Study New Languages

You may not yet have heard of Lingo Basics. It’s a product being sold for $49.97 and promises many things. Does it deliver?

As I look at my shelves I have MANY language products that I’ve collected over the years. Most of these are books, dictionaries, references, but there are others, novels, dvds, audio. I’ve probably spent a couple hundred dollars in all easily. So, in some ways you could say I’m an easy sell, but these days I do try and not throw money after each and every product out there.

So, Lingo Basics (I’m not sure if it’s two words or one Lingobasics). What is it? Is Lingobasics a scam?

Their pitch page says “Learn and Master Spanish, French, German, Italian or Japanese in 30 days FLAT – Even if You can’t speak a word of it right now ” Which is quite a claim.

It is essentially a guide (text only) to the languages they advertise, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese.

You don’t have to go through each, they suggest you pick the one that you most want to learn and when you’ve accomplished that then you can study another if you like. This appeals to me because I am interested in learning several languages and have had some initial study in about 4 languages so far.

For each language they give a guide to Pronunciation, Basic phrases, Singular and plural nouns, which include people, place, and things, Pronouns & verbs, Numbers, Question words, Directions, Adjectives, Days of the week, Months of the year, Time, Weather, Colors, Foods. Which does cover the ground of the essentials of getting a structured start to learning a language.

Now, even though they’ve definitely covered the basics how well will you do? If you can consider this course as your introductory level view of a language I think this could be a good launching point for further study. My biggest disappointment is that unlike the Rocket Languages products, they don’t provide audio in the chosen languages. However they seem to cover enough basics that you could then branch out to listening at a later stage.

Right now they’re pushing a free bonus – “How to Learn Any Language- In this 109-page e-book, you?ll learn and master languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Hindi, Greek, Persian, Russian, Swahili, Vietnamese, Zulu, English, and every other language in between!” I think this is probably quite worth while because the most important part of language learning is having a strategy on how to continue your learning and mastery of the language.

So, will you be fluent in your chosen language? I really doubt it, it takes more time for true fluency. However, I suspect after 30 days of using this course you should have enough of the basics covered to be comfortable with simple conversations in the chosen language and I would imagine you would be able to get around as a tourist with the chosen language. Let’s face it though, there will be MORE to learn if you really want to master a language. (I sometimes run across words in my native language that I’m not familiar with.)

So, if you go into this course knowing that there is no audio bundled with it and that this will be a good structured START to learning the languages included then you shouldn’t be disappointed. Ultimately it looks as though LingoBasics does a thorough coverage of the basics of their chosen languages.

I think LingoBasics might also be a good choice for someone that’s not interested in in-depth study, but for casual learners. One other bonus is that there is a 60-Day Money Back Satisfaction Guarantee in case you are disappointed with the product.

If you’re looking for a more detailed study course that includes audio for the languages above, you might consider Rocket Languages Italian, Japanese, Spanish, French, German. It is more expensive but they do provide a wealth of materials on each language. So, I highly recommend Rocket Languages for the serious study of one of these languages.