This place has a few courses on Japanese. Although It's not really my cup of tea, I thought it was worth a share.

http://www.livemocha.com/

Discuss, praise, criticize, etc.

I tried it for a while. It's basically just Rosetta stone with accelerated courses and a community.

At first, I thought it was good, but once it got beyond things I already knew, I realized I wasn't learning anything from it... I was just gaming it and getting points. I also found that I dreaded going back to it each day.

It's a great site for meeting people. The lessons are pretty much garbage, though. They were clearly designed with English in mind, then each sentence was mindlessly translated into Japanese (or Spanish, or whatever language you're learning). This causes endless problems, including situations where it is impossible to answer correctly without guessing simply because the question doesn't contain enough information. Here's one example... one lesson might ask you to click on the picture representing "a girl and a flower", and another question might ask you to click on the picture representing "a girl and some flowers". Sounds OK, right? Well, both of these got translated into Japanese as "女の子と花", so now you don't know which one to click anymore!

So, yeah, it's much better to take lessons that are actually geared towards students of Japanese. Still, the community aspect of the site is worth checking out.

- Kef

its ok if you want to get an impression of what rooseta stone is like

I hope not, because not only would that mean that Rosetta Stone is very overpriced, it would also mean its quality is abysmal.

furrykef Wrote:I hope not, because not only would that mean that Rosetta Stone is very overpriced, it would also mean its quality is abysmal.

Sorry to have to break the news to you.

alyks Wrote:

furrykef Wrote:I hope not, because not only would that mean that Rosetta Stone is very overpriced, it would also mean its quality is abysmal.

Sorry to have to break the news to you.

Er, yeah. What alyks said. I hope you didn't buy it?

So what's Rosetta stone?

I've tried livemocha. I kind of like it. The speakers are slow and clear, so I find it good for shadowing practice especially intonation.

Raichu Wrote:So what's Rosetta stone?

I've tried livemocha. I kind of like it. The speakers are slow and clear, so I find it good for shadowing practice especially intonation.

Imagine LiveMocha, but it costs several hundred more dollars and goes slower on the content.

Seriously... It's really just about the same thing.