You hear so often that you can get fluent in 3 months, for example, that people often say they failed in learning a language, but they didn't fail, they managed to learn the most basic things, but to get fluent you have to spend several years, so unless you put in that amount of time you will fail, but not really fail, you just were successful at learning some basic stuff.
I used Pimsleur French, it was EXCELLENT 👌. If you know, you know. Pimsleur in conjunction with several other methodologies and resources over time have really helped me develop a strong base in the language.
In that case once I’ve reached a nice level with my Dreaming Spanish challenge and it’s recommended that I start speaking I might try the Spanish Pimsleur out to get started on speaking :) But that’s probably like a year from now lol.
@@Evildea That’s actually my exact plan with French. I tried Pimsleur a few months back and I came to the conclusion it will be best used after about 1000 more hours of input when I feel ready to start outputting. I completed level 1 and about half of level 2. I feel it is not a good tool to learn the language but to help you start outputting in lieu of real conversation.
17:00 You wanted to know if there's some other Pimsleur-style courses. I'm aware of one for japanese, it's called: Miku Real Japanese. I haven't personally tried it, so I can't speak positively or negatively. I've only seen that they're quite lengthy lessons, it's closer to an hour per lesson. The concept should be more or less the same of Pimsleur, but with a bit more reading as well.
I think the word you are looking for is self-flagellate. I did some Pimslieur for both Spanish and Chinese up to level 3 but didn't finish it because at that time I though it's getting too hard to repeat the sentences. I feel bad about it to this day. But then again, I didn't pay for it because I was a student that generally didn't pay for things.
I did a lot of pimsluer in the late 90s. It was good but slow progression and annoying that they don’t explain grammar points. You get further and faster with the Michael Thomas approach
@ there was a BBC documentary, called The Language Master, about him that’s on YT. Try the French course if you don’t want to spoilt your Spanish experiment with Dreaming Spanish.
Pimsleur starts out with short "touristy" sentences, of course. But when i took a peek ahead at a lesson in level 5, it's still just short "touristy" sentences. It made me depressed and i just can't get back into it
His review is NOT a review, as in "i have used it and here is what my results are". His video was more like a sales spiel why you should use it. A product overview, not a true review.
To be fair to him he did use pimsleur when learning his English - which is clearly stellar (he's a native French speaker). The question is how much of his English would he attribute to Pimsleur? My guess is not that much after the preliminary stages. But as much as this isn't quite a true review in the proper sense, I do think he genuinely values it.
I think the best thing about Pimsleur is the quality of the speakers doing the recording. In most other courses, the speakers feel ... like ... they ... are ... speaking sooo slow, but at least with Pimsleur it feels like they're speaking at a normal speed albeit a bit like a newscaster (i.e. much clearer than real speakers speak).
I've did 3 levels of Pimsleur Japanese and 2 of Spanish and 1 of Chinese. The only reason I stopped on Spanish was that I took 4 years of Spanish in school and it just got too repetitive/easy once enough of the language came back and I gave up on learning Chinese for the time. I'm thoroughly impressed with the method. If I wanted to start learning a language that I had no exposure to, I'd definitely do 2-3 levels of Pimsleur in the first 60-90 days just to grind out those basic patterns/sounds/sentence construction. I just can't imagine a better way to supercharge the early part of learning a language. But I'd also transition away from it as soon as it had served its purpose. The main drawback to me is that it is way, way too formal. Most of the sentences you are grinding are not how real people would say them in real situations. But that's fine because you'll get real world content after a few months and then see how it derived from the formal way of speaking, which is almost better than only learning the colloquial way from the start.
I've never bought a language learning product (since Rosetta stone like 12 years ago), but Mango Languages was free through my library. It was good. Sentences with audio, even a little bit of accent mix (maybe depending on language?). I liked that besides playing the sentence and it color coded the words between languages. You could click specific words to hear that one. Not perfect, but a good first start, I think. The US Military HeadStart program is free and has a ton of languages free. It's even kind of fun, but a noticible chunk is military related. "Where is the bomb?" "Put down your weapons!". But some niche languages and dialects that I guarantee will never make it to other platforms. VN resources were scare enough to make it a good early resource for me.
