Anyone tried Rosetta Stone for Russian?

I want to learn Russian, have any of you used it and what did you think?

Nothing can be better than to learn language with person for whom russian is native language, so try to find russian frends who knows english and ask to teach you.

I have not tried Rosetta Stone, but have heard great things about it. Fortunately my friend is an English teacher and speaks excellent English - I am interested in the language, but I find that we usually are too busy with our conversation to concentrate on learning Russian. I have however learned some phrases which are important to her. I am also beginning to recognize the alphabet and sounds associated with the letters, without even trying.

We have discovered that when she speaks to me in Russian, that I frequently have a general idea of what she is saying from her intonation and voice inflection, and of course the topic of our conversation.

You may also find a few simple phrases helpful:

"Privet" = "hello"

"Poka" = "Bye" or "Goodbye"

"Ya dumayu o tebye." = "I think of you"

"Ya skuchayu" = "I miss you"

"Ya tebya lublyu" = "I love you"

Even if you cannot immediately pronounce these words and phrases correctly, your friend will appreciate your efforts!

i tried it and i think was veryeasy to use and learn .Its not that expenseive to buy and see if it helps you .

Unfortunately, I have not used Rosetta Stone, but have heard it is a decent program.

Right now, most business people that I know that are traveling frequently internationally are using universal translator products by ECTACO, but they are generally rather costly.

You can get something as simple as a ECTACO Partner® UT-203, (only available as "used") that has speech recognition and instant translation English/Russian/German (handheld, non-USB) about $250.00 USD

Quick features:

The Ectaco Universal Translator™ UT-203 is a voice translator with a unique speech recognition system providing phrase translation. You speak into it in English, and then it repeats what you said in German or Russian.
This model contains 14 different conversational topics which include about 3,000 phrases and expressions facilitating communication in hotels, post offices, banks, stores, restaurants, hospitals, beauty salons, and many other places.

Unique linguistic resource

The speech recognition and reproduction system was created using 700 different American English native speakers’ voices
Advanced speech-to-speech engine repeats phrases in 2 foreign languages
Friendly interface, easy to operate
Clear speech, superb sound quality
Built-in digital voice recorder with microphone
Multifunctional Action Button for easy navigation
http://www.electronic-translators.net/electronics/dictionaries/german.html

To the very complex:

ECTACO Partner 13MT900 Deluxe Multilingual Talking Electronic Dictionary and Audio PhraseBook
cost about $850.00 USD

Too many features to fully list.. but this unit has multi-language speech to speech, speech to text, text to text, plus an available scanner pen to read and translate items like newspapers. The unit operates using Windows CE. It also includes language learning/teaching programs.

Here is the quick feature overview:

Features:

Large 3.5” color LCD screen
7,000,000 entries English <-> Spanish, English <-> French, English <-> German, English <-> Italian, English <-> Polish, English <-> Portuguese, English <-> Chinese, English <-> Arabic, English <-> Japanese, English <-> Korean, English <-> Russian, English <-> Farsi dictionaries
70,000 English explanations with the WordNet Princeton English Dictionary
Unique User’s Dictionary lets you create personalized word lists
Advanced English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Farsi Speech Recognition
True Voice human pronunciation English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish words and phrases
Pre-recorded words list provides access to spoken dictionary entries
Talking Picture Dictionary with pronunciation for all words
91,000 entry Audio PhraseBook for commonly encountered situations
Patented Language Teacher system with hands-free, eyes-free U-Learn™ Car Tutor
Unbeatable Word-of-the-day vocabulary builder
Full Text Translation functionality
Spell-Check, History and Slang Lock options
Smart Virtual Keyboard with Audio interface
Vector Ultima™ spell-checker and English, Spanish and Polish Morphofinder™ to help find the words you need
Customizable English interface with support for the C-Pen/Ectaco handheld scanner
English Grammar, Irregular Verbs, Idioms, and SAT 200/5000 vocabulary builders
Linguistic Crossword, Pockets, Spell-It-Right, FlashCards, Hangman games and a Translation Test
Customizable translating jetBook Reader with FB2, TXT and XML file support
Video Player with .avi, .wma, .wav, .ogg, .jpg, and .png. support; Voice Recorder; FM Radio
SDHC card support of up to 32GB
http://www.ectaco.com/ectaco-partner-13mt900-deluxe/

That is going on my list! I still want to learn Russian, but that would make travel less awkward. Thanks for posting.

I read a lot of reviews on Rosetta Stone, some even from native speakers who had friends who used it. To my surprise, the most credible say don't get it. SO I am going a cheaper route and getting the one from Transparent Language. It seems you get better results.

I will let you know when I get into it.

Thanks for the above information. Once I find my dear Russian woman, with whom we can become more serious, I will for sure consider buying one of the Ectaco Universal Translator™ UT-203, Rosetta Stone.

When we become serious in finding our respective women from foreign countries, it would be very helpful for us to learn as much as possible of our prospective woman's language. By arming ourselves with any decent level of particular foreign language, we can clearly show to our prospective women how much we really care about their culture, heritage, and about them in general. This could also become a clear indicative that we intend to respect our prospective women by many important means, before and during our possible marriage life. The two language communication could make much better bilingual understanding and enjoyable friendship, and more effective learning about each other.

For the time being I am learning mainly some of the basic Russian writing and pronunciation. I am also visiting, time permitting, a Russian cafe and one of their better restaurants, where learning of the Russian language skills is very much possible from many friendly "teachers". Besides, it is very important for me to also learn there about the Russian cuisine, their customs, life styles and more.
One of the ladies who is working in that particular Russian restaurant, and who reminds me a lot on our sweet and very helpful member of this forum, alena769, is helping me a lot in faster learning. She had promised to very carefully appraise my future Russian woman!...so with some helps from her and Alena, as kind of experts in such domain..hehehe, I am looking forward to find my future wife in the RF.

