Rosetta Stone iPad app for language learners

Rosetta Stone launched its iPad app today, which is basically just a lighter version of its core “course” software. The app itself is nothing extraordinary, but the way it teaches languages is pretty awesome. Foreign language has never been my best subject, but I had a blast playing with this app because it feels way more like a puzzle than a language lesson. The worst part is the price: you have to be a Rosetta Stone customer to access the app.


If you take learning languages seriously, I would gladly argue that there is no better language-learning app out there. But if you’re looking for something light and fun, the price tag on this app will certainly outweigh your desire for it.

As far as learning languages goes, Rosetta Stone seems to have the process nailed. Instead of learning through simple flash-card style memorization or by-the-book translation, the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Companion app forces you to problem-solve while you learn. For instance, instead of reading a sentence in Spanish, hearing it, and then repeating (parroting), Rosetta Stone gives you a couple of different pictures of whatever phrase or word the lesson focuses on, and turns language learning into a puzzle.

So now let's get to what this app does have. Every language's curriculum is broken into five levels. Each level has four units and each unit can take anywhere from six to ten hours to complete. Right from the first slide, you are required to parrot what the digital teacher says, with no context to go on aside from the images displayed. And in case you're wondering, there's a speech precision setting, so you decide whether the program's a hard-ass or a softy.

All in all, if you're looking to learn a language, Rosetta Stone's got a pretty good track record. And the developers of this app believe the tablet is the perfect device for their software because touch is what makes the experience more personal and easier to remember. Rosetta Stone may be the dominant brand in computer-aided language learning, but needless to say, it does not come cheap. You can download the iPad app for free, but it doesn't do anything without a corresponding Rosetta Stone account. You'll have to purchase the actual Rosetta Stone software, which'll cost you a pretty penny. Sharing is sexy