Hello everyone,
Welcome back to our Advent Calendar, day number 16. Wohoo!
And today, I actually kind of want to talk with you a bit about a topic that many of you are on the fence about but that most of you will not be able to avoid in one way or the other:
AI in German Learning
I think at this point all of you have at least heard about these new technologies and have at least a cursory idea what they do.
What I want to do today is give a little overview of HOW they’re influencing German learning, whether you want it or not, and then, I’d like to do a quick poll to get an idea how you as a community are using the new tools and how you feel about them.
And then, I’d of course love to talk more in the comments.
My thoughts here ended up quite lengthy, so if you don’t care about this or you don’t have time and instead want to jump right to the poll and the discussion in the comments, you can do that here :)
AI in Language Learning – Your Opinions
But yeah… let me give you my thoughts first.
I think there are basically 3 ways these new AIs are used in the context of language learning.
I’ll go over them one by one and tell you what I think are the pros and cons.
Oh, and I’ll use ChatGPT in the headlines, for some of that sweet sweet search engine interest, but of course I mean any of the models. Except the one by Facebook. That one zucks.
ChatGPT as a tutor
The first way AI is used in the context of German learning is using the chat directly. Some people just use it to ask questions about German or have the bot explain something in different ways. Other people have the bot draw up quizzes for them or write little stories.
You can of course also use it to correct your writing, and most importantly, you can use to just have a simple conversation.
And I think overall, this is really great, especially for the many people who do NOT live in a German speaking country and don’t really have the option to talk to native speakers. Talking to ChatGPT, and have it reply in voice mode is a great safe space where you can practice without the fear of being judged or the other person becoming impatient and annoyed with you and that’s absolutely amazing.
Where I’m a bit more skeptical is when it comes to using the tool for explaining the language and answering your questions about it. It does fine on the basic, broad strokes of grammar that have been widely discussed, but the more specific something gets, the more apparent it becomes that the thing really doesn’t actually know what it’s putting out.
It regularly fails with explaining differences between similar words or listing all the meanings of a verb or some more delicate questions about word order. I’d put the hit to miss ratio at 70/30 for those. So 3 times out of 10, the answer you’ll get is soft or hard BS and I don’t think that’s good enough.
That goes for informational queries as a whole of course. As long as you’re aware that ChatGPT does NOT in fact have ANY Sprachgefühl it could abstract into a proper reply about nuance, it’s a great tool to practice reading, writing, speaking and listening with for very little (or no) money.
ChatGPT based Apps and Features
Very soon after ChatGPT came out, so did the first “next gen” AI German learning apps like Langotalk or Langua or Speak.com or whatever else there is.
What these are is basically a convenient wrapper around the AI that also offers some basic flashcard features. In these apps, you can usually pick from a range of characters, chat with them, and have the app explain your mistakes and explain vocabulary to you.
The main difference to just using ChatGPT itself is that you have secondary explanations and corrections as an overlay, instead of in the chat, and you can save words and do some vocabulary training.
I think this improves the experience enough to be valuable and I would probably use one of these apps if I wanted to learn a language and I’m between A2 and B2 with the need for some casual practice.
BUT… since they’re using AI to explain vocabulary and AI to explain mistakes, you’ll have to live with the typical amount of misinformation flying at you. A lot depends on how the developers prompted the thing and how aware they are of the language they’re offering.
Sadly, many of them try to scale fast to many languages, and the result is that the AI, when asked to give some info about a verb, will say what gender and case the verb is in, just because it uses a generic prompt like
“Explain the word with all important information like gender, cases or conjugation”.
If the developers understand what they’re teaching and what’s important and what isn’t, the quality can be much better, but usually, it’s a very small team and there’s no time invested into this because… that would be boring, old school and most users won’t know the difference until they’ve already payed and then they’ll just have to “live with it”.
And this brings me to the last type of AI use.
ChatGPT to create learning material
The amount of websites that “explain” the common aspects of German grammar has exploded in the last two years, because now you can just have an AI write a boiler plate article, you optimize your page for SEO and then you sell your course or your eBook, which of course was also created by AI.
Most people teaching German online do it for one reason – making money. Which is fine, we all work for money.But back in the day, when you had to create the material yourself, you needed to have some level of interest in the topic to actually be able to do it.
Now, you don’t need to care about the topic at all.
There are loads of German learning articles written by AI, YouTube channels completely filled with AI generated voices reading AI generated texts and there are even AI created German learning podcasts.
This side of things I completely hate.
The other aspect of this is that AI allows people to realize app ideas that they would not have been able to pull off alone before. There are regularly posts on Reddit of some German learner who created an app or a website for German learning, and some of them are genuinely great ideas. I’ll introduce a couple later on in the calendar or next year.
BUT… the problem starts when the person creating the project uses AI not only for the coding part but also to fill it with content. And not even because it’s soulless. I don’t find the average textbook to be very inspiring either.
