Japanese Level 1 & 2 Win/Mac Personal Edition [Old Version] | ![Japanese Level 1 & 2 Win/Mac Personal Edition [Old Version]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PYJH3P52L._SL500_.jpg) | From: Fairfield Language Technologies
This item is no longer available
Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 3120
Format: CD-ROM
Platforms: Mac OS X, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP, Mac, Windows
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Windows
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 8.2 x 2.8
MPN: 794678018664
Model: 232-12
UPC: 794678018664
EAN: 0794678018664
ASIN: B000077DD5
Release Date: October 28, 2002
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| Features:
| • | This powerful 2-CD set of learning tools adapts to your personal needs and imparts 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 Japanese 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 speakers to help improve pronunciation |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Rosetta Stone Japanese Level I & II opens up a new world to you by teaching you how to communicate with a new culture! Reviews and testing features help identify weak points and work harder on them Comes with illustrated User's Guides and Curriculum Text books Ages 6 & up
Amazon.com Product Description
Learn a new language with the award-winning method used by the U.S. State Department to train diplomats. Proven effective by NASA astronauts, Peace Corps volunteers, and millions of students worldwide, the Rosetta Stone Language Library teaches new languages faster and easier than ever before. We all learn our childhood language by associating new words and phrases with the world around us. The Rosetta Stone method replicates this process by presenting vivid, real-life images to convey the meaning of each new phrase. Instead of translating, memorizing, and studying rules of grammar, you actually learn to think in the new language. Vocabulary and grammar are integrated systematically, leading to everyday proficiency. This comprehensive program provides up to 550 hours of mastery instruction in listening comprehension, reading, writing, and speaking. Systematic structure teaches vocabulary and grammar naturally, without lists or drills. Previews, exercises, and tests accompany every lesson, and there are automated tutorials throughout the program. Graphical speech recognition displays your voiceprint and compares it with the native speaker to help improve your pronunciation. (Ages 6 and older)
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
 worked great for me October 30, 2009
squiggyflop (CT)
in this review i will show why i like this program better than others and how some things that annoy other people work for me (everyone learns differently)
*some people get annoyed because there is no translation given for words* i like that there is no translation because then when i go to speak japanese my mind doesn't start with English and have to manually translate it into japanese..this allows me to speak my ideas a bit faster.. i also tend to learn new japanese words much faster if i connect them to a picture/idea than if they are connected to another word.
*some people complain that there is no grammar explanations* um well it seemed really obvious to me that the verb always came last after the third sentence given.. however for more complicated sentences, like ones with more than one adjective or just a very long sentence it might be helpful to have some experience with the grammar.. thankfully rosetta stone doesn't give you the harder sentences until you are far enough into the program to understand the rules. everyone learns differently and i can understand why some people couldn't grasp it just from the program
*some people get annoyed that they cant use the phrases they learned right away* boo hoo.. so get yourself a phrase book if you want to talk like a tourist.. if you want to make it past tourist level you are going to have to have a big vocabulary and the best way to do that is through sentences.. that way you know how the words come together and can make your own sentences instead of just memorizing and reciting book learned phrases..
*some people get upset that it doesn't teach how to read hiragana/katakana/kanji* well people settle down now and listen.. the japanese reading/writing system is hard. now most of the learning should be writing practice. hiragana can be learned in 4 hours without rosetta stone.. yes it can.. kanji takes years to master.. now once you take the 4 hours to learn hiragana then go back to rosetta stone and soon you will be reading it much faster because you will hear the pronunciation while the characters are on screen.. now if you switch it to kanji/kana mode instead of just kana you can actually learn to recognise the different pronunciations of the kanji much faster.. you are learning it much faster because you are associating it with a word, a sentence, a sound and a picture all at once.. it works well but no you cannot possibly count on rosetta stone to teach you everything about kanji and the kana.. think about it.. if it worked that well then it wouldn't take japanese children so many years to be able to read a newspaper.. now for learning the kanji/kana get a few workbooks and a portable Aquadoodle Travel Doodle.. yes an aquadoodle.. its a children's toy but in the end you will save money on paper.. also its good for practicing calligraphy if you get a water brush:KOI WATER BRUSH LARGE.. the water brush also makes it more fun to practice.. get your stroke order down and focus on making neat characters.. by writing them you cement the shape in your brain.. sorry but there is no easy route to kanji memorization.. but using rosetta stone to learn the pronunciations helps alot..
