Rosetta Stone Hindi Review

The essence and integral part of your personality is communication irrespective of your culture or country. As a native Hindi speaker with average proficiency in the language, reviewing Rosetta Stone Hindi gave me the opportunity to assess the basics of Hindi using different techniques and from another perspective.

I began by visiting the publisher website. There you will see that the site describes Rosetta Stone Hindi as engaging, interactive and systematic. It also says that it helps learners start speaking accurately and promptly and that it resorts to repetition for improving retention. Consequently, I browse the site for any information about the Hindi language. I noticed this was somehow lacking and only found some preliminary information. If the site had more information about the language it would definitely be more interesting and encouraging. There are many unique qualities about the Hindi language that could be useful for a learner to be informed about such as the history, other languages that have influenced it and information about the script. This would make an interesting introduction for the language. The site gives basic tips for learning Hindi that are essential to begin learning the language.

It could be of great help if they have added information about genders, pronouns, singular and plural and how verbs change according to the number or gender of the subject. This aspect of teaching the language is nowhere to be found in the site.

The Rosetta Stone Hindi program introduces the student to nouns, qualifiers and verbs. The difficulty level of words and sentence formation increases from level 1 to 3. The student is taught how to form sentences, ask questions, issue warnings, make requests, express wishes and make choices and comparisons. The lessons are interactive sessions that encourage the student to be attentive.

Overall, my experience with Rosetta Stone's Hindi course was disappointing. If you compare the online technique with the conventional method, the online method has some advantage. The online method involved the eyes, ears and mind at the same time. It gives the learner the opportunity to work on alphabet and number recognition. This is done by selecting an icon, ‘alphabet’ or ‘number’ option, on the top right corner of the sheets. However, this facility could be better exploited if there was provision for illustrations to go along with the text beginning with a particular alphabet and if the software allowed the student to practice speaking the alphabet.

The course in Rosetta Stone Hindi could be planned better as there is not much cultural specificity in them and some exercises are not placed under the correct groupings. Also the words used in the software are too formal instead of the words that are used as part of daily speech. The accent in the program is very close to what you would hear from this region, but when it comes to voice recognition, the package needs to improve a lot because it is unable to differentiate between some sounds.

Comprehensive language course

Good interactive emphasis on the learning process

Slow vocabulary learning

Sometimes unclear quizzes

Sometimes not teaching useful phrases

Expensive ($499.00 USD for all 3 levels)

Rosetta Stone Hindi gives some basic knowledge about Hindi and could be good enough for a traveler to find his way. As for students or professionals who would need to stay for extended periods, they definitely would need more information and proficiency than what the program supplies. Anyone who desires to achieve fluency in Hindi will need more than just the online sessions. The interface makes language learning interesting and easy, thoroughly engrossing the student. It would be better if some introduction about the language was made available, which could help students grasp the lessons better. I would recommend the program as a complimentary tool for someone just starting to learn Hindi, but not as a standalone. If you're looking for a better Hindi learning program at a lower price, try out Rocket Hindi.