The problem is that the content will be full of mistakes. Words are translated wrong, the AI doesn’t recognize a prefix verb or it gives usage or grammar info that is just wrong. Even if there’s just 15% nonsense in there, I already find that to be a HUGE problem.
I am aware of how fast an actual developer can code up a flashcard app now. You can literally do it in a day.
So now, the learner will be faced with a wall of options, texts, videos and apps, and most of them are half-assed, because the thing that actually makes a difference, the didactic care and factual accuracy, needs a human to do it and that costs money and time. Which no one wants to invest. Or maybe can’t. Because in the meantime, 10 other apps are out that are newerererer.
Conclusion
Overall, I think ChatGPT and other AIs are a great plus for German learners. The option to chat and practice listening and writing in a safe space is something that just wasn’t available for many many learners before.
I also think it’s positive in the sense that it allows people who have an idea for a new tool or app to realize their vision. That’ll broaden the market and put some pressure on the big players to move their lazy asses and actually INNOVATE beyond calling something Duolingo Super and offering the same lame stuff everyone else has. Where is the 3D open world language learning game?? Where is it??
The only thing I really dislike is that the wash of AI generated learning content, be it videos, articles, eBooks or courses will slowly wean learners to a lower quality of material. Us right now, we’re mostly able to tell if something is AI generated. But more and more people will be fooled and end up learning something that’s the equivalent of highly processed junk food. Yes, it makes you full. But it doesn’t make you fulfilled. And if you don’t know anything different, you’ll think it’s normal.
But enough of me. Let’s hear from you now.
Opinion Poll – AI for Learning
Like I said, I have prepared a few little questions to get an idea of what you all think and what you use or don’t use.
So if you have a minute more after that huge wall of text just now, please participate :)
I’m really curious to see the results :).
So yeah, that’s it for the post for today, but like I said, I’d really love to hear from you in the comments. I know that you are from all over the world, all walks of life and all biological ages. My gut feeling is that the majority of people is a bit apprehensive about AI in language learning, but maybe I’m wrong.
So yeah, let’s talk more below, have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow!
Every day YT recommends me 2-5 new german learning channels with completely Ai generated cover, voice and probably content. Every time I have to click “Do not recommend me this channel” and hope that YT stops recommending them. Reassuring thing is, these videos have very low views (< 1000), so humanity is not lost yet.
The only AI tool I use, other than google translate, is your gpt sentence corrector, which works okay.
“Every day YT recommends me 2-5 new German learning channels with completely Ai generated cover”
Oh damn, that’s crazy and kind of sad. I have seen at least one that was doing really well in terms of numbers and it was a “Podcast” but you could tell it’s fully AI.
As with everything, it really depends . I have Langotalk, but I never use it. I hate it now. What I do use every day, however is deep L because it’s on my phone and when I take a walk, if I hear a word in a podcast, typically a verb, I can immediately get it. So I really use it like a dictionary. However, when I make my own flashcards, I say them into deep L, and this is something I always do. I always speak my answers or the question. When I flip the translation from one language to the other, I’m looking for parity, meaning that I want to make sure that when it translates back into the other language, that the meaning stays the same. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Then it’s a matter for me to check which is “right“ or not. Sometimes it replaces the German verb that I used with another one. Many times, it leads me down a different path and that can be very interesting. Ich habe es getan. Tun>Machen>Erledigen>Schaffen>usw
that said, I think you really need to understand when your answer is correct enough, and when it isn’t. That is always a frustrating thing, especially with the German language. Of course that’s why I’m here, and why I use many other resources with real humans
” I have Langotalk, but I never use it. I hate it now.”
Wow, that’s a clear statement :). Why did you end up hating it?
Also interesting what you say about how you do flashcards and use DeepL. This back-translating is an absolute must once whenever you look up more specific word like “erledigen”. On Dict.cc you get a list of like 6 translations and you want to know what the actual core is, so you kind of have to go back and forth to explore the meaning cloud of the word. Also a great way to explore synonyms and “adjecentonyms”.
Why… Because they changed the core functionality of the ‘app/website’. When I joined about a year and a half ago, it had “four personalities” but you could ask the AI people whatever you wanted. “Give me 5 sentences that use erledigen as the main verb” “What is the difference between erledigen and gemacht or getan?” It would do its best. Usually 80% great, and other times where I ran to you or reddit or DeepL for clarification. They added in more ‘this is what you got right or wrong’ scoring in your conversations which was fine I guess (although I don’t NEED a score, I can see what was right or wrong). But then about 6 months ago, maybe more, they went all in on the AI personas. Tons of them. And each persona has a level and a topic that they really really really want to you to talk about. I wrote to the guy/people there, and said I really missed the open-ended stuff – especially “Please give me 5 sentences that use ordnungsgemäß erledigt” etc – and they/he said they might bring that back, but no dice. Its AI personas are too strict and limited now. I guess I need to just use ChatGPT or something, but using Langotalk made me feel like I wasn’t contributing to the ills of society. I always use YDG, Dict.CC and DeepL as a powerful trio. In fact I have all three open right now (ehrlich gesagt). Many of my flashcards are checked this way. I often take your examples and alter them, or take something in a book or youTube video and alter it.