*some people think pimsleur is better* I've tried both.. pimsleur is boring and i hate things without pictures.. I'm just not good at learning things without the visual.. if you learn best through audio get up from the computor right now and head to your local library and check out pimsleur before buying rosetta stone.. i just cant pay attention for more than a few minutes without visual stimulus.. the more colorful the visual the better.. rosetta stone is fun like a game and pimsleur is boring listening with your eyes closed praying for it to be over.. however im not saying that rosetta stone is the best thing out there either.. its just better than pimsleur.. but not better than the video courses out there for grammar.. i have lets learn japanese from NHK.. it was done in the 80s but it works well.. it has a clip from a movie in the beginning and then an English speaking person explaining then some cute little skits and then back to the movie.. and somehow at the end of the episode you magically understand everything going on in the movie clip.. but the videos are lacking in vocab.. that's where rosetta stone comes in.. because when it comes to vocab rosetta stone clobbers its enemies with its huge amount of vocabulary words..
anyway to summarize
*its immersion (yay!)
*some of the more advanced grammar is best learned from texts.. but with rosetta the simple sentence's grammar is obvious
*no you wont be able to use what you learned right away but its better that way in the long run
*it wont teach you how to write in japanese but its wicked awesome for reading practice
*no pimsleur is not better (for me)..
 Instant Immersion for listening/speaking comprehension fills a great need! May 21, 2009
Coder (USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Let me start by saying I have a very old trial version which has about 9 languages on it. Even so, it's easy to see why Rosetta Stone is so popular.
You can study from books all you like and still not retain what you studied. This is because you are going at it much too intellectually. First, translation is *not* how you *naturally* learn any language -- not even your own! Second, only imagining how things should sound in your head while reading does not help you retain language -- your brain needs to hear, interpret, and speak! Third, your practice will be stale and one-dimensional without conversation with other Japanese speakers (or at least an interactive substitute).
Rosetta Stone fills this gap very well! It will also help improve your reading and writing, though it cannot be the primary method to learn reading and writing. However, Rosetta Stone's method of recognizing pictures, sound, and kanji, and matching them together, will help you retain the kanji and kana *much* better than books alone.
Rosetta Stone teaches you *naturally*, the way you learn as a child -- you point to an object, someone tells you what it is, and you keep pointing and listening and repeating the word yourself. Once you learn several objects you create simple sentences. After a while, someone says the name of an object to you, and you can point to the correct one, almost automatically. Once you learn simple sentence patterns, you substitute words. Then you combine simple sentences into more complex ones.
Rosetta Stone provides multiple "paths" through each lesson. In the lesson's preview, a word is matched directly with the picture, and you just watch. Then you are given a word (either written, in audio, or both), and choose the correct picture. Next, you go through the lesson given a picture and four words, and choose the correct word. You can also go through some tasks with the microphone, where you are given a picture and must say the word aloud. You can also turn the audio on or off, or use audio only, on most tasks in order to practice specific skills -- and to *maximize* your learning by *varying* the use of your natural senses. A test rounds out every lesson.
Another great feature is that each person can create their own profile just by adding a "user". Your exercise and test results are stored and listed in your profile. New results do *not* overwrite old ones, so you can view your real progress. Links to the lessons and your results are part of the same screen, making it easy to pick up where you left off last. Your profile is also portable -- it's a plain-text file located in C:\Program Files\The Rosetta Stone\The Rosetta Stone\Data\Profiles\YOUR-USER-NAME -- so you can transfer it to any computer for use with another copy of the software, or back it up to floppy disk or CD/DVD in case you reformat your computer's hard drive!
As others mentioned, Japanese grammar is very different from English. "I car saw." "Blue book (it) is." Someone reviewing Version 3 said Japanese sentence patterns reminded him of Yoda in Star Wars -- that's a good analogy! However, Japanese is more sensible than English in many wasy. Very few Japanese nouns have singular and plural forms, and verbs *only* have singular forms. There are standard ways to convert words between adjective, adverb, and noun. However, verb conjugation, while more standardized than English (not so many exceptions), is more complex. There are more forms (in general), plus there are casual, polite, and honorific and humble (super-polite) ways to say things. Then there are the notorious "counters" -- suffixes used to count various types of objects/animals/people. So, Japanese is more difficult in some respects.
Japanese in general is not very difficult, though the writing system is certainly is! What usually trips up students of Japanese is that subtleties of pronunciation and timing of speech are *very* different from English. You need regular listening and speaking immersion, or you will have a hard time understanding someone, even when they say words you know!
It is very difficult to practice conversation outside Japan, because so many Japanese, as foreigners, become fluent in the languages of their adopted or host country. It's intimidating to just jump into conversation in Japanese, especially if you must get an idea across correctly and quickly, when you *know* they speak English. You'll probably speak English, because you both know it!
You need a *lot* of speaking, listening, and direct association (a.k.a. immersion) practice during the early stages of language-learning. Rosetta Stone provides! It uses *much* better immersion techniques than audio CDs -- which teach set phrases but can't effectively teach grammar. These software lessons progress in a logical order others don't, changing patterns to teach you new concepts.
