german

A new and very interesting project with Drupal at Munich renewed my interest in learning German, something I've had pending for too long. This time I decided to try harder and finally learn Hermann Hesse's tongue.

I already knew that finding the time and right teacher was not an easy task so I started searching online. I had already tried a few options, including the quite helpful and funny free course from Deutsche Welle, but now I wanted something that could teach me German as fast as possible and I would pay for it.

That's how I found Rosetta Stone, a company offering software used by many many people all over the world, including executives and employees from some very big businesses. The system Rosetta Stone uses is called Dynamic Immersion and works quite well, connecting you with the new language, they have thirty available, from the very first moment.

Using nice pictures, different voices and a series of interactive exercises the student can easily get the basic concepts behind the language. I have almost one week with my Rosetta Stone course and I can say I'm right on track. The project with Drupal went quite well and at some point I could just program and design without even noticing all the text was in German.

I purchased the online version of Rosetta Stone, a little more than US$ 100 for a 3 month subscription, to avoid additional shipping and custom costs, and of course to save time. The only problem I've found so far, as a Linux user, is that the software requires Adobe Shockwave, available only for Windows and Mac OS, but anyway, that's an Adobe issue actually.

Obviously this is not the end of the road for my German classes. I will take other courses in the future, probably Berlitz Online, much more expensive and, obviously, will keep listening to Rammstein and Tokio Hotel as much as possible.

Auf Wiedersehen!