Jaunted

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Tongue-Tied

Want to master a new language before you travel? Unless you're five, you're screwed. That big adult brain of yours is already sclerotic when it comes to learning new tongues. It's hopeless, or at least that's Slate's assessment of Rosetta Stone's new software for learning foreign languages.

Instead of the classic textbook "My name is" conversations, pictures flash across the screen, and the user must match them to foreign words. The idea is to skip the mental translation that slows down beginning speakers. It's great, until you need to string useful sentences together with verbs.

Jaunted supports the "horizontal method" of linguistics; bed yourself a foreigner and you'll have no problems, at least until you accidentally tell a waiter "I love you" instead of "I'll have the goulash".  

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