Remember, you *cannot* learn a language properly without any sort of text, and if that's what you expect, you will be disappointed! However, Rosetta Stone is the *best* program for achieving fluency through listening, speaking, and reading -- nicely complementing your grammar and vocabulary learning.
You *need* an excellent program like this to get you beyond, "What is your name?", "Nice to meet you," "Thank you," and "Do you speak Japanese?" My recommendation is to start with a good grammar or sentence-pattern book until you get the hang of constructing and understanding simple sentences, then plunge right into Rosetta Stone, while continuing your text-based study.
One weakness which confounds me is that Rosetta Stone only supports romaji input (typing phonetically with the roman alphabet). Microsoft Windows supports typing Japanese natively -- you merely have to install the files for East-Asian languages and configure Microsoft IME -- and the capability is extended to all text-aware programs! So why isn't this software kanji-aware? Maybe the authors thought comparing user-entered kanji to an internal dictionary would require too much processing, and slow down the program. Due to this deficiency, I would give 4 1/2 stars instead of 5, if it were possible.
(P.S. I run a Japanese meetup, and the PDF instructions to install, configure, and use the components for typing Japanese are on the webpage, accessible to non-members: [...] )
Rosetta Stone is expensive, but you get what you pay for -- the quality of the lessons clearly justifies the cost. *But* if you buy all *three* levels at once, you'll save between $[...], depending where you buy it! (Sometimes I get coupon codes from PayPal. Otherwise, compare prices on Amazon, eBay, and [...] immediately before you purchase to get the best price.) I'm student without much money, so I haven't bought a new version yet, but that's because I'm still working on the old demo I already own. (They don't make the demo CDs anymore.) Otherwise I would have purchased it already!
I *highly* recommend this product for anyone who wishes to become fluent in Japanese!
 Only use as additional tool April 24, 2008
TeamSporks (USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I wanted to learn Japanese, and for all the hype-dodging I do everyday, I somehow fell victim to this. I don't know how well this works for other people, but for me it wasn't enough. I had to use additional tools (other books and internet sources) to start to get even a basic understanding of the language. To begin with, how about teaching the fact that the word "mother" is different depending on whether you are talking about your own mother or someone else's mother? That wasn't included in here. It doesn't teach you the multitude of verb endings, it doesn't even TOUCH conjugation. It wasn't until I used another source that I realized that kanojo and kare weren't woman and man, but she and he. That's the kind of stuff people need to know to learn a language. The only reason I gave it two stars is because it did teach me new words. But I could have gone to a dictionary for that. This product is seriously over hyped. If you get it (which you shouldn't) you will absolutely need additional sources to actually learn anything useful.
 Extremely useful for vocab and recognition as a kinesthetic learner November 12, 2007
T. James (Seattle, WA, USA)
I have already learned two languages to relative fluency, Spanish and Croatian, but had never tried Rosetta Stone. Perhaps learning with Rosetta Stone is easier for me because of already knowing how to learn a language through immersion, especially when considering the fact that Croatian has almost as little to do with English as Japanese does (although at least it shares an alphabet!). This having been said, it seems to me that this program allows you to pick up on vocabulary that would be far more difficult to memorize without this kind of medium.
I have never studied Japanese in my life, and yet after just a day and a half of doing the lessons, maybe two or three hours total, I have stored away at least 15-20 new words. This is pretty much unheard of for me, because since I'm a kinesthetic learner (meaning one learns best by doing with a mixture of seeing and hearing), I have a hard time memorizing words by reading alone, or from simple listening. I can understand the linguistic concepts but memorization has always been my weak point.
This program is not something to be used as an all-in-one, but generally I've found that a combination of materials and manners of study is always best for learning no matter the language. For someone like me, who has to put a huge effort into memorization, it's a relief to have a medium that makes it easy to put together the word with the image and the sound. Aside from making it much easier to memorize words by forcing you to read, look, listen and act at the same time (as well as write in some exercises), it allows you to begin to recognize the cadence of the language at a much faster rate as well. Normally one of the first difficulties of learning a language is differentiating between sounds. Already I can tell where one word begins and another ends by listening and reading the accompanying sentences.
This program is similar to immersion, in which one learns by piecing together what one sees and hears. It's definitely worth a try, although maybe it would be best for those who've already had some foreign language experience. Try repeating aloud each sentence the program says, or at least the key word, and that might help to speed up the memorization process and polish your pronunciation.
I think that this product is over-hyped and too expensive for what it actually is, but that it's still a strong program when used in collaboration with other materials. I would suggest it if you are serious about learning the language, but probably not until you're sure that you are. Perhaps you can see if they have it at your library first, try it out, have some patience, then decide whether it works for you.
Great product A+++++++ September 12, 2007
N. Moyes (Provo, UT)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I already speak Japanese, but don't have many opportunities to keep it current and fresh--this is a great tool to hear native speakers and make sure you've still got it!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
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