“Tons of them. And each persona has a level and a topic that they really really really want to you to talk about. ”
Lol, oh that does sound annoying. Dozens of bots that each want to talk about one thing. It’s so unnatural :). Sounds like a way to lure in new customers by showing “lots of variety and choice”.
You can set up your custom ChatGPT agent with not much effort. And I’m sure there are plenty of custom GPTs for German learners in the GPT store completely for free.
Let me know if you need some pointers for that :)
I am a retired teacher, and a year after I retired, I learned about ChatGPT. I felt crushed for all the teachers still out there dedicating their lives to helping kids actually learn and think. How can kids learn if AI is writing for them, providing summaries of classic literature, etc. I hated ChatGPT and how it would affect education. Flash forward a couple of years. One of my French teachers suggested using ChatGPT to check my writing. So I tried it. I never use ChatGPT to spit out a corrected version of my work. I ask it to highlight places where I have errors. Then I fix them myself. Then if I don’t understand what’s wrong, I ask ChatGPT. I ask lots of grammar questions. Usually I think, « Oh yeah, right; I remember that. ». If not—if something seems off or contradictory—I check elsewhere (then I grill ChatGPT). My conclusion: AI is like any invention: it can be used destructively or beautifully. I am finding it very useful because I want to learn—not because I need a polished text. But there are, of course, many downsides, too.
I am not a big fan of the amount of resources it takes to enable this technology but agree there are other bigger resource-sucking pollutants out there that are worse. In any case, it’s frustrating to feel so helpless and everything a person interacts with on a daily basis has some component of AI integrated within it. I have used ChatGPT for German grammar questions and tried an app that uses AI to generate conversations in German, which I find not helpful for my goals. My number preference is and will always be to engage in German Sprache practice with other humans (understanding not everyone has this opportunity).
As someone who ran a small business for 3 decades, I can see the appeal of AI. But as a human, it makes me angry. Reasons in general:
#1 reason is that it is environmentally more raping of the earth. It uses an incredible amount of resources, and people just seem to say, “Oh, well” or not actually take it seriously.
#2 reason is that it blurs the line between reality, fantasy, misinformation, and outright lies or propaganda. People can make anything look real. I saw a convincing video or Neil deGrasse Tyson (famous astro physicist) saying he had reconsidered and concluded that the earth is actually flat – it was not real, but it sure looked real. It is beginning to rob us of the joy in real things, because we no longer know is something is real and truly amazing, or if it’s just crap and clickbait. It’s getting harder and harder to tell.
#3 is that it popularizes dangerous misinformation. e.g. People are already getting more and more stupid about animals and the natural world, and AI-generated videos are not helping. Videos of people hugging polar bears and zoo elephants rescuing babies are telling them that wild animals are actually cuddly and friendly are convincing people that every animal = a Tiktok moment, and it’s not true. Not that an elephant would harm a baby, but it’s blurring the lines of what would actually happen and what would not.
#4 is that it steals from other people’s work. That’s worst for artists and creators, but also grammarians and writers of dictionaries and other language tools. Someone works hard, and AI just takes what you publish and people can use your work to make money for themselves.
As for language learning, the above reasons have kept me from trying it, but I pretty much agree with your breakdown of where it would be most useful.
Rant over. (But you did ask!) :-)
I did ask and I do appreciate the discussion here :).
I think when it comes to consuming resources, there are way less useful things humanity indulges in than AI. What I hear how much corporate flying is going on in Europe and certainly also the states and elsewhere… employees flying 1000km and back to Zürich from Berlin for some stupid meetings where they create zero value and just blabber for three hours that could have been a zoom call (or just no meeting at all) and they’re doing that like twice a month. And I’m not talking CEOs. I’m talking pretty random employees who maybe have a team of 4. Same for politicians in the EU and the US. There is so much stupid flying going on on top of the online meetings and emails and messengers. I’m almost certain 80% of job related flying is completely unnecessary.
I hear that and I feel like a dunce for separating the cardboard wrapper from my plastic yogurt container.
Same for things like adds and Youtube and so on. When you visit a website that runs adds, there are so many queries going on in the background to auction off and service and load these banners and pop-ups that I’m sure it consumes more than a chatGPT output.
And that is not even to mention all the resources the top 0,1% use up.
At least AI tools are something that truly is accessible for the masses. I have many people in my surroundings that chat with ChatGPT on the daily, doing “therapy” and so on.
My point is, that the “what do we get” vs “how much does it cost the planet” calculation for AI is not so bad compared to a lot of other things.