I’m actually going to try out that US Military HeadStart for Chinese because that’s exactly the types of words I need in gaming haha. Thanks for the suggestion!
Of all the apps and courses I’ve bought, and I’ve bought a lot of them, Pimsleur is the one I regret most. Pimsleur never really breaks out of beginner level. It teaches “hola que tal” at level 3, for example. It repeats “me gusta” as if it’s the only impersonal structure in Spanish and as if it’s some concept so complicated no one can pick it up the 15th time they’ve repeated it. Another frustration is how Pimsleur repeats the same three dated scenarios through all 5 levels. Given how situational language is, it was boring and extremely limited in terms of language scope and vocab. Compared to Rocket Languages where each lesson is a different situation, and is much better priced, I won’t be going back to Pimsleur for any other languages.
Thanks for giving insight into the Spanish course! So in summary it's basically like the Chinese one with you never actually leaving the beginner stages. So why is he saying you'll communicate with natives O.o
@ Yes, your description of the Chinese course is similar to my very frustrating experience with all 5 levels of the Spanish course. Level 5 is largely a repeat of the first 3 levels. There’s little new content in level 5. I did the silly thing of buying the whole course instead of the subscription and with that money I could have bought two or three more modern courses. So if people really must use Pimsleur, I recommend a subscription only. Also if I compare it to Rocket Languages, which is Pimsleur’s like-for-like main competition, I spent the whole of 2024 going through Rocket’s French course and there wasn’t a day I didn’t listen to it. In fact, I arranged my life so that I had at least 30 minutes of Rocket in my ears every day. Having a new situation and topic with each lesson kept me engrossed throughout. That’s not to say Rocket is perfect but it’s the better of the two options hands down. It is not as repetitive as Pimsleur so you have to repeat each lesson more often, which can be a challenge, but it does create a feeling of progress.
For quick production honestly I liked the 'spoonfed Chinese' anki deck a lot. Ready made recognition cards + production cards with great quality native audio. I have some issues with production cards asking you to translate from English to Chinese since there's never one way to one on one translate a sentence but it did the trick of allowing me to say some basic stuff for travel survival when going to China for tourism and establishing at least some connection with the people in a couple months of pretty light study. 'Anki just beats everything' is a very boring conclusion but it's true in my opinion, including for fast production. Being able to do it during a commute though is a huge bonus admittedly
The most interesting thing I got from Pimsleur Japanese is backchaining. When learning or memorizing long phrases, start with the last syllable or word in the phrase, and progressively add words to it until you add the first syllable. It's the same way I used to practice musical pieces -- learning the last bar first. I only tried the first couple of chapters of Pimsleur Japanese. Looking back at it now, a lot of the phrases were a mix of pretty useful and weird/creepy/cringey.
I grew up speaking French, but left my family at 19 to live in Japan. The one time I came home two years later, and I spoke French with a Japanese accent. My mother forced me to speak English because she was so angry. Anyway, that was over 20 years ago. My daughter asked me just the other week what the word for "egg" is in French (I dont know why she needed it.) I had to stop picking up the living room to stare into the wall. My brain came up with egg in Spanish, German, Japanese, Esperanto, Mandarin, but not French. My original/native language! With my sister dead now, the last person I ever spoke to from my family in French, and I couldn't even remember such a basic word! My Japanese is also disappearing, so I started playing an online game this week in Japanese to bring that back. Should I bring French back? I am not sure. I think Mandarin and Japanese and Spanish are the languages I will keep for now. I live in a German town, and my grandparents (father's family from Germany) died two years ago so I don't need that anymore really. I can't see any need for French since I don't speak to that side anymore and don't see us visiting France. 😒 Also, a few years ago I had to have surgery and they had a nurse on staff to speak French to me when I woke up in case I reverted back... I woke up speaking Japanese. My husband told me the next day when I was coherent again. 😂 I did use Pimsluer for Mandarin. That was the first program I used for Mandarin. I loved it in the 90s for first learning Japanese when I got the CDs from the library and dictionary from the library. I learned for close to five years before moving there. I think it helped as a good step into the front door. You have to finish the courses, though, and then move onto bigger stuff.
