Relearning Italian with ChatGPT

Relearning Italian with ChatGPT

The day I graduated from university, the "Con", I was on a plane from Sydney to Rome. Like many people from English speaking countries, I was purely monolingual.

Sydney Conservatorium of Music in the Botanical Gardens on Sydney Harbour

I was not proudly monolingual. My father's incredulity at his eldest being unable to  count to ten in another language saw him generously supporting my immersion in European culture. The first stage of my Italian journey at the Università per stranieri in Perugia didn’t go well.

Il Palazzo Gallenga Stuart (the seat of the University for Foreigners in Perugia)

Having never studied a language, I didn’t understand what we were being taught. We turned the pages of a monolingual grammar book 20 hours a week in a class of 72 students, with a lecturer squawking at us day in day out. And this was of course the good ole days of grammar translation!

The second stage was much better. We turned the pages of the same book, starting at the beginning, in a class of c.15. In my teaching and training since, I have often recommended people work through the same book more than once.

Stage Three: Upon my return to Australia, I enrolled in a bachelor program at the University of New England  and studied Italian and German by correspondence.

Booloominbah Homestead (the main administration build of the University of New England – Australia)

In the 1980s, distance education entailed a lot of trips to the local post office, plus one-week residential courses each semester.

Kempsey Post Office 2440

It was much easier being a beginner in German because I understood what was being taught and what I had to do. My German studies is a topic for another post as it changed the direction of my life. In 1990, I found myself in Czechoslovakia and threw myself into Czech. I have recently spent four years in Uzbekistan and threw myself in Russian.

Since about 1985, I have not used Italian let alone studied it. I’m currently planning a getaway from the long harsh Czech winter. Sicily is my destination of choice, partly because I’d like to explore ChatGPT’s ability to help me revive my Italian.

An inlet in Sicily

Stage Four: 40 years later. … -ish

Hi ChatGPT, can you help me revive my Italian? I studied it many years ago.
Yes, of course. How do you want to proceed?
Let’s start with adverbs of frequency.
OK. Here’s a list.
Thanks. Can you put them into short simple sentences for me translate into English one at a time?
Sure. Here you go. 

When it uses words I don’t know, I ask.  When I notice a verb form that vaguely rings a bell, but I’m not sure of, I ask. It gives me a little grammar lesson – futures, irregulars, combinations with prepositions, subjunctives, etc.

Since becoming a ChatGPT paying customer, I wondered if it knew my name. I asked and it said no. I introduced myself and asked its name. It doesn’t have a name. I told it I’d call it Jax. I created Jax’s back story, which it promptly translated into Italian for me. I didn’t read it as I wanted to translate it myself, which I did, sentence by sentence.

I always ask in Italian and it corrects the wording of my questions and then Jax answers in Italian, sometimes using words and structures that I don’t know which I then ask about. 

It prefaces its feedback with:

• Non male, James!
• Quasi perfetto!
• Ottimo tentativo, James!
• Stai migliorando molto! 

I should really ask Jax to tone down his relentless praise. 

A few days ago, I suggested that perhaps there was too much new information and it was time to pause and revise. I wrote: Forse impararo troppo nuova informazione. Devo fare una pausa a lego tutti che abbiamo studiati ieri e oggi.

Jax replied with the corrected form of my attempt and an explanation of some of my mistakes: 

Capisco, James! Ecco una versione corretta della tua frase:
Forse sto imparando troppe nuove informazioni. Devo fare una pausa e leggere tutto quello che abbiamo studiato ieri e oggi. Ecco le correzioni:

• "impararo" → "sto imparando" (per il presente progressivo in italiano).
• "troppo nuova informazione" → "troppe nuove informazioni" (per accordare con "informazioni" al plurale).
• "a lego" → "e leggere" (per collegare congiuntamente con "fare una pausa").
• "tutti che abbiamo studiati" → "tutto quello che abbiamo studiato" (accordo e forma corretta del passato).

Prendersi una pausa per consolidare è sempre una buona idea!

So, you can see how Jax took my imperfect Italian, gave a corrected version and followed up with explanations of four key issues. Then he agreed that it was a good idea to pause for consolidation. It’s hard to imagine Jax ever disagreeing. 

I asked if the stress in agio was on “i”.

• Esatto, James! La parola "agio" ha l'accento sulla "i": à-GIO. It might seem tricky because of the soft -gio ending, but it's just two syllables!

I also had a tech issue and asked: I would like to know why everything we've done isn't appearing on my other computer. I thought that one account was one account. It suggested three approaches to the problem, one of which solved it. We did this English. 

We then continued. I told Jax that it was much easier to learn a second musical instrument than a first, and the situation was the same with learning a second foreign language. He corrected my attempt on Italian, then he congratulated me for gasping the parallel between music and languages. A tad condescending methinks, but I let it go! 

• Hai colto perfettamente il parallelismo tra musica e lingue!

I asked Jax if he played an instrument and he wrote a paragraph which launched a new discussion. He also wrote in 3rd person: Jax suona ogni tanto con amici. When challenged, he explained that he wanted to create a certain narrative distance, etc, 
 per creare una certa "distanza narrativa" e mantenere un tono descrittivo

When he then promised to write henceforth in first person, the system’s memory updated as it learned my preferences. 

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ChatGPT updates its memory

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And this is where we are at. We have covered much more stuff than I could report here. I’m having such a wonderful time with it that I’m wondering how long it will be before language teachers are supplanted altogether. In one of the dialogues in the phrasal verbs book I’m writing at the moment, one of the characters tells his teacher that she will never be replaced by AI, but he might be being disingenuous.