As for the lies and propaganda – we’ll evolve along with that. Yes, you can create a fake video and share it with millions of people. That is new. But you can also have millions of people yell “This is fake”. The abundance goes both ways. I don’t know when it was easier to brainwash someone… now or in the 50s where access to a variety of viewpoints was much more limited. My personal believe is that “freedom” is better. I’d rather have everyone have the tools to manipulate and fact check than just a small elite, be it billionaires or government.
But yeah, we’ll have some evolving to do as a species to adept to the new informational environment, for sure.
I don’t mean to talk you out of your being skeptical or critical. Just wanted to add my thoughts and where I stand on some of the things.
Ha. I’m apprehensive about AI in general, not just language learning. I have seen some useful implementations, even for small ad hoc items, but for every one of those I’ve seen stuff that could have been done faster by the user or stuff that was just plain wrong. Let other people be the beta testers. I will be a late adopter.
“Let other people be the beta testers. I will be a late adopter.”
Lol, I love that! Might be the winning strategy here.
I use ChatGPT to help when I’m finding DeepL and GoogleTranslate aren’t giving me a clear enough answer. I usually find it can tell me the difference between two apparent synonyms with a fair degree of accuracy – I rely on what I’ve been reading and my prior knowledge to tell me if it is making sense. It is mostly able to regurgitate sentences it has been trained on that show the point it is making – basically, it’s like a search engine for German sentences.
I never, ever rely on it for a grammar explanation as it is mostly wrong. It will tell you, “[this word] is in the dative because [x]” when in fact the word is in the accusative.
It’s irritating to know that I can’t rely on it, but if it comes up with something that seems questionable there are a whole lot of other resources online available, and I have three native speakers I can check things out with. I never accept what it gives me as definitely true.
I wish they had prioritised accuracy over user engagement.
The opportunity to take a topic, write a few sentences, and ask a LLM to correct you has been the best use so far. I can’t recommend it enough for people at A and B levels.
I pretty much agree with the above, in that the best feature of AI by a country mile is the ability to construct sentences, speak them out loud, and have corrections given in roughly real time that are *good enough* for even intermediate learners. By which I mean that they’re not perfect, but the feedback is infinitely better than a learner like me gets by simply “thinking about them to myself”, or even trying having an interior dialogue. Feeling that dread when it’s your turn to speak, and learning to control it and work through it, is a big aspect of learning in my book. It’s a similar feeling to the first few times I spoke before a large audience, and it really ain’t all that much fun!
Anyway, focusing, focusing, before this balloons again. I notice that even the venerable Google Translate now has a language practice button that lets you have conversations, provides hints about how to answer, and offers hearing and speaking activities. Pretty bare-bones, but in a pinch…
The more interesting option I recently tripped over was the egregiously named “Chickytutor”, which uses the tagline “Like Duolingo, but for language-learning”, an idea I tend to think should have stayed internal to the brainstorming session, but will probably get them a fair bit of free publicity. Let’s just say that it’s really nothing at all like Duolingo. The standout aspect (after about an hour of using it over a few days) is the conversational learning (ie, speaking with hints and corrections and suggestions). It’s at a comfortable level, and noticably better than most such options. They offer a seemingly infinite number of languages, which points to the main trouble with the other aspects of the offering: things are a lot rockier when you’re asked to correct sentences, filling in the gaps, and so forth, as I guess they’re all AI-generated, and prone to the sort of slippages mentioned above (the 85/15 rule). Before giving an example, I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has tried the speaking exercises, and whether they were useful. I’m cautiously optimistic, which is a nice change from most such tools!
So here’s a typical error from the AI-gen’d questions:
___ man die Tragweite seiner Entscheidung frühzeitig erkannt hätte, wäre viel Unheil vermieden worden.
(Choices are: falls / hätte / würde / wenn)
I chose “wenn”, but apparently (!)…
The word was ‘Hätte’. This sentence uses an inverted conditional clause (‘Hätte man erkannt…’) which is a more advanced and formal way to express ‘Wenn man erkannt hätte…’ (If one had recognized…). This construction is common in C1-C2 German.
Hmm… :-)
“Chickytutor” – I hate the name and the whole chicken theme.
I also hate the vibe coded dark mode interface look.
“Like Duolingo, but for language-learning”
I do find that funny, but yeah… it’s not like Duolingo at all.
I just tried it for 10 minutes for German.
What I like is the immediacy of it. No account, no setup or endless “onboarding”. Just boom, there’s the chat. I also like that it listens and I don’t have to click to record.
I was prompted to translate a sentence. I did, and it didn’t like my native speaker accent, it wanted me to speak properly.
Then I had to translate “I’m meeting my friend tomorrow” and went with “Ich treffe morgen meinen Freund”.
As usual, I would swallow the “-en” in meinen. It didn’t like that and told me to do it again. I did it again, this time pronouncing the “-en”, but didn’t catch it and it got bitchy about it and told me to do a soft “mein-en”, which is typical AI “instruction slop”.