God damn, mum got angry over an accent lol. The funny thing is I had an operation a few years ago and after I woke up apparently I was doing the times tables. I don't remember it but the nurse was laughing about it later on. I reckon you should bring your French back, even if just to refresh it from time to time.
Did Pimsleur French (1-5), and Italian (to 3 now), and I think it's good as one part of your learning arsenal. I do like the fact that I can use my work commute time to get some extra language practice in on a regular basis. I don't think it works as a stand-alone solution for me though. Sometimes I do have follow up questions on whatever (grammar, additional context ,etc), and the course is on rails, so you can't explore further. Mix it in with other learning methods? Sure, why not.
I did the 5 levels of Pimsleur German audio course years ago and the first 2 levels of Spanish. It's was just a phrase book that has native audio. Yes, they are the same course in each language and the same questions. I wanted to answer the Spanish questions in German and it was a real problem.
Based on my experience with Pimsleur courses (Mandarin, Cantonese, French), their level 1 courses are good to get quite a few basic sentence patterns memorized and automated, but the following levels I could never get through, since progression was far too slow.
Based on these comments, folks don't seem to appreciate just how much and how well Pimsleur delivers what it actually delivers. You're far from fluent, however the level of production you can get is hard to beat.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of these but this is apparently a good podcast for Chinese learners: youtube.com/@dashumandarin?si=d938IR4NX0-U-ecG Also Rita Mandarin as well
Did up to like level two for Dutch just in the car rather than listening to music. Could say some very basic stuff, but really fun coz no English speakers speak Dutch and Dutch people are everywhere.
I did Pimsleur Finnish. Unfortunately there was only 1 level, if they had more I would certainly have done them as well. If, or when, I decide to embark on learning a new language, I’ll be using Pimsleur for as many levels/lessons as they offer. Of all the language learning apps I’ve used, Pimsleur seemed to be the most well and professionally put together. Also the 30-35 minute lessons are great- not too much not too little.
I finished both courses of Pimsluer Greek... I just wish it had 5 courses like Spanish does. It didn't make me fluent, but it ingrained a lot of keyphrases in my brain. 3 more courses would have done me wonders.
As to forgetting. I went back to the original text that I used to learn Lithuanian 30 years ago. There are a few words that I memorised at the time that I have no memory of, like for ice pick, which is like sandwich in Chinese. But in general, I do agree that relearning a second or third time is easier. But by that time, I start looking for a better mnemonic.
I finished the only Cantonese level for English speakers Pimsleur had. It does seem somewhat useful for pronunciation as it has you mimick tones a lot (I think mine did get better using it), but man, the amount of vocabulary and structures is so limited and that like the entire course is basically you learning to flirt badly in Hong Kong... Oof. I mainly used it as good material for Cantonese beginners is just frustratingly limited and often low quality.
Unless you can get free access to Pimsleur, as a total beginner, in 2025, I don't recommend this method. You end up learning a tiny bit of words. You're way better of doing Anki or even just using Chat GPT to create some content then using an AI voice or asking native speaker to record the text. Plus, this way, you get used to a long term method that can take you to fluency.
Pimsluer probably won’t get you above a low A2 level. I’m at 1100 dreaming Spanish hours and I’m maybe B1. I plan on starting pimsleur German in 2026 when I’m don’t with Spanish but no way am I gonna be done with learning German when I’m finished with the 5 courses.
For Pimsleur, I did level 1 in Russian and a bit of level 2, and I finished level 1 of Indonesian. The actual vocab was different between the language in terms of street names, etc. But the actual phrases were THE SAME. Each lesson in Russian has the same topic in Indonesian, just replacing the words. You are spot. ON. It's so ineffective. I was super disappointed in Pimsleur and glad I only bought a 1 month sub both times I tried it. Way too few vocab for the time investment, the course either went too slowly or too quickly for me and I had to re listen to the same lesson multiple times which is frustrating, it's a copy paste method that doesn't work. And it's massively overpriced. No back and forth dynamic with anyone if you have questions, and you need to use external material for almost everything to even get beyond the newbie level to a basic A1. Level 1 barely gets you to A1, by the way, and that's over 20 hours of listening and 1 month spent, if you do a lesson a day and review when needed (which takes minimum 30 minutes)
Thanks for that insight. So they customised names and places but kept lesson structure the same. Which explains why they probably focus on somethings a lot that they don't need to in Chinese because it's just following some template.
