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Some background - my girlfriend was born and raised in Zagreb, Croatia. I'm trying to learn the language well enough so that when we travel there I'm not entirely dependant upon her. There are very few courses in Croatian available, so I took a chance with Langocity's course.
I purchased the Langocity course early this year (2010). I was immediately disappointed to find that the course is nothing more than a U.S. Government Foreign Services course dated 1965!
When I showed my girlfriend the course she laughed at it. Then, after she looked at it further she told me NOT to use it. Why? Because the course is a Serbo-Croatian course - NOT a dedicated Croatian language course (as advertised by Langocity on their website).
Why is this important? Because in the early 1990's Yugoslavia underwent a civil war (splitting into Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina) and since the war Serbians are not well regarded in Croatia.
Many of the words in this course are in fact Serbian; therefore using them in Croatia is frowned upon and you may find yourself being ignored, asked to leave, or worse, possibly victimized in some way!
DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS COURSE!
I bought the software online. There was no confirmation email or back-up CD as promised. I called the number. Live customer service was not available. A recorded message asked me to email the complaint. I did. two weeks passed with no response. I called the sales line and got someone live right away but she couldn't help me. I had to send an email she said. I called my credit card company and disputed the charge. They credited my account. Langocity has a deceptively professional-looking Web site, but they're either a fraud or horribly inept. Hold on to your money.
The PDFs look like poor quality scans of poorly printed hardcopies, and thus many of the accent marks over the romanized cantonese words are indistinguishable from one another.
This makes it difficult for the student who is just learning to figure out what should be pronounced how.
Additionally, the source text book which was scanned for this distribution seems to be old as well as very rudimentary in its nature. It looks outdated and rough in terms of presentation of material.
The audio files have a lot of background noise and the sound quality is not good. This does not help the student distinguish the subtle tone differences.
The claim that this course will help you read and write Cantonese Chinese is misleading. There is very little presence of actual Chinese characters in the text and no real emphasis on teaching them.
There is no refund or exchange policy once you have purchased, so buyer beware.
All in all, this appears to be a waste of money!
This program is not what I thought I was ordering. I will uninstall the program. Please issue a credit to my account. I really wish that I could use the program but it is too advanced for me. Please notify me when the credit is issued Thanks
Did you ever find an alternative? I actually want to learn Serbian, and it seems impossible to find something good.