It was a schadenfreude moment when I ran across this blog post about how the marketers at Rosetta Stone language-learning software are bad at translating, the other day – because I’d decided I didn’t like Rosetta way back shortly after I’d acquired it. I’d decided I’d wasted my $300 and had forgotten it, basically.
Apparently, the marketers were putting German or Dutch or Swedish noun forms in place of the English verb form for “snow” in a multilingual play-on-words based on the song line “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.” Which, of course, indicates a rather poor apprehension of the grammatical issues at play. But then there was a comment on the blog post that made me reconsider, and decide that the criticism of the Rosetta marketers was irrelevant: the commenter (who went by Breffni) wrote:
I don’t get the idea that mixing English with German, Swedish and Dutch is an acceptable conceit, but using nouns for verbs is an incongruity too far. ‘Let it Schnee’ is wrong, all wrong – but ‘Let it schneien’, that would be fine? It’s bilingual word-play, from start to finish.
And so, my schadenfreude moment quickly faded. Because… here’s the thing: I totally agree with this point – if you’re going to play with mixing languages, what does it matter whether you’re getting the grammar right – it’s like complaining that the pieces don’t go together when playing with Legos and Lincoln Logs at the same time (which I did as a child, and I’m sure there are more contemporary equivalents). The point is, you’re mixing things up, so just go with it. That’s what makes it “playing with language,” and not, say, Chomsky’s “government and binding” theory or abstract grammar. In fact, it’s the over-emphasis on grammar vis-a-vis communicative efficacy that I dislike about Rosetta, and thus internet grammar peevers are criticizing from the wrong end, as far as I’m concerned.
So regardless, that doesn’t change the fact that I deeply resent having wasted $300 on Rosetta. But I’m not blaming the marketers. I’m blaming the designers’ poor grasp of foreign-language pedagogy and methodology. The only thing the marketers did wrong was successfully convince me to shell out $300.
Caveat emptor.
