Rosetta Stone is fairly massive in scope - it teaches over 20 different languages, is available on desktop and mobile, has different curriculums designed for learners with different motivations, and includes extra features like videos, reading practice, and live lessons. While the company has added quite a few extra bells and whistles, including translations for some languages, the core material has remained remarkably consistent over the years. Instead, learners are exposed to words and phrases in their target language with accompanying pictures and audio. Unlike its eponym, the program is famous for teaching languages without the use of translations or explanations. Unfortunately, the name seems to be all that the artefact and the language-learning resource have in common. It’s a pretty amazing piece of history, and I think certainly worth naming a language-learning tool after. Through these translations, it was possible to decipher the previously unreadable hieroglyphs.

The stone contained fragments of the same text in three different scripts: Hieroglyphic Egyptian, Demotic Egyptian, and Ancient Greek. To be more specific: it was the key to helping experts learn to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. If your answer was something along the lines of, “Um, language stuff?” Yes! Language stuff. What do you know about the actual Rosetta Stone - the one discovered in northern Egypt in 1799?

The company has been hugely successful since its early start in the computer-assisted learning scene in 1992, and part of that is thanks to stellar advertising efforts.īut, let’s switch gears for a second. Chances are, this isn’t the first time you’re hearing about Rosetta Stone for learning languages.

Rosetta stone spanish latin american