You might recall that Michael Phelps did a stint as the spokesman for Rosetta Stone. Did you also know that Rosetta Stone and Phelps managed to uncover something about Chinese that has eluded linguists, scholars, and even the Chinese themselves for millennia?
The highlight starts at 0:53:
Interviewer: And, Michael, I understand you used [Rosetta Stone] to learn a little Mandarin to prepare yourself in Beijing. How did it go?
Phelps: Uh, it's a very tough language.
That's getting dangerously close to saying, "I didn't really learn anything so please don't ask me to say anything in Chinese." (But, then again, as Rosetta Stone is an advertiser on Fox, I suppose he didn't really need to worry about getting grilled by the interviewer.)
Phelps continues:
Phelps: Um, you know, uh, um, foreign languages have always been very tough for me to learn, but, you know, I figured I might as well, um, I'm gonna give it a shot and, uh, try it and, uh, learned a few of the simple terms and, and the masculine and feminine term, feminine terms, so…
And to think that for years everyone's been running around thinking that Chinese didn't have any grammatical genders.
Oh, right. It doesn't.
Now go to the video and watch Rosetta Stone's CEO Tom Adams' face when Phelps drops the gender thing. I'm not completely sure, but I get the feeling based on the way his expression changed that he realized right then and there what was wrong with what had just come out of his spokesman's mouth.
So how did Michael Phelps come to learn about Chinese's non-existant grammatical genders?
Read more...Off the top of my head, I can think of a few possibilities.
Rosetta Stone is so messed up that it's trying to teach grammatical gender in a language that has no grammatical gender. If Rosetta Stone is still merely translating the existing content from one language to another, rather than customizing the content for each language (as they've been criticized for in the past), that could very well be the issue.
Phelps used but did not actually learn from his use of Rosetta Stone's products.
Phelps did not actually use Rosetta Stone's products.
Phelps needed too much "extra help" to get through the Rosetta Stone software.
My money is on something like the following. Rosetta Stone strikes an endorsement agreement with Phelps. In the agreement, Phelps makes some kind of vague promise to use the software. Phelps tries the software while being filmed, and maybe even uses it a little bit on his own. Language learning isn't really much of a priority for Phelps in the lead-up to the Olympics, so he doesn't really use Rosetta Stone much, and the few times he does he finds that he's just not that into it. End result: he learns pretty much no Chinese but takes home a nice paycheck from Rosetta Stone. Then, when he's put on the spot by the report, Phelps—genuinely wanting to do good for his sponsor—tries to think of something good to say. His high school Spanish memories rear their ugly head, and you get grammatical genders in China.
He seems to have fared a bit better in other, more scripted promotional pieces:
While mildly humorous in a cornball sort of way, notice you don't actually hear Phelps speaking any Chinese.
You've gotta go to this one to hear him actually speak:
My Chinese-speaking daughter, who was sitting next to me as I watched the above video, said, "What's that guy saying? I know what the computer says but not what that guy says."
That doesn't seem to stop Rosetta Stone's software from telling him he's saying it right. Indeed, I've heard of native Japanese speakers being unable to get the software to recognize their Japanese, but when the American store clerk used his American store clerk accent on the Japanese, the software got it. Could it be that making people feel good about using their software is a better business strategy than making them comprehensible to native speakers?
The fact that Phelps was best understood by Rosetta Stone's software is probably why he didn't use a lick of Chinese when Mazda made him apologize to the Chinese people for the bong-smoking incident.
Not even a measly nǐ hǎo, even though a little effort in Chinese would have probably gone over pretty well.
I suppose we can't draw any firm conclusions about Rosetta Stone from this little case study, but things do seem to point in one direction.
The idea has great potential for language learning. However, before it can reach that potential, they're going to need to make a few changes.
And priority number one is getting rid of all the naked dudes.
Read more...Yes, there seems to be an abundance of dudes exposing themselves in various stages of undress. This article in the Hartford Advocate gives you a good idea of just how many there are. In short, it's definitely NSFW (and not safe for children, for that matter) and it's clearly not for the light of heart.
As you avoid the pervs, you'll also probably manage to sneak a good laugh or two in. One lady had a note posted in front of her camera that said "Your mother is watching". When I saw that (thinking in particular of all those pervs), I laughed. She removed the note and she was indeed a very maternal looking figure—a very typical "my friend's mom" type. She waved and moved on to the next stranger. Another guy was just sitting there with a big, green alien head on. He kind of cocked his head and stared, then he waved and moved on.
So there's definitely some amusement value to the site, but that's not what gets it a post on this blog. The thing that gets it on here is its potential as a language-learning tool.
I tried it out for maybe 2 or 3 hours in total, and in that time I managed to chat in Chinese, French, German, and Russian (although, as I don't speak Russian, that was limited to my bastardized interpretation of the Russian version of "Pleased to me you" in Latin letters and responding to the question "Kto vi?", which if I recall correctly means "Where are you?"). I also came across a Dutch guy, so had I any Dutch skills that would be on the list as well.
The award for the most diligent use of the website for language-learning purposes definitely goes to the Chinese. Just about every Chinese person I came across on there was looking to practice English. That of course shows the potential behind the idea; being able to get in touch quickly with a random language partner with no fuss would be a great tool.
There aren't really any other sites that do this. Livemocha, iTalki, LingQ, etc., all require you to contact the specific person you want to speak to; there's no "chat with random English speaker" feature. After using ChatRoulette, the idea definitely fell into the "Why didn't someone already think of this?" bucket.