I disagree. I would put it into three categories: moved on, like I did with Russian because I did not see anything work striving for (I would also say the pronunciation instruction was weak, which was another reason I moved on); failed where I made an effort to learn the language but I was not able to achieve a sustainable level, mainly because I did not understand the rule about grinding and the instructors made it seem like grinding was not necessary, and utterly failed (not a category I usually distinguish) where the method did not allow for success, like using Tuttle to learn Japanese script without learning the language itself. The last is a danger for people who are reading based instead of oral based. In short, an ill-advised decision, a learner failure, and a method/material failure. Maybe you can select better names.
I did 5 levels of Japanese and Spanish, completed on my daily work commute. I used the monthly basic subscription and it took me about 6 months for each one so about $120 each. (Wanting to stop paying was a great motivation to finish.) For both languages I would say I was still solidly in the beginner category afterward, but I had a lot of useful phrases under my belt, I got practice speaking out loud, and from there went on to having an online tutor already having somewhat of a base and intuition for the language. I really see it as a solid jumping off point because I’m still continuing both languages (on about year 4 of Japanese and still in my first year of Spanish). I wouldn’t use it as the only learning method but I felt like it was still very worthwhile for the time and money investment. For what it’s worth I could already pronounce the languages; when I tried a Korean lesson for fun I couldn’t pronounce it so if I ever wanted to do that again I would go learn the writing system and pronunciation first. I don’t think the Spanish version got me any farther in comparison to the Japanese version after 5 levels.
@@agfhdl239 I am happy to have the attention, but Evildea is very good at reading all the comments. And an independent comment will be read by more viewers (although likely not by me). I agree with your deduction that pricing was set with motivation in mind. It looks better to have a high success rate than free accessibility. Since I couldn't comment on this directly under the video, but I can to your comment, I will do so. Grammar and the 200-300 most basic words of a language do not need to be memorised as they will stick in your memory due to the frequency of their encounter. All you need is a list to read every morning before you start your lessons. A physical list will work better than Anki because you can quickly refer back to it when you recognise one of those words in a text but need the translation. Thus, to that degree, Pimsleur has extended the learning process instead of speeding it up. However, my shortcut works far better in writing than orally. And this is not in conflict with what Evildea has stated. I agree with reading an appropriate level grammar initially and as needed thereafter. By grammar on a list, I mean things like all those pesky pronouns and prepositions with their cases. I would include suffixes and prefixes on that list. With those last three items, I would use a specific example. 'už tavęs' (behind you) is a better way to remember that už with that meaning takes the genitive than 'už + genitive' because tavęs can be unique while a number of prepositions take the genitive. (Lithuanian, if you had not already guessed) So, if Pimsleur gives you such reference phrases in lieu of pure grammar, then they did you a service.
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You hear so often that you can get fluent in 3 months, for example, that people often say they failed in learning a language, but they didn't fail, they managed to learn the most basic things, but to get fluent you have to spend several years, so unless you put in that amount of time you will fail, but not really fail, you just were successful at learning some basic stuff.
Yeap
I used Pimsleur French, it was EXCELLENT 👌. If you know, you know. Pimsleur in conjunction with several other methodologies and resources over time have really helped me develop a strong base in the language.
Totally agreed.
In that case once I’ve reached a nice level with my Dreaming Spanish challenge and it’s recommended that I start speaking I might try the Spanish Pimsleur out to get started on speaking :) But that’s probably like a year from now lol.
@@Evildea That’s actually my exact plan with French. I tried Pimsleur a few months back and I came to the conclusion it will be best used after about 1000 more hours of input when I feel ready to start outputting. I completed level 1 and about half of level 2. I feel it is not a good tool to learn the language but to help you start outputting in lieu of real conversation.
You're spot on in regards to not really forgetting anything.
17:00 You wanted to know if there's some other Pimsleur-style courses. I'm aware of one for japanese, it's called: Miku Real Japanese. I haven't personally tried it, so I can't speak positively or negatively. I've only seen that they're quite lengthy lessons, it's closer to an hour per lesson. The concept should be more or less the same of Pimsleur, but with a bit more reading as well.