Then, I cleared my cookies and tried again.
Again, I had to translate “I’m meeting my friend tomorrow.” but this time, I went with a really strong American accent and the typical mistakes. “ick trayfun mourgain mein Froind” It said “Almost” and then said I should pay attention to word order and “morgen” needs to be at the end.
I said it again with the strong accent and the proper word order where morgen is not at the end, it said I did amazing, but morgen needs to go to the end, and then said “let’s move on”
Next, I had to translate “I want to visit Berlin next Summer.” I went with a native “Ich will nächst’n Sommer Berlin besuchen.” which was almost perfect, but my pronunciation was off.
The thing is… NO NATIVE SPEAKER would actually say this. We do not use besuchen that way.
Then, I clicked the “create exercise” button and now I’m blind because the vibe code night mode switched to 80s neon color mode.
So yeah… this tool is a vibe coded mess.
The upside is that you don’t have to “prompt” it to do language learning with you. It’s very low friction. But I’m sure that ZERO actual language didactic have gone into this and since it’s mixing pronunciation feedback with grammar feedback,you can pretty much NEVER rely on what you’re getting.
Nice idea, needs a lot more work.
“The word was ‘Hätte’. This sentence uses an inverted conditional clause (‘Hätte man erkannt…’) which is a more advanced and formal way to express ‘Wenn man erkannt hätte…’ (If one had recognized…). This construction is common in C1-C2 German.”
To quote someone very rich: concerning.
Seriously… this is EXACTLY AI garbage. It’s hyper-prompted to correct a mistake, and “hätte” CAN fit there if there wasn’t “hätte” at the end of the phrase again, which the model doesn’t know though when it starts blabbering.
When I did my Passive Voice AI practice, I did a lot of “engineering” to make sure shit like this doesn’t happen too often. And that means like 60% are old school string savings, if else decisions and so on. For something like this here, you need to create the full sentence first, then cut out one word, save the word to a string, do a string compare and then have the AI give human style feedback. Or at LEAST you have the AI compare your version to the premade answer, which lives in a javascript variable and not just model context.
They are doing NONE of this, and I’d say Chickytutor is more 70/30. So you get 30% BS.
I’m not hating, btw. I WANT these tools to work. But they’re all always rushed and low quality.
Haha… good to know that I’m not going totally mad over here (though with an ugly 40C arriving tomorrow, things might change in a rush!). Yep, the spots where this app has been jammed into place and secured with thirteen thousand tonnes of blu-tack are still way, way too foregrounded.
As for pronunciation, you obviously need to mimic the untutored horror that is my german accent. It hasn’t complained once about anything I’ve said. Admittedly I’ve not been poking at the soft spots, and my considerable stack of Reduktionen don’t exactly jump to the fore in such situations, but it’s still remarkable, and very welcome ;-)
In any case, it’s pretty evident that native speakers haven’t really been involved in any way, shape or form in this production, which is simultaneously a shame and totally understandable. Having a stable of native speakers for those 578 languages you profess to teach would be utterly unsustainable: much better to spread the slop in a uniform manner, and pray for improvements to continue to arrive via updates to the core LLM.
“Just one more data-center, bro!”
I have many concerns with AI: environmental, IP theft, enriching/creating oligarchs, enshittification of the overall internet as a resource, etc., and especially how it will extend the intrusiveness of the surveillance economy. This is somewhat more regulated in the EU, but in the USA it is pervasive. I won’t use any AI except anonymously, so I’ve used duckduckgo (a wrapper for ChatGPT) and proton’s lumo. For german learning the only thing I have used is yourdailygerman (with some trust that I’m not being identified to ChatGPT). Having said that, I do love the tools here. I’m one of the users you describe; live in the USA and do this for fun, but have literally never met a native german speaker in real life and may never in the future. The sentence correction tool is a great way to practice writing and actually know when you make a mistake. Not perfect, but you can usually figure out when it is spouting nonsense. I have also used the story generator, saved the text and mp3, then repeat listen to the stories like podcasts. Repeat exposure is a great way to learn by osmosis.
I share AU’s concerns about AI (also in the US), and I am quite alarmed about the manipulation of what we see and hear. I don’t do TikTok (too old), but Insta reels reek of AI slop. Cute animal duo – AI. Amazing dance routine – AI. Famous politician or other celebrity saying or doing something outrageous – AI (unless it’s ….but I won’t get political here ) Do artificially generated voices count as AI? In that case, the free translators make some glaring pronunciation errors – and by the way, I found LingoDeer disappointing in that regard.
As a learning tool, to put in flashcards and ask an AI program to generate quizzes – fine. Even to generate exercises testing case usage or word order. But I wouldn’t trust my accent or idiomatic conversation to a bot at this point. (And certainly not my beloved Züritüüsch!)
