thai alphabet may help, although the characters are very small and the differences between many of them are very minute.

I'm extremely disappointed with the overhyped Rosetta Stone approach, and cannot recommend it to anyone, at least not for an Asian language. However, if you already have some background and knowledge of the characters, this may help. Otherwise, you won't get past the first three lessons.

"Teacher Taught", I've taught French for 30-odd years and have always wanted to learn an Asian language. No, I'm not looking for a compendium of useful phrases for travel, but rather a working knowledge of the language. Oh, and as a proud autodidact, I want to do it on my own. I've been at it for a couple of weeks now, using Rosetta Stone as my core tool. I've supplemented it with a grammar, a dictionary, and more patience than I thought I had. I'm finding the Rosetta Stone approach necessary but not sufficient -- it's much more useful for speaking and listening comprehension than for reading and writing, the Thai alphabet being what it is. the For the latter two skills, I'm in search of a tutor, not so much to teach but to fill in any ambiguities in the written texts. All in all, given the "at mother's knee" philosophy of Rosetta Stone's method, I cannot imagine the pedagogy being carried off any better. I wish only that there were level II and III versions!

"This is genius", Even though i've only gotten to start a few lessons now, I think that this program is exactly what i've needed to learn Thai. Starting without explicit instructions, each lesson takes you through learning Thai in the way you learn your first language - pictures, sound, repetition, and associating words together through context instead of pre-determined vocabulary lists. The way they designed the program is genius! I highly recommend this instead of over-used language tapes and workbooks.

"This is the way to learn a new language...", I live in Thailand and have tried various phrase books, language media, as well as an English-Thai dictionary (which i still use for reference) and feel the need to give RossettaStone its just due. After reading the other reviews i could not understand what the problem was. RosettaStone does not use translation (which is the worst way to learn a new language!)but instead uses a "mothers tongue" or acquisition approach. This approach may take some getting used to but once the learner feels comfortable using the RosettaStone method one should see progress rather quickly. Yes Thai language is very different from English such as different sentence structures, lack of tenses, adjectives following a noun instead of preceeding a noun, a whole set of personal pronouns that change depending on the sex of the speaker, and then a whole seperate set for royalty, etc, etc. but this should not discourage a person from learning Thai. I will agree that to shell out the money for RossetaStone may not be practical if one is just visiting Thailand on holiday, a phrase book would meet this need just fine since you probably wont get the tones right anyway but hey its Thailand and Thais are very tolerant. If you are planning on spending more than just a holiday,( like if you live in Thailand)then RossettaStone can be of benefit as well as taking a formal Thai language course. It's also important to keep in mind that the RosettaStone programs are not designed to learn a new language in a week which would be totally unrealistic but more like several months to a year.



 
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