If I ever get back to Japanese will check it out.
I think the word you are looking for is self-flagellate.
I did some Pimslieur for both Spanish and Chinese up to level 3 but didn't finish it because at that time I though it's getting too hard to repeat the sentences. I feel bad about it to this day. But then again, I didn't pay for it because I was a student that generally didn't pay for things.
That is definitely the word I was seeking haha. Yeah on the first run it does get hard after 3 quite quickly.
I did a lot of pimsluer in the late 90s. It was good but slow progression and annoying that they don’t explain grammar points. You get further and faster with the Michael Thomas approach
I gotta check out this Michael Thomas method. It's been mentioned a few times now.
@ there was a BBC documentary, called The Language Master, about him that’s on YT. Try the French course if you don’t want to spoilt your Spanish experiment with Dreaming Spanish.
Pimsleur starts out with short "touristy" sentences, of course. But when i took a peek ahead at a lesson in level 5, it's still just short "touristy" sentences. It made me depressed and i just can't get back into it
Yes, it never truly gets beyond that.
Man, I love your reviews. Can watch these all day. Unfortunately, I'm not a grinder due to a bad hip.
Thanks a lot!
His review is NOT a review, as in "i have used it and here is what my results are". His video was more like a sales spiel why you should use it. A product overview, not a true review.
Yes, it quickly deteriorated into that. Basically a funnel for the affiliate program :/
To be fair to him he did use pimsleur when learning his English - which is clearly stellar (he's a native French speaker). The question is how much of his English would he attribute to Pimsleur? My guess is not that much after the preliminary stages. But as much as this isn't quite a true review in the proper sense, I do think he genuinely values it.
I think the best thing about Pimsleur is the quality of the speakers doing the recording. In most other courses, the speakers feel ... like ... they ... are ... speaking sooo slow, but at least with Pimsleur it feels like they're speaking at a normal speed albeit a bit like a newscaster (i.e. much clearer than real speakers speak).
Yeah, that's 100% true, the recordings are really crisp.
I've did 3 levels of Pimsleur Japanese and 2 of Spanish and 1 of Chinese. The only reason I stopped on Spanish was that I took 4 years of Spanish in school and it just got too repetitive/easy once enough of the language came back and I gave up on learning Chinese for the time.
I'm thoroughly impressed with the method. If I wanted to start learning a language that I had no exposure to, I'd definitely do 2-3 levels of Pimsleur in the first 60-90 days just to grind out those basic patterns/sounds/sentence construction. I just can't imagine a better way to supercharge the early part of learning a language. But I'd also transition away from it as soon as it had served its purpose.
The main drawback to me is that it is way, way too formal. Most of the sentences you are grinding are not how real people would say them in real situations. But that's fine because you'll get real world content after a few months and then see how it derived from the formal way of speaking, which is almost better than only learning the colloquial way from the start.
Yes, this is a problem with the Chinese one. Also it follows the formal Beijing accent which like no one speaks.
I've never bought a language learning product (since Rosetta stone like 12 years ago), but Mango Languages was free through my library. It was good. Sentences with audio, even a little bit of accent mix (maybe depending on language?). I liked that besides playing the sentence and it color coded the words between languages. You could click specific words to hear that one. Not perfect, but a good first start, I think.
The US Military HeadStart program is free and has a ton of languages free. It's even kind of fun, but a noticible chunk is military related. "Where is the bomb?" "Put down your weapons!". But some niche languages and dialects that I guarantee will never make it to other platforms. VN resources were scare enough to make it a good early resource for me.
I’m actually going to try out that US Military HeadStart for Chinese because that’s exactly the types of words I need in gaming haha. Thanks for the suggestion!
Of all the apps and courses I’ve bought, and I’ve bought a lot of them, Pimsleur is the one I regret most. Pimsleur never really breaks out of beginner level. It teaches “hola que tal” at level 3, for example. It repeats “me gusta” as if it’s the only impersonal structure in Spanish and as if it’s some concept so complicated no one can pick it up the 15th time they’ve repeated it.
