Originally Posted by
backprop
it helps you pick up nouns and adjectives and basic verbs and you are able to speak the pre-packaged phrases with some speed and finesse.
But where it falls short IMO is understanding the grammar - things like verb tenses and cases and anything but the most basic, formal version of communication. It would have been difficult for me to actually communicate with a native speaker - particularly if I needed to interpret the response - with the first few Rosetta stone levels.
This. I had the German - English version a few years ago and found it wasn't great. The teaching technique has you associate words and phrases with pictures, but doesn't explain the nuances of grammar, tenses, articles, gender, etc.
Example: having had a few years of French in school I was familiar with masculine and feminine articles and nouns. But it took me a while to figure out that German also has a neutral gender. It wasn't explained anywhere, so it was quite confusing until I figured it out.