“Do artificially generated voices count as AI”
It depends on the tech they’re done with, but the new ones coming from Google, OpenAI, 11labs etc are all based on similar tech as ChatGPT, so they’d qualify as AI. That includes the one in LingoDeer, but I am surprised to hear there are glaring errors. Do you possibly have an example for something it gets wrong? Because the new gneration of text to speech are VERY natural sounding compared to older tech.
I can’t remember where I encountered the problems with LingoDeer but it was a few vowel and emphasis issues, which are always tough for AI vocalizing tools.
Ah, damn it. I was really curious. But thanks anyway!
“(with some trust that I’m not being identified to ChatGPT).”
Yeah, no worries! I am calling the API with my credentials and I do not pass on any user identification data for things like the example generator, sentence correction or speech production. So OpenAI has no idea who the query is coming from.
For transparency, on the AI based Passive Voice practice tool, I do pass on the username because I felt this was a nice touch to greet the learner. But I do not pass the email or any other account data. This goes to Voiceflow, and not ChatGPT directly.
I haven’t done a lot yet with ChatGPT, but I do use it to generate simple example sentences for the three main tenses of verbs that I’m trying to learn.
I even have a “template” that I copy and paste –
Give me three simple examples in German, using the three tenses present, present perfect and simple past for the German word
This has been very helpful for me.
And in a few cases I’ve had it generate a simple sentence for every meaning, when the word has several meanings.
Sometime in the near future I will give Langua a try, since I need help speaking German. Hard to do that in the middle of the USA.
Actually, I’ve been meaning to create this tool for a while… a sentence modifier. You give it a sentence or have it create one, and then you have it put out this sentence in past, future, conditional, passive voice (if possible) and all of them as side sentences. I’ll do that next year.
I use ChatGPT for quite a lot of purposes (personal, educational and more), and at this point I would consider myself a bit of an expert on prompting, AI writing style and its limitations. Imo it’s only good for people with good critical thinking skills, which sadly is not the majority. It’s excellent for organizing/collecting ideas (definitely more efficient than Google for this) and brainstorming. For factual inquiries I use it as a starting point, if I wouldn’t know where to start on Google. In the best case I can then do further research. In many cases it gives sources now, so you don’t even always have to search for them.
One recent example is I was reading a newsletter and got blindsided when I noticed that a Nebensatz had “hätte” at the beginning instead of the end. I was like, what? Is that a mistake? I thought I’d never seen that before, but of course after learning about it now I see it constantly… I tried to Google it but nothing came up because I didn’t know what it was called and had to use a lot of words to describe it. ChatGPT explained that this is the standard rule when the clause has 3+ verbs (“hätte genehmigt werden müssen” was the sentence) and said it’s called Oberfeldregel for “complex verb clusters.” Sadly, mostly obscure academic sources come up when googling this, so I have had to be mostly satisfied with the ChatGPT explanation (unless you write a blog about it soon :D).
I have also used it to come up with exam practice questions, to correct my writing, and now that I’m done with tests for now, I started using German as my primary language for inquiries on other topics. This is a great way to boost reading and writing skills!
Oh, I will just add that when it comes to commercial learning products with AI content, I would go even farther than you and say they are almost never worth it. They can’t really add much value on top of what I can get from direct interaction with the AI. The only way to add value would be the human touch from someone who is actually an expert in the language, as you say.
Okay, so I think what you were asking about is something like this:
– Hätte ich das gewusst, hätte ich nichts gesagt.
Which is an alternative of “Wenn ich das gewusst hätte, hätte…”
Not sure if this was what you asked about but if it was, then ChatGPT is WRONG here. It has nothing to do with “3+ verbs in a sentence”. It’s just a special type of phrasing.
What ChatGPT is talking about is this:
– Ich habe verstanden, dass ich mich hätte beeilen müssen.
(instead of “…beeilen müssen hätte.”
This is a different special phrasing and I actually do talk about it in the article about “Conditinal Past Tense”. The structure is not limited to that, but that’s the most common context you’ll find it in.
Never heard the term “Oberfeldregel” though and I found ZERO references for it on Google besides one dissertation or Master’s thesis of the FU Berlin from 10 years ago. Save to say that this has no business being mentioned casually to a language learner and maybe it has no business being mentioned at all, since no one seems to be using it.
So I guess that counts as another instance of Chatty being extra meh when it comes to more specific informational queries.
I totally get your point too though. It can be really hard to phrase what you’re looking for for a Google search, so Ai with its semantic capabilities can really make digging more accessible.
Oh, sorry I was unclear, it was the second thing you said. The sentence I first saw was in a C1 online course: “Der Arzt ist der Meinung, dass die Reha sofort hätte genehmigt werden müssen.” I was so confused by that syntax. But after I read it, I’ve noticed this construction several times in news articles, although somehow I never noticed it before!
My impression is that in speech and the VAST majority of normal writing, you would just not use that many verbs in one clause, you’d simplify the sentence. But it seems like in “highbrow” writing it does happen from time to time. Is that right?