Another frustration is how Pimsleur repeats the same three dated scenarios through all 5 levels. Given how situational language is, it was boring and extremely limited in terms of language scope and vocab. Compared to Rocket Languages where each lesson is a different situation, and is much better priced, I won’t be going back to Pimsleur for any other languages.
Thanks for giving insight into the Spanish course! So in summary it's basically like the Chinese one with you never actually leaving the beginner stages. So why is he saying you'll communicate with natives O.o
@ Yes, your description of the Chinese course is similar to my very frustrating experience with all 5 levels of the Spanish course. Level 5 is largely a repeat of the first 3 levels. There’s little new content in level 5. I did the silly thing of buying the whole course instead of the subscription and with that money I could have bought two or three more modern courses. So if people really must use Pimsleur, I recommend a subscription only.
Also if I compare it to Rocket Languages, which is Pimsleur’s like-for-like main competition, I spent the whole of 2024 going through Rocket’s French course and there wasn’t a day I didn’t listen to it. In fact, I arranged my life so that I had at least 30 minutes of Rocket in my ears every day. Having a new situation and topic with each lesson kept me engrossed throughout. That’s not to say Rocket is perfect but it’s the better of the two options hands down. It is not as repetitive as Pimsleur so you have to repeat each lesson more often, which can be a challenge, but it does create a feeling of progress.
For quick production honestly I liked the 'spoonfed Chinese' anki deck a lot. Ready made recognition cards + production cards with great quality native audio. I have some issues with production cards asking you to translate from English to Chinese since there's never one way to one on one translate a sentence but it did the trick of allowing me to say some basic stuff for travel survival when going to China for tourism and establishing at least some connection with the people in a couple months of pretty light study. 'Anki just beats everything' is a very boring conclusion but it's true in my opinion, including for fast production.
Being able to do it during a commute though is a huge bonus admittedly
Yeah Anki is god tier.
The most interesting thing I got from Pimsleur Japanese is backchaining. When learning or memorizing long phrases, start with the last syllable or word in the phrase, and progressively add words to it until you add the first syllable. It's the same way I used to practice musical pieces -- learning the last bar first.
I only tried the first couple of chapters of Pimsleur Japanese. Looking back at it now, a lot of the phrases were a mix of pretty useful and weird/creepy/cringey.
I grew up speaking French, but left my family at 19 to live in Japan. The one time I came home two years later, and I spoke French with a Japanese accent. My mother forced me to speak English because she was so angry. Anyway, that was over 20 years ago. My daughter asked me just the other week what the word for "egg" is in French (I dont know why she needed it.) I had to stop picking up the living room to stare into the wall. My brain came up with egg in Spanish, German, Japanese, Esperanto, Mandarin, but not French. My original/native language! With my sister dead now, the last person I ever spoke to from my family in French, and I couldn't even remember such a basic word! My Japanese is also disappearing, so I started playing an online game this week in Japanese to bring that back. Should I bring French back? I am not sure. I think Mandarin and Japanese and Spanish are the languages I will keep for now. I live in a German town, and my grandparents (father's family from Germany) died two years ago so I don't need that anymore really. I can't see any need for French since I don't speak to that side anymore and don't see us visiting France. 😒 Also, a few years ago I had to have surgery and they had a nurse on staff to speak French to me when I woke up in case I reverted back... I woke up speaking Japanese. My husband told me the next day when I was coherent again. 😂
I did use Pimsluer for Mandarin. That was the first program I used for Mandarin. I loved it in the 90s for first learning Japanese when I got the CDs from the library and dictionary from the library. I learned for close to five years before moving there. I think it helped as a good step into the front door. You have to finish the courses, though, and then move onto bigger stuff.
God damn, mum got angry over an accent lol. The funny thing is I had an operation a few years ago and after I woke up apparently I was doing the times tables. I don't remember it but the nurse was laughing about it later on. I reckon you should bring your French back, even if just to refresh it from time to time.
Self-flatulate is a word but not the one you want unless it's a fart joke. The word you want is self-flaggelate.
