This article may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. For full information, please see the disclaimer here.
You’ll find a lot of good use in studying Romanian.
Spoken by 34 million people in the world, Romanian is most practical when visiting the countries of Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Ukraine, the United States, and the like. Furthermore, it’s a Category I language according to the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (FSI), so it’s relatively easy for English speakers to pick up!
If you’re itching to learn this language, you may be searching for it on Rosetta Stone, a prestigious program in the language learning sphere. Unfortunately, we have bad news: Rosetta Stone doesn’t offer Romanian. There are, however, plenty of great Rosetta Stone alternatives to learn Romanian.
You’ll find a whole list of Romanian learning resources at the bottom but before getting to them, let’s find out more about Rosetta Stone.
What is Rosetta Stone?
If you’re an aspiring language learner, Rosetta Stone is one of the best places to start! This platform is equipped with bite-sized courses and playful features to keep all of your studies fun and interactive.
Whether you’re studying for school, work, or travel, Rosetta Stone’s Dynamic Immersion method will best prepare you for that through its intensive and flexible tutorials! By using your target language in your vocabulary, grammar, and speech lessons, you’ll get to study in the context of the real world.
In fact, you can customize a unique lesson Plan to suit your current schedule, proficiency level, and goals. Pair this with their TruAccent speech recognition technology and you’re practically set for learning!
With that, it’s no wonder why Rosetta Stone is a well-known and highly acclaimed app and website for language students. However, since it has no course for Romanian yet (and Romanian isn’t available on Babbel too), you’d have to try your luck elsewhere.
To make your search easier, we’ve compiled some of the best Rosetta Stone alternatives right here:
The best Rosetta Stone alternatives
Rosetta Stone Romanian might not be in development, but you have alternatives to consult! From audio-based lessons to elaborate courses, these top Romanian learning apps have got you covered:
1. Mondly
The Mondly app is a surefire way to acquire a new language quickly! With short, multi-level courses on Romanian vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, it’s just the right resource for learners new and old.
Among their many hallmarks, I’d like to highlight their unique Hands-Free mode, which aims to make your studies more flexible. Using state-of-the-art voice recognition technology, it functions as a learning assistant that’ll take you through all Mondly features—Daily Lessons included—in a snap!
With instant feedback, intuitive pacing, and customized content, studying Romanian on the go has never been more fun!
Get the latest Mondly offers here.
Key features:
- Bite-sized content for beginners, intermediates, and advanced-level students
- Special Hands-Free mode for mobile learning
- Includes a fun competitive leaderboard with statistics
2. Pimsleur
For audiophiles, Pimsleur is your best bet for learning Romanian. The app is largely composed of daily 30-minute audio tutorials which are based on real-life conversations.
That said, the Pimsleur Method is one of the most reliable approaches to speaking a new language. Using well-timed recorded intervals, your lessons repeat and reinforce core vocabulary, so that you’ll come to recognize these in day-to-day scenarios!
So, if you want to practice listening and speaking in Romanian, then check Pimsleur out for free!
Key features:
- Daily, 30-minute core audio lessons
- Focused on developing your conversation skills
- Based on the scientifically-backed Pimsleur Method
3. Ling app
Ling app‘s gamified method is designed to help you become fluent quickly through a variety of mini-games and quizzes that make learning more fun and interactive than traditional school books. As you learn basic conversation skills through challenges and games, the app also provides grammar tips to help you build your confidence in speaking.
You can also start practicing from your first lesson by choosing one of the smart chatbots, one of the app’s best features. With this chatbot, you can grow your conversational skills.
It helps that Ling is user-friendly and easy to navigate, making it an excellent choice for anyone who wants to learn Romanian in a non-intimidating way.
Key features:
- Interactive Romanian lessons
- Mini-games, quizzes, and fun challenges
- Chatbot for conversational practice
Other great resources to learn Romanian
The three apps above aren’t your only options. Here are alternative resources like books, websites, and YouTube channels to learn Romanian.
italki: Find Romanian language tutors on italki! Upon selecting an instructor, you can schedule classes regularly using the italki Virtual Classroom and/or Skype.
