Week 3 – ChatGPT is Kinda’ Cool.
Listen, I know AI is hit and miss, however I was genuinely curious to see if it could help me practice my Italian. Honestly, it does a little bit.
Using AI, more specifically ChatGPT, for conversational italian has been helpful to me in a funny way. Cross-checking with resources such as WordReference has lead me to discover and understand more about how Italian should be spoken.
ChatGPT is actually concerningly smart, and polite when talking to it in any language. It’s language is always formal, but when asked to be more informal and conversational, it usually delivers in a grammatically correct way. I took some screenshots of the progression of our conversation today and I can say that it definitely has personality despite being AI.
We started strong with just one word in italian, however Chat had absolutely no issue full diving into it. I’ll roughly translate our sentences and highlight them below for everyone’s convenience.
C: Of course, I can help you with Italian! What do you need? Me: can you give me a phrase? one i can learn. C: Certainly! Here is a simple phrase: “Life is an adventure, dare to live it.”
Cringe, I know. So I had to ask it for a different phrase, one I could use daily and not sound like a poet.
Me: thank you, but is there a phrase i can use every day? a common phrase in italy. C: Certainly! Here is a common phrase that you can use every day in Italy. “Thank you very much!” Me: bravo! thank you very much. i already know that. C: Very good, here is another common phrase you could find useful. “Hello, how are you?”
I apologized to it for being sassy, because it seemed like it was getting fed up with my minimal attitude towards knowing the phrases it was trying to teach me. So we kept on pushing.
Me: is there another phrase that is a little longer? what about slang? C: Certainly, here is a bit of a longer phrase you can use in conversation. “What are you doing tonight? Do you feel like going out for a pizza or doing something together?” It is a casual and amicable way that you can invite someone to spend time together. Me: bravo, thank you. that’s perfect! C: You’re welcome! I’m happy that the phrase is to your liking. If you need any other assistance with Italian or anything else, don’t hesitate to ask. Good luck on your linguistic studies!
Touching back to what I said at the beginning of this post, the actual sentence didn’t help me with my Italian, but when ChatGPT was just thanking me was when it was the most helpful. I learned a lot of new words like “gradimento” (liking) and “esitare” ((to) hesitate).
Overall, this was kind of a super cool experience. I found myself chatting with it more afterwards about grammar and other stuff along those lines. I’ll include a screenshot of what it said, but to be honest, I ain’t translating all of that. Try to translate it at your own discretion.
Now this is not explicitly teaching me anything, it’s just kind of telling me what I should be going to grammatically improve my Italian. That being said, it is giving me new words to work with in conversation. Overall, ChatGPT is a 7/10 experience. Fun, but not a good study outlet.