I always mix up those two words lol
Did Pimsleur French (1-5), and Italian (to 3 now), and I think it's good as one part of your learning arsenal. I do like the fact that I can use my work commute time to get some extra language practice in on a regular basis. I don't think it works as a stand-alone solution for me though. Sometimes I do have follow up questions on whatever (grammar, additional context ,etc), and the course is on rails, so you can't explore further.
Mix it in with other learning methods? Sure, why not.
Yeap, that's exactly how I see it.
I did the 5 levels of Pimsleur German audio course years ago and the first 2 levels of Spanish. It's was just a phrase book that has native audio. Yes, they are the same course in each language and the same questions. I wanted to answer the Spanish questions in German and it was a real problem.
Wait until someone in Spanish in real life asks you that exact same question and you start responding in German due to automation haha
Based on my experience with Pimsleur courses (Mandarin, Cantonese, French), their level 1 courses are good to get quite a few basic sentence patterns memorized and automated, but the following levels I could never get through, since progression was far too slow.
That seems to be a common theme in the comments.
Based on these comments, folks don't seem to appreciate just how much and how well Pimsleur delivers what it actually delivers. You're far from fluent, however the level of production you can get is hard to beat.
Which course did you do and how high did you get? Would love your input.
Michel Thomas is an audio only course. Paul Noble followers Thomas’ methodology but not as many courses.
I’m assuming I’m probably beyond whatever level Michael Thomas teaches but I’ll probably give it a go just so I know what it’s like :)
I don’t know if you’ve heard of these but this is apparently a good podcast for Chinese learners: youtube.com/@dashumandarin?si=d938IR4NX0-U-ecG
Also Rita Mandarin as well
I follow both of them :)
I’m using native’s voice as my inner monologue and imitating him by subvocalization. What do u think of that method?
Who or what is native’s voice? Or do you mean you’re listening to a native and imitating them?
Did up to like level two for Dutch just in the car rather than listening to music. Could say some very basic stuff, but really fun coz no English speakers speak Dutch and Dutch people are everywhere.
Ohhh did you continue with Dutch after that?
I did Pimsleur Finnish. Unfortunately there was only 1 level, if they had more I would certainly have done them as well.
If, or when, I decide to embark on learning a new language, I’ll be using Pimsleur for as many levels/lessons as they offer.
Of all the language learning apps I’ve used, Pimsleur seemed to be the most well and professionally put together. Also the 30-35 minute lessons are great- not too much not too little.
It is definitely very professionally done. I'd use it again but in conjunction with other tools and only when I'm walking or driving.
@@Evildea Yeah. I only ever used it while driving.
I finished both courses of Pimsluer Greek... I just wish it had 5 courses like Spanish does. It didn't make me fluent, but it ingrained a lot of keyphrases in my brain. 3 more courses would have done me wonders.
Interesting. I thought all courses had 5 but it appears a few such as Greek don't
@@Evildea Yeah :( Rip ελληνικά
As to forgetting. I went back to the original text that I used to learn Lithuanian 30 years ago. There are a few words that I memorised at the time that I have no memory of, like for ice pick, which is like sandwich in Chinese. But in general, I do agree that relearning a second or third time is easier. But by that time, I start looking for a better mnemonic.
Pimsleur is my favorite beginner tool.
Asimil ... Listen to this, read it while listening, speak it.
@@MisterGames Ah yes, I forgot about Asimil!
I finished the only Cantonese level for English speakers Pimsleur had. It does seem somewhat useful for pronunciation as it has you mimick tones a lot (I think mine did get better using it), but man, the amount of vocabulary and structures is so limited and that like the entire course is basically you learning to flirt badly in Hong Kong... Oof.
I mainly used it as good material for Cantonese beginners is just frustratingly limited and often low quality.
What else you gonna do in Hong Kong? :P
Unless you can get free access to Pimsleur, as a total beginner, in 2025, I don't recommend this method.
You end up learning a tiny bit of words. You're way better of doing Anki or even just using Chat GPT to create some content then using an AI voice or asking native speaker to record the text. Plus, this way, you get used to a long term method that can take you to fluency.
Someone said you can get it at the library so that might be a way
Look for pimsleur at a library!!!
I totally forgot libraries were even a thing. I need to find my local one.