Clozemaster: Test your skills on Clozemaster, an engaging language app and website. Intermediate and advanced students can level up their learning through Cloze Tests, competitive games, supplementary media files, and more!
Complete Romanian Beginner to Intermediate Course: This book is broken down into units based on themes, with a focus on communication. You will learn to introduce yourself, use the phone, talk about work, and more. The grammar is presented in simple building blocks, and you will learn the vocabulary you need for a solid foundation.
Learn Romanian: Following the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule for learning, this book focuses on the core words and sentence structures that you need to know to start speaking Romanian. It includes the 2,000 most important Romanian words and phrases in order of frequency of use. It’s recommended to spend 15 to 20 minutes each day on this book.
Cudoo: Even if you have zero background in Romanian, you’ll soon develop your skills with Cudoo’s easy-to-follow Romanian courses. Available in three levels and a Business course, Cudoo Romanian features video lessons that you can access anytime and on any device. And you earn a certificate as soon as you finish a course!
RomanianPod101: RomanianPod101 brings the best of podcasting and Romanian studies into one great app! Feel free to listen to its audio, slow down the tutorials, or even get line-by-line transcriptions.
Simple Romanian: This neat, accessible website contains 74 great lessons that teach you the basics of Romanian. Includes high-quality audio and video files for good measure.
Learn Romanian with Nico: Learn Romanian with Nico is a lively YouTube channel that teaches basic words and phrases, verbs, everyday dialogues, and the like. Interestingly, she also has a website for additional content.
Forvo: Forvo is an online pronunciation dictionary that is available for the Romanian language. If you’re having trouble saying certain words or phrases, just look them up over here and play its audio for reference.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, there’s no telling when Romanian will be on Rosetta Stone. For as great of a platform it is, there hasn’t been an announcement to this day.
However, that doesn’t mean you’re entirely out of luck. These three apps—partnered with supplementary resources—make great alternatives to Rosetta Stone, as they’re filled with interactive and practical tutorials on the language.
Try them out today, and see how far you can go!
How about Duolingo and learnro.com?
In the first section of the big platforms Duolingo is definitely missing. With it’s gaming style it has attracted many students.
In the other categories of the more independent resources learnro.com is missing. Learnro has real life scenes in the form of movies that show you a real conversation. Indirectly it is teaching the Romanian culture together with the language. I believe learnro.com is the only one doing that.
I would be curious to hear your views on the two missing candidates above.
My review:
1) Mondly I like – simple intuitive
2) Pimsleur – I’ve used the method 20 years ago listening to the tapes, I liked it a lot at that time, I’m happy the brand is still alive. I haven’t tried it though
3) Memrise is ok
4) italki. I used verbalplanet in the past. I’ve heard italki is better. Haven’t tried it though
5) Clozemaster – never used it, I’ll give it a try
6) Five short stories – it’s a book. In 2022 learning a language from a book it’s a bit outdated
7) same as above 6)
8) romanianpod101 – I do not know why I do not really like it. It seems so superficial… I might be wrong though. I went to the main page, I need to subscribe to be able to hear learn even two words…
9) SimpleRomanian – a lot of lessons and a lot of slang. No exercises though
10) Nico’s lessons have been there for a long time. It’s better than simpleromanian as you have a visual support, and better than a book, but you cannot learn a language from youtube.
11) duolingo is the obivous site that should have been on this list. It’s the most popular. The Romanian tree is ok, not the best trees among the other languages. Has many features, even though lately they are focused on premium segment with only 5 mistakes and then you need to pay
12) learnro.com – a bit outdated design, but great content. Has thousands of exercises. It applies the pimsleur method for teaching you a longer sentence by breaking it down into smaller parts and teaching you each one of them one by one. Has many exercises and real-life scenes thus teaching you as well the Romanian culture. Has a dedicated section for pronunciation.
In the end it’s good to have a choice – 20 years ago, there was only Pimsleur audio cassettes