Posted: 8/1/2006 4:22:36 PM EDT
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Hey folks, just wondering if anyone here has used some of the "Learn-At-Home" (CD/DVD based) systems to learn even a rudimentary concept of a foreign language and how useful they found a particulair program? I'm looking at learning some Arabic and really don't have the time to audit classes at Willamette university or Portland State so, has anyone here gone the "Berlitz" or "Rosetta Stone" route and what did you tink of them? Thanks. |
I'm fumbling through some accelerated Arabic right now. We have an actual real live Iraqi PhD to teach us (he works for DLI normally) but I have heard pretty good things about the Rosetta Stone program. In fact since the USAF won't buy it for me (they will for officers though, and the Army will pay for anybody that wants it  ) I may buy it myself. One thing to be aware of, it's a reaaaal mother@#$% of a language. There are no direct "rules" for transliteration between Arabic and English, so you may see the same Arabic word spelled 4 or 5 different ways in English, all of them correct.  Also the Rosetta Stone type programs are for Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) which may vary a whole lot from local "dialects". I'm only on the very basic stuff and already there are some pretty huge differences between Iraqi and MSA Arabic. Good luck with it, I hope to learn a lot more of the language in person from my IQAF counterparts.
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Is that why we have stuff like Mohammad/Mohammed/Muhammed and Moslem/Muslim? |
Yup, there are something like 20 different (correct) ways to spell Mohammed. It makes tracking people down in databases a mother, too. One of our instructors (he taught us the structure of Islamic names) has developed a pretty cool computer program to do just that. |