However, as you've probably already gathered, ChatRoulette isn't anywhere near being a "no fuss" tool, but very little would actually need to be done to make the model effective for language learning. First, you'd of course need to toss out all the pervs, etc. That sort of thing doesn't seem to be an issue at all on Livemocha or other online language learning sites, so it shouldn't be a big deal to do that.
The second thing is that you'd need to be able to filter your chat partners. At a minimum, you should be able to filter by target language so you can get someone who speaks the right language for you, but being able to filter by age, interests, etc., could also be useful for finding someone interesting to talk to.
I don't have much hope that ChatRoulette itself will become a website I can recommend for language learning any time soon, but I very much look forward to language-learning websites implementing their version of the idea soon.
This is one time when I'm happy to recycle a quote from a press release:
Transparent Language Inc. announced today the release of free versions of their Haitian Creole language software based on the British Red Cross Emergency phrase list. The language learning company has added the 62 common medical questions and statements from the British Red Cross to its Haitian Creole Byki software. In the hope that these software programs will enable thousands of people to better mobilize and respond to the emergency, Transparent Language has made them all available for Windows, Mac, iPhone, and Web Browser, all at no charge.
Rico Suave suggests language learning aids you in finding a future husband or wife by simply "increasing the size of your selection pool."
I don't think we can deny Mr. Suave's point. Indeed, given that I found my own wife on one of my language-learning jaunts, it probably wouldn't be inappropriate for me to consider myself a beneficiary of this "increased pool".
However, I wonder whether or not this is the real Mr. Suave, or just an impersonator.
The New York Times last week ran an article by Eric Taub entitled "The Web Way to Learn a Language". For the most part, the article is an uncontroversial list of some of the better known language-learning resources on the web, followed by a grab bag of a few lesser-known, language-specific resources plus a few iPhone apps.
That the article is an incomplete list of the numerous resources available on the internet is probably the nature of the medium, but it also to some extent reveals Eric's prejudices about language learning: that some kind of structured "class" is needed, along the lines of those found in the offerings of Rosetta Stone, TellMeMore, Livemocha (see my review of it here), Babbel, and BBC Language. Some things that are not really part of a course fall into his grab bag at the end, but he completely misses out on great resources like iTalki, Lang-8, or LingQ, which respectively can be used, among other things, to let language learners freely tackle whatever content they like in speaking, writing, and reading and listening.
However, the article is shockingly misleading in how it characterizes the results of one language learner's experience.
The young woman … was born in Iran and spoke only Farsi until her arrival [in the U.S.] two years ago. What classes, we wondered, had she attended to learn the language so well?
There's that assumption that a "class" is needed, plain as day.
"I didn't," she said. "I used RosettaStone."
And that's where the article leaves it. And what are you left thinking after that? Naturally you end up thinking that Rosetta Stone is the only thing you need to sound just like a native speaker. But let's rewind and repeat for a second…
…spoke only Farsi until her arrival [in the U.S.] two years ago.
Uh… say again? She's been living in a place where she's getting tons of exposure to her target language for TWO YEARS?
For those of you who are wondering, living in the place where your target language is spoken will generally do wonders for your language abilities. Let's assume she speaks Farsi at home. I would still wager that she's been going to a U.S. school, has native-speaker friends, watches U.S. television, reads U.S. websites, has an English-language Facebook account, etc. To slavishly suggest what the marketers are hoping would be suggested—glory be to the software!—without checking to see what other exposure she might have been getting to her target language is practically negligent.
Indeed, the sole fact that she's been living in the U.S. for two years could be more than enough to explain her native-sounding English. A friend of mine from Belarus moved to the U.S. when she was 15. I met her when she was 18, by which time she was completely indistinguishable from a native-English speaker. After spending about two years in the U.S., my wife began getting asked if she was a native-English speaker. After just a year in Japan, even I was able to briefly fool people on the phone into thinking I was a native-Japanese speaker. And none of us had used any software, while all of us had spent has spent significant time in places where our target language was spoken.
If the article's young woman had just arrived in the airport from Iran speaking native English and said the only exposure she had to English was Rosetta Stone, then I would be very impressed indeed. But to uncritically suggest that exposure to English via Rosetta Stone's software somehow played a more prominent role in her language learning than other avenues of exposure—especially for someone who in all likelihood was getting a lot of exposure to her target language—is doing readers a disservice.
Reason 1: Livemocha offers hundreds of hours of free courses in over 30 languages.
Reason 2: Livemocha lessons include revision of speaking and writing exercises by native speakers.
Reason 3: Livemocha has a community of over 4 million members to connect, socialize and practice with.
Here's what I think Kirsten (but not Livemocha) glossed over: price! Livemocha lets you do lots of stuff for free—most notably, in my opinion, getting in touch with lots of people in Livemocha's language-learning community (see my full review of Livemocha here)—whereas Rosetta Stone lets you do very little for free, and charges you out the wazoo for whatever they do let you do. When Livemocha does charge you, their prices are much more reasonable.
And we all know that this blog loves a little bit of snark, so I can't help but appreciate these gems from Livemocha's post:
Rosetta Stone gives you CD-ROMs. Remember those? From the 1980s?
…
If you pay Rosetta Stone $999 (yes, that’s one dollar short of 1,000), you can get into one of those clunky group tutoring sessions. Ahem.
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