Learn Swedish Now! 9.0

I purchased this "course" a couple of years ago when I was beginning to learn Swedish.
I am now fluent. This "course" is effluent.
It consists solely of a CD with 4 short swedish passages in it and little else.
A mere 5 minutes on the web would garner more material than is in this CD.
I purchased the CD because of the "reviews" on amazon.
I can only surmise that these reviewers have a vested interest in giving their grossly misleading reviews. (employees of the producer of this useless course)
I would not even buy this course second hand for 1 euro.

The Macintosh version included in the box is an older version (8.1), lagging behind the advertised Windows version (9.0). While I'm thrilled it runs as native "Carbonized" application on Mac OS X, I've run into a few minor glitches: 1) The application help uses Apple's Help Viewer, but the Swedish grammar reference uses QuickHelp, which crashes often and won't print. 2) The cool Speech Correctness feature works with my PowerBook G4's built-in microphone, but doesn't work correctly with my higher quality iSight microphone. 3) The user interface looks horribly outdated when running in Mac OS X's Aqua interface.

That said, this is the best language software I've seen on a computer. Yes, it includes canned quizzes and games, vocabulary and grammar tutorials, just as you'd expect from educational computer software. However, its primary teaching mode is non-structured and passive, as an interactive digital textbook. It took me a while to understand this. You can read the titles in any order and have it speak any word or phrase. Using your computer's microphone, you can record your voice and compare it against the native speaker's. But it can also analyze your voice based on pitch, frictive, and vowel sounds (to varying degrees of success, but enough to make it useful). So, the usage is completely open-ended (what they call the "Successful Immersion Approach"). In a way, this is better than human instruction. I sat there trying to nail the pronunciation of a phrase, repeating it over and over, and I thought: a human would never be so patient! The reward comes not from flashing "congratulations, you passed this quiz!" at your face, but from within yourself as you experience the joy of entering a foreign language with software "training wheels."

The technical problems on the Mac version, while frustrating, are not severe enough to prevent usability.

You have to have self-discipline to get much out of this software. If you're willing to be your own teacher, it provides a deep and individualized medium for learning a new language. However - if you're in a hurry, I recommend the excellent Pimsleur language series (audio CDs) instead. And if you're looking for comprehensive traditional instruction, I'd recommended a book and CD series called "På svenska!", ISBN 91-7434-429-3 (not available on Amazon.com).

Swedish Now is an incredible piece of software. This is a really good way to learn a language and this software takes advantage of everything technology has to offer in regards to language learning. It uses video, has extremely detailed audio features (you can listen to every Swedish word in the program), and uses voice analysis technology to help correct your pronunciation. When you get bored learning or feel you need to practice the Swedish you know before moving on there are some really fun and intresting games to help you practice. My impressions of Swedish Now is that it is well worth the buy and it will help you learn to speak Swedish.

I bought this product to try and learn Swedish on my own and it really is everything they say it is and more. The amount of actual Swedish language in the program you can learn is so large that it would take a great deal of time to learn it all. There are tons of conversation practices to learn from and even Interactive Video Conversations which through video, audio, and a microphone you can simulate a conversation with native speakers. To practice vocabulary and other aspects of Swedish language there are many games provided in the software. This software is really versatile because it is good for all skill levels and purposes (work, travel, education, ect.). I give my utmost recomendation to use this software for learning Swedish.

I love this product. I tried some other products but I haven't found anything better than this. The games and coversation practices are really fun and there is just so much to learn with this. If you want to learn Swedish(or any other language) try this. Overall, this product is really good and I would advise anyone who doubts this to try it.