Not intending to deviate to much from this topic; I've also recently learnt some interesting facts about the Slavic Orthodox Easter customs which are very rich in tradition. I even visited one of the Ukrainian churches (almost identical customs as to the Russian churches) during this past Easter Sunday. I was pleasantly fascinated with the church services, very friendly and kind Slavic people, and about their world famous artistically inscribed Easter Eggs called pysanky (писанка). I was given five of such eggs, which were also blessed by the church's main priest. I've learnt that such extraordinary art performed on the pysanky is also considered as an American art, via the Ukrainian immigrants who brought it here a long time ago.

Yes. I found the course to be excellent as you can study at your own pace. However, even with taking all 3 sections, you are only going to have a fundamental knowledge. Once you are comfortable with the basic, you may wish to subscribe to a Russian newspaper or magazine. Also, there are numerous "Russian Wives Clubs" throughout the U.S. If you can make contact with one of them in your area, you can arrange for private Russian language lessons to supplement the Rosetta Stone Course.

I used this. Russian Lessons 1,2,3. Now bear in mind some of my words were already know from previous relationships. It's a great tool, and is extremely helpful if you have someone who is native to the language to help you. It;s not memorization, it's immersion. Lesson 1 will help a lot the only problem I had with it was the advanced lessons moved quickly and would boggle your mind at time. You can slow the speech down and it really helps.

Its not cheap despite what some have said. Its like 300.00 for the app, then 399.00 per lesson. So cheap in the overall, but helpful more than most. Russian is not an easy language to learn, if you are native english, you will have to unlearn a lot. As with anything what you put into it you get out of it. I used it at the time to try and salvage a relationship, that utlimately failed. It did give me the " bug" however. Its in my blood now and I'm learning it for different reasons now.

hope this helps.

After a huge amount of research off and on for 3 years, I have come to these conclusions.

The Pimsleur Method:
The best AUDIO language learning technique and overall may be the best.
As it is audio, it you have the advantage of using MP3s of the lessons in portable players.
Beginner to advanced.
I'm surprised this has not been mentioned.

Rosetta Stone:
The best software learning which uses visuals.
I have heard, which also has been mentioned in this forum, it will only take you so far in
your learning, bit it would be a great start. My brother & sis in law verify this and both learned
Spanish from scratch. They also used flash cards which they said were greatly helpful.

ECTACOproducts; [AS OF 15 MONTHS AGO]
No products can come close to theirs.
The one feature they did not have, of which I am expecting they will eventually have is..........
speech to speech, OF ANY WORDS OR PHRASE WE CHOOSE. In other words, you cannot as of
yet speak into the unit, in English, "I am writing in this forum" and the unit speaks that
phrase in Russian.
They do have 1000's of pre-programmed phrases where you can speak key words or phrases
and if it has that phrase it will speak it.

I plan to use Pimsleaur and buy the ECTACO unit just before I visit Ukraine/Russia so I can
hopefully catch the latest features or improvements in their products.

I hope this helps

I have tried several products, Rosetta Stone, Transparent Language, TL BYKI and so on. With games and such. All were useful in learning some things but don't do a good job of explaining the grammer. Without the proper grammer you will simply sound silly. The best source I found was finding a local language course. I was able to find a small organization called The Portland Language Exchange where I was able to get some personal training. After this, you will need practice. So you may need to speak it with your lady when you take the time to call her.

_________________
To be happy with someone else, you must first be happy with yourself!

I have used RS a little. It seemed ok, but i did not use it for Russian. Another point to make about it is that if you are in the military it is free to use. Another one that is similar to it and that is free is called livemocha. It also used native speakers to help you write and read, kinda like grading each other thing.

One man's opinion: Rosetta Stone has good ads but it is not an effective system. First time I went to Russia I hired an immigrant to give me lessons 2 hours per week for about 5 months (about $600). I bought a few "learn Russian" books and of course a dictionary. That exposure taught me a lot. I visited a family in Yuzhno Sakhalinsk for 10 days and we got along quite well. Each night I sat in my cot (in an icy cold closet) and wrote a 3-page letter, which would then be a basis for conversation the next day. My grammar skills were zero, but I could make myself understood. This was before we had translation software. Two years later I visited Moscow and Ekaterinberg with no additional effort to improve my Russian. Honestly, I was better at Russian then than I am now with a Russian wife and daughter! Eleven 11 years went by before I joined LoversPlanet. Computers and email changed everything. It was at this point that I bought RS. At first it was fun, but in terms of actually helping me learn more Russian it was disappointing. My wife's mother is using the "learn English" RS at our home right now. She likes the recordings because they help with pronunciation.
PS - My tutor charged $15 per hour (back then) and was wonderful. She also helped with a phone call to the girl I was visiting. I was very impressed with the young Ukrainian ice skater, Oksana Baiul (before she was on alcohol and drugs). I wrote a movie script involving an ice skater and had my Russian translator read the whole screenplay into a cassette. It involved a hijacked trans-Atlantic airplane, a crash landing in Greenland and the use of ice skates to survive (bash a hijacker to death, prop the flight controls in place during a fight with a second hijacker, chop out from the crashed plane, and then tow the injured agent overland back to civilization). We went to an ice skating show in Jacksonville, waited in the autograph line, and handed the tape to Oksana. Her agent wrote that Oksana enjoyed the story but was not interested in going into movie making.

Yes I'm using the program, if you decide to buy it it is cheaper to get level 1,2 &3 and it is very easy and the program teach you step by step plus review later, go for it..