I just found the blog where you mention it, but it looks like there is not much more explanation to give than the fact that the rule exists, you just called it “completely pointless” :D
Oh, my bad, I didn’t really catch that it was actually mentioned in your first comment :).
I think the reason I called it pointless is that I couldn’t find a logic to it. It just is what it is, and y’all have to learn it.
Now, this doesn’t happen often in speaking, but it DOES happen in speaking.
Sometimes, what you say just happens to have a verb cluster and your example is a great one, because this is something people might end up wanting to express.
We do NOT anticipate that there will be this cluster. We just have the message in our head and the sentence flows out. And then we get to the cluster and our brain startled for a second because it needs to do some actual processing work.
What happens then is some people just mess it up.
– genehmigt hätte werden müssen.
– genehmigt werden… äh… hätte müssen, lol.
The later you catch yourself that you forgot “hätte”, the wronger it sounds and the higher the chance that you’ll say it again correctly.
So no, we don’t avoid it, we just don’t run into them too much (unless in a professional context) and when we do… if we have good training with these, we nail them, otherwise we just fail :)
I‘ve tried a number of AI related apps and have settled on Langua. I use this almost exclusively for speaking practice , which is my major weakness. It took me a while to get used to speaking with „Stephan“, but it seems to be pretty reliable. I frequently cross check grammar or phrasing questions with Emanuel/YDG; with one rather spectacular exception it seems to be accurate. The developers are also very responsive when I’ve had problems with the app.
“I use this almost exclusively for speaking practice , which is my major weakness.”
Yeah, I think that’s their major benefit. A sort of “free form” conversation. I hope “Stephan” isn’t too annoying with trying to press their agenda of how it wants to steer the convo :)
Yes, I have noticed that…
The main reason they’re doing that (based on my assumptions) is that they want to avoid people using their app to just generally chat with ChatGPT about anything. I think a “custom mode” would be nice where you as a user can create an avatar, describe the person, give it characteristics and then just chat to that person about anything (harmless) in German. So you’d have the pros of the interface they built with the grammar correction and word collection while not being limited to these sort of narrow focus bots.
Hello,
“Advent Calender” (Advent Calendar)
Here are a few typos:
“tell you what I are the pros and cons” (tell you what I think are the pros and cons)
“basic, broad strokes or grammar” (basic, broad strokes of grammar)
“some more delicate question about word order. I’d put the hit to miss ration” (some more delicate questions about word order. I’d put the hit to miss ratio)
“I am aware how fast an actual developer” (I am aware of how fast an actual developer)
“more an more people” (more and more people)
“get an idea what you all think” (get an idea of what you all think)
Ok, now I’ll share my opinion on AI: I use it for all sorts of things, including German practice. Because I also use it for work (I’m a translator), I am well aware of the mistakes it makes, so I take it with a pinch of salt… For instance, I might get ChatGPT to to translate a sentence, but then have to go over it myself to correct and sometimes things are REALLY wrong. As long as we’re aware of this, it’s actually a useful tool to chat in German, do little role play conversations and correct your texts if you’re learning and don’t live in a German-speaking country, bearing in mind that if your text still has a few mistakes, that’s fine…
And I have the paid version, by the way, so it is better than the free one… just an aside, the paid version has built-in emotional intelligence and I sometimes use it to vent about my issues, it’s a lot more patient than my Mum and actually gives proper feedback without getting mad at you… even if you ask the same question 17 times… ;)
Bis morgen!
The question about asking the ways you use it is limited to one answer BTW.
I use chatGPT a LOT right now. Here is my routine. I am reading Momo on my phone (kindle app). I highlighted all the words and sentence elements that make me feel I don’t understand the sentence, and I’m going back through writing them all into a notebook. First I use the in-app translator (you can highlight a word or phrase in kindle and it will pop up with a translation). If that’s not sufficient, I use my preferred dictionary app, which is called “Dictionary” and has loads of examples.
If it’s a longer clause, or a paragraph with a lot going on, or I’m still confused, I ask ChatGPT about it.
It is sooooo useful.
I’m hoping it’s not 85/15 correct/BS ratio. I do notice that it often says things take the dativ when they actually take akkusativ, but I can tell that difference on my own and don’t need that info from a bot, so it doesn’t bother me.
The last phase will be going over the notebook and organizing the vocabulary and whatnot , figuring out what I know and what I want to know, and (I imagine) scouring several more YDG articles.
In the past, I have had written “conversations” with it in German. It has been good for that. I also ask it for example sentences and occasional quizzes.
I think the thing about it is that you have to actually understand what you’re working on well enough that you can tell when it makes an error. And also know enough about how it works to be able to keep what you get from it at arms distance. It’s more like a peer tutor than an actual teacher.
If you want a much-less fallible source, spend money on a specialized app. That’s what I think. So if an app is only AI, it can f*** off.
