Customer Review(s)
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Rosetta Stone - The Fastest Way to Forget a Language!
Comment: I had four months of Thai in Thailand two years ago and have spoken "Tourist Thai" there for years. With this background I figured the first few lessons on Rosetta Stone would be a great refresher courses, but then I'd get into the good stuff and work on the critical pronunciation skills needed to speak Thai well.
For example `maa' may either be a dog, a horse or have any of several other meanings. The word for tiger and shirt are also "the same". The meaning changes with the infection. Wrong inflection and you wind up collecting your tiger from the drycleaner.
I have wanted Rosetta Stone Thai for years, but at over well over $200.00 it was never practical. Then, I just did it. While this may work for Nike, it did not work for me. What I received was a 200+ dollar flaming yellow box of headaches.
The flaming yellow instruction manual is full of pictures - none of which match the pages I am looking at on screen - except for the title at the top that lets me know I am truly on the correct screen and that life is just cruel. No worries though they have a Help Desk. Of course the it is open M-F when any semi - normal person would be at work. When I finally did get through the man asked about my purchase, then laughed at me and snotted off. I looked around for another $200.00 to have him beaten to a pulp, but alas I am broke.
Ultimately the Hyena behind the Customer Service desk gave me some token advice to make me go away (you know how you can feel it when someone is doing this to you). Of course nothing was fixed. I waited all weekend for Rosetta Stone CS desk to open again and got a helpful, friendly lady who got me set up despite my disks persistent desire to teach me Spanish. Se habla Thai?
Let the learning begin! Well, not really. You see I could barley keep up with the first lesson. Had I not already spoken Thai, I doubt I'd of been able to any lean Thai. Heaven help those starting from scratch. There was no introduction into the unique language issues around the specific language. I don't know how long you may practice inunciating the words casually before they bother to tell you the that if you are not perfect you will be riding a dog up the beach on vacation. Of course you have to get past the wrong screen issue in order ever practice pronunciation - I think. Who knows?
Wore yet, mid way through a first lesson (may be 20 minutes in) with long sentences like "The woman and the young boy are in the boat" I found myself suddenly being asked to match the `sentence' to one of several photos. No. There was no intropduction to the alphabe. No. There was no intro to small words. (I want my Tiger back).
For those unfamiliar with Thai, the letters look like swirled noodle. These long sentences look like a plate of spilled spaghetti. It is ludicrous to start where Rosetta Stone does! So why not skip that section and just feel like a looser, then move on? I tried. Believe me. I studied the manual, not Thai for an evening - that lead me back to all those screens that are not the same in the book as in real life. It is now another Friday. Costumer Service is closed and Hyena Man is off for the weekend. By the way - be prepared to live on hold trying to get thought to him. When I call on Monday I will be sitting on hold with my good old Thai Language school Flash Cards in hand, so technically I am guess learning Thai by owning Rosetta Stone.
I fully believe the dream is dead. The disks I wanted for years are a flaming yellow hole in my wallet. The only reason I have not returned this product is I purchased them just as I was moving and the receipt is A.W.O.L. I have tried for over 4 weeks of discouraging experiences to even get started using my Rosetta Stone Thai and it has been nothing but one negative experience after another. This is time I could have spent reviewing materials I already own - not being discouraged and having my limited time wasted. AdiĆ³s a mis amigos!
Customer Rating: Summary: Experienced only need apply
Comment: This program assumes that you can already read Thai script. There is nothing that teaches you the individual characters and sounds; you are presented, from the gitgo, with whole words and phrases (Thai script does not uses spaces between words). For the first two lessons, this approach is OK, as you associate sounds with pictures. However, the third lesson expects you to associate sounds with written symbols, which cannot be done without a prior study of the characters and some sense of what they represent.
To use this program, you will need a dictionary and some kind of guide to the alphabet to begin reading. This is not exactly an easy task, as many dictionaries either use phonetic transliteration (using Roman characters instead of Thai), or have very small print.
Before buying this program, learn the alphabet, if you can find a good book. Printing out Wikipedia's page on the Thai alphabet may help, although the characters are very small and the differences between many of them are very minute.
I'm extremely disappointed with the overhyped Rosetta Stone approach, and cannot recommend it to anyone, at least not for an Asian language. However, if you already have some background and knowledge of the characters, this may help. Otherwise, you won't get past the first three lessons.
