Transparent Language and other computer language programs

There is a lot of discussion here about various audio courses (Pimsleur et al), but I haven't seen much about computer courses (CD-ROMs). Has anyone had any experience with them?

The one that I'm most familiar with is the series from Transparent Language (Learn French Now!, Learn Japanese Now!, etc.). It's the only one I've seen that is close to the "comprehensible input" idea used by antimoon and others.

Each course has four "titles"--survival phrases (with dialogues), fundamentals (also with dialogues), and two topics, usually with video. You get the audio, video (when available), transcript, translation, word meaning, phrase meaning, and grammar. You can listen continuosly, or by segment, or continuosly by word, or pick a word. You can click on a word or sentence as many times as you want. There are other activities, but I tend to like the "input" parts. Some of the courses have additional videos you can buy. Unlike Pimsleur, you have to motivate yourself, but you can get a huge amount of the language if you push yourself.

By the way, these are the folks who make the 101 Languages of the World course, which gives you a little taste of what the full course can do. (I have the old 51 Languages, which I like better--fewer languages, but for a few major ones, you get close to half of a regular course.)

I like Transparent 101 languages and their mini courses/introductions to the languages. If you travel to other countries frequently and don't want to be a boor, their courses will give you key words and phrases plus pronunciation practice. Also it is great fun for polyglots and probably older children. I have two Transparent courses and they were an incredible value. I bought one for less than five dollars (new) at a bookstore.

Some languages have more words than others, but it is a great value.
You'll be able to eat, take a taxi, get information, go to the bank, and relay information in case of an emergency in some languages and get directions. Now you can go to India or Greece and not be completely clueless! They have Danish (not the easiest language to find on the cheap) in the 101 languages. I think there is even some info on Scottish Gaelic (ran into someone looking for this recently), and languages of Spain. There are some New World languages as well.

Regrettably, there are never any interesting North American Native languages on these types of courses. Lakota, Cherokee, Apache, Navajo,and Pima, would all be interesting to investigate, but I don't think there are any of these languages with that program.

There is another course, 102 Languages by Instant Immersion, which is quite different. You get about 85 words for each language. There is Navajo with this course. This is more for kids. It's fun, but you won't even have tourist language. You will get to hear how many languages sound and test your memory with games. It's not expensive though.


Rosetta Stone is very, very expensive for the level you'll reach after "shelling out" hundreds of dollars. One of their employees was honest and indicated that level three would bring one to or place one at the intermediate level. If they chopped down that price, I'd like to try one of their more uncommon languages. It's hard to get excited about the same old big languages when there are so many other materials to study them.

I have tried some of their sample languages. They make it pretty easy, but whoa! try it with a non-IE language. You will HAVE to think to sort out what you're hearing.

I know of a lady who practically swears by the Spanish version of this. Spanish, French and Italian are their most popular versions with an occasional request for German and Chinese.