Pimsluer probably won’t get you above a low A2 level. I’m at 1100 dreaming Spanish hours and I’m maybe B1. I plan on starting pimsleur German in 2026 when I’m don’t with Spanish but no way am I gonna be done with learning German when I’m finished with the 5 courses.
Sounds about right
For Pimsleur, I did level 1 in Russian and a bit of level 2, and I finished level 1 of Indonesian. The actual vocab was different between the language in terms of street names, etc. But the actual phrases were THE SAME. Each lesson in Russian has the same topic in Indonesian, just replacing the words. You are spot. ON. It's so ineffective. I was super disappointed in Pimsleur and glad I only bought a 1 month sub both times I tried it.
Way too few vocab for the time investment, the course either went too slowly or too quickly for me and I had to re listen to the same lesson multiple times which is frustrating, it's a copy paste method that doesn't work. And it's massively overpriced. No back and forth dynamic with anyone if you have questions, and you need to use external material for almost everything to even get beyond the newbie level to a basic A1. Level 1 barely gets you to A1, by the way, and that's over 20 hours of listening and 1 month spent, if you do a lesson a day and review when needed (which takes minimum 30 minutes)
Thanks for that insight. So they customised names and places but kept lesson structure the same. Which explains why they probably focus on somethings a lot that they don't need to in Chinese because it's just following some template.
11:23 Sounds like you need to revisit your English SRS. xo
Probably haha
I disagree. I would put it into three categories: moved on, like I did with Russian because I did not see anything work striving for (I would also say the pronunciation instruction was weak, which was another reason I moved on); failed where I made an effort to learn the language but I was not able to achieve a sustainable level, mainly because I did not understand the rule about grinding and the instructors made it seem like grinding was not necessary, and utterly failed (not a category I usually distinguish) where the method did not allow for success, like using Tuttle to learn Japanese script without learning the language itself. The last is a danger for people who are reading based instead of oral based.
In short, an ill-advised decision, a learner failure, and a method/material failure. Maybe you can select better names.
Interesting break down. I'm not very creative with naming things so I'll leave that up to someone more creative lol
I did 5 levels of Japanese and Spanish, completed on my daily work commute. I used the monthly basic subscription and it took me about 6 months for each one so about $120 each. (Wanting to stop paying was a great motivation to finish.) For both languages I would say I was still solidly in the beginner category afterward, but I had a lot of useful phrases under my belt, I got practice speaking out loud, and from there went on to having an online tutor already having somewhat of a base and intuition for the language.
I really see it as a solid jumping off point because I’m still continuing both languages (on about year 4 of Japanese and still in my first year of Spanish). I wouldn’t use it as the only learning method but I felt like it was still very worthwhile for the time and money investment. For what it’s worth I could already pronounce the languages; when I tried a Korean lesson for fun I couldn’t pronounce it so if I ever wanted to do that again I would go learn the writing system and pronunciation first. I don’t think the Spanish version got me any farther in comparison to the Japanese version after 5 levels.
@@agfhdl239 I am happy to have the attention, but Evildea is very good at reading all the comments. And an independent comment will be read by more viewers (although likely not by me).
I agree with your deduction that pricing was set with motivation in mind. It looks better to have a high success rate than free accessibility.
Since I couldn't comment on this directly under the video, but I can to your comment, I will do so. Grammar and the 200-300 most basic words of a language do not need to be memorised as they will stick in your memory due to the frequency of their encounter. All you need is a list to read every morning before you start your lessons. A physical list will work better than Anki because you can quickly refer back to it when you recognise one of those words in a text but need the translation. Thus, to that degree, Pimsleur has extended the learning process instead of speeding it up. However, my shortcut works far better in writing than orally. And this is not in conflict with what Evildea has stated. I agree with reading an appropriate level grammar initially and as needed thereafter. By grammar on a list, I mean things like all those pesky pronouns and prepositions with their cases. I would include suffixes and prefixes on that list. With those last three items, I would use a specific example. 'už tavęs' (behind you) is a better way to remember that už with that meaning takes the genitive than 'už + genitive' because tavęs can be unique while a number of prepositions take the genitive. (Lithuanian, if you had not already guessed) So, if Pimsleur gives you such reference phrases in lieu of pure grammar, then they did you a service.