Rosetta Stone – Indonesian, Version 2: Review

This is a review of Version 2 of Rosetta Stone’s Indonesian program. In brief: this program provides neither practical nor comprehensive instruction. It teaches a few things quite well, but it does not teach how to converse with Indonesians or how to read or write ‘authentic’ texts. At best, it can supplement more-fully realized materials.

Version 2 is the highest version currently available for Indonesian; however, Rosetta Stone offers a Version 3 for most of its languages. So I recommend against applying my comments to any Version 3 product.

Review: Quinn’s ‘Learner’s Dictionary of Today’s Indonesian’

George Quinn’s The Learner’s Dictionary of Today’s Indonesian is a two-way dictionary (Indonesian-English and vice versa). This reference is excellent in many ways, but its lack of comprehensiveness makes it a poor choice as one’s only dictionary. Its main weakness is what I have just signaled: although it does cover a large number of words, it fails to include many basic ones that, for example, the Tuttle Concise Indonesian Dictionary has.

Despite this drawback, I do recommend this dictionary to anyone trying to gain fluency in Indonesian. This is because it contains so much useful information about so many words.