AI is taking over (the headlines).
While Github Copilot promises the potential to subdue friends texting you about their next big app idea, text-to-image AI like Midjourney and DALL-E are putting our visual arts brainstorm sessions into turbo mode. Effective large language models (LLM’s) such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 are here and are already disrupting markets.
As for me, I’ve had some fun messing around making crazy images and playing some text adventure RPG’s – admittedly, feeling the most excited about a technology as I had in a long time. I feel as though AI as a tool is a massive leap forward, and it’s ready to be utilized by anybody with an internet connection.
Tired of being a monolingual American, I’ve dabbled in learning a few languages including Spanish, Japanese and French. As luck would have it, our new vocalist in Sleepsculptor ended up being a Frenchman. I had the perfect excuse to focus on learning French, and a native speaker to help me learn. I’ve made it my 2023 goal to take learning it seriously.
If you’re learning a new language, you’ve surely heard of Duolingo. Recently, they announced a new subscription plan called Duolingo MAX, touting a couple of features that leverage the new GPT-4. At the moment of typing this, they are slowly rolling the feature out to iOS users, planning to release the rest of the market over the following months.
Disclaimer: I’m not sponsored by Duolingo, but if a certain green owl wants to get in touch and let me test some tech, I wouldn’t be upset.
While that sounds awesome and I’m now stuck with the inferior Super Duolingo, I wanted to get started using AI to learn French right away. What could be done with the freely available ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) instead? Which free tools can I use instead?
Below, I’ll list some things I’ve found useful on my mission to harness the power AI and become a polyglot.
- Firstly of course, OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While “prompt engineering” can be it’s own blog post, keep in mind you can ask ChatGPT to take on a personality and talk to you in a certain format. I’ve had good success with asking it to play a question and answer game with me, where it will continually ask me my favorite things, or something similar. You can surely get creative here and go on a text-based adventure in a different language, or role play is some fashion.
- A browser plugin called Simple Translate (available on Firefox and Chrome) allows you to highlight a section of text and translate it to a destination language instantly. Switching to a new tab and copying/pasting into Google Translate doesn’t take long, but those seconds add up. Once you have something frictionless like this, you won’t want to go without it.
- Speaking a new language aloud is its own battle. A browser plugin called Read Aloud (available on Firefox and Chrome) lets you highlight text and have it spoken to you. In my conversations with ChatGPT, I’ll do this with both sides of the conversation and mime it as I go.
- While this is specifically for French and I am still in the process of testing it, I’ve installed a browser plugin called Grammalecte for checking grammar. As a beginner, it’s hard for me to vouch for it, but it does let me know at a glance if a word may be feminine or masculine.
- When typing in French, I’ll usually first try out typing my sentences in Google Translate, keeping this open in another tab. Depending on your browser, you can use a shortcut to cycle your tabs (usually Ctrl + Tab).
I can’t end this post without mentioning a couple of other things that were a huge help for me:
Learn French With Alexa has been a huge help for me while learning tenses and grammar. She has plenty of free videos on YouTube, and more in-depth lessons through her program.
Lastly, I’ve played Stardew Valley many times, and the fact that you can play it in French (among many other languages) has allowed me to learn some vocabulary in a “virtual setting” I’m familiar with. I play it at my own pace, writing down words and phrases as I go.
AI is here to stay and will be a massively helpful tool in so many ways. Take advantage of it!