With Hungarian I was always having it generate short A1-level material because I couldn’t find what I needed online. And I would post on r/Hungarian asking ppl to correct the mistakes (redditors love this, it’s like fries for seagulls). There would always be some mistakes. Which I anticipated. And there would also be like a whole chorus of ReallySmartPeople telling me I should NEVER use AI because of the mistakes. Like, no, the routine is to have it generate the material and have you guys fix it up like those cleaner-shrimp, and it works. When j had some momentum going I had an idea to make a little album for streaming services of short, listenable AI paragraphs initially drafted by AI but checked and recorded by native speakers. You can upload an album onto streaming for like $5 a year if you don’t need to copyright the content. I still might one day.
I don’t really like feeling like I need chatGPT for Hungarian, but there is a real dearth at this point. There are some passionate teachers but they have nooo idea how to teach… and then aside from that there are traditional textbooks that I can barely use bc boring/bad ordering. Basically without ChatGPT it would not have been possible for me to learn it at all, outside of hiring a tutor maybe. But even tutors are hit or miss.
“(redditors love this, it’s like fries for seagulls)”
LLMAO, so true!
“like, no, the routine is to have it generate the material and have you guys fix it up like those cleaner-shrimp, and it works.”
Again, lol. They got played good! In r/German it’s similar. You mention “AI”, you get insta-downvoted.
” there are traditional textbooks that I can barely use bc boring/bad ordering.”
Yes, why they still be like that?! These textbooks are the reason this blog exists. I’ll write my own eventually. I’m playing the long game here, lol.
I’m a German teacher and I use an AI model designed for school use to create exercises when I just can’t think anymore. I always have to fix them to be what I want, but it still saves me a lot of time. I ignore the answer key because I know the answers already. :-) I also use an AI app (snorkl) to give students feedback. As a global feedback tool, it is really good!
Oh I can relate. Creating exercises can be boring and repetitive especially if it needs to be simple and generic. I don’t use AI for my article related exercises but I have built a couple of practice tools for passive voice where AI creates practice sentences on the fly. So you can just practice endlessly.
I asked ChatGPT to make up an exercise with 10 sample German sentences. When it corrected my answers, it said one was wrong and the correct answer was … exactly the same sentence. Between that and reading how often these models hallucinate, why bother? I’d have to search elsewhere to try and figure out whether or not to trust it.
“When it corrected my answers, it said one was wrong and the correct answer was … exactly the same sentence.”
Lol, yeah, I have seen that happen as well. When doing this straight in the ChatGPT chat, it’s better to go question by question and not say something like “correct all my mistakes” because that’ll make it over-eager.
There’s also the environmental devastation, corporate predation, and intellectual expropriation aspects of AI not mentioned in the article or poll
Yeah I wanted to focus on the language learning angle of the whole topic. It’s already a long article as it is :)
I think people need to contextualize the environmental thing. A ChatGPT prompt “costs” as much as five google searches or a minute or so of scrolling instagram. Or about 4 seconds of running your fridge. It’s not casual users who are pushing the usage up, it’s companies that have it baked into every single thing, or people using it to generate tons of images.
I’m not as concerned about the intellectual property stuff when you’re using it like Advanced Google and not as a generator of “creative” work.
This a very good point. The casual user base does NOTHING compared to these content factories and also coders by the way, you use thinking mode for everything and often run several models in parallel or some “agents” to do trivial stuff.
I’m torn about the intellectual property side. I can understand it for music and images but just because it’s “in there” doesn’t mean you have to get it out, imo. I can create Studio Gibli style images with Photoshop if I want to, the same way I can create them with ChatGPT or Midjourney or Nano Banana. In both cases, it is I… sorry, it is me, who is infringing on copyright as soon as I put those out there, imo.
I think there needs to be an infrastructure for creators to sue publishers who put out similar work that was created by an AI into the ground. We’ve had copycat content before AI after all.
I am absolutely not sad that BuzzFeed style writers or the average SEO travel blog written by freelancers who’ve never been to the place they write about get replaced by AI. It was soulless before already, whipped into uniform shape and tone by convention, click-through rates and tools like Grammarly.
So yeah… I think it’s the people who use AI to reproduce rather than create who are the ones actually violating intellectual property. If a company trains up a model and no one ever uses it for anything… has intellectual property really been infringed upon in a meaningful way? I’m not a lawyer of course, but I still rest my case :)
With regard to intellectual property, the difference between photoshop and ai is that photoshop, gimp, or similar are (presumably) not themselves infringing on intellectual property (unless they are infringing on some patent). They provide a way to blur, change contrast, or add other effects based on algorithms, whereas AI models are trained on human creators ideas, and when asked to perform a task use those ideas to produce output. They do so for profit, an mostly do not pay for use of the material they trained on, or even acknowledge or admit which material they used.
“They do so for profit”
All right, that is true and that beats my argument.