what learning Spanish is like with ChatGPT and Babbel

Here's a bit of today's lesson with ChatGPT, starting with dialogue + translation:

A: ¿Tienes frío?
(Are you cold?)

B: No, tengo calor. ¿Y tú?
(No, I’m hot. And you?)

A: También. Quiero una bebida fría.
(Me too. I want a cold drink.)

B: Yo quiero un jugo de naranja.
(I want an orange juice.)

NB: ChatGPT wasn't using English before I told it to go easier on me (it had started with a higher level of Spanish, and only Spanish, based on its perception of my level). I didn't know that "going easier" would mean using English, but here we are.

__________

Pronunciation Tip (no audio, but visual aid):

• té helado → [teh eh-LAH-doh]
  (The two vowels glide: té-eh almost sounds like “teh-lah-doh”)

__________

Pronoun	Ser Form	English
yo	soy	I am
tú	eres	you are
él / ella / usted	es	he/she/you are
nosotros/as	somos	we are
vosotros/as 🇪🇸	sois	you all are (Spain)
ellos / ellas / ustedes	son	they/you all are

Examples:

• Yo soy profesor. → I am a teacher.

• ¿Tú eres de España? → Are you from Spain?

• Ella es simpática. → She is nice.

• Nosotros somos estudiantes. → We are students.

__________

Quiz: Choose SER or ESTAR

Translate the following sentences into Spanish using the correct form of either ser or estar. (Don’t worry—I’ll give feedback afterward.)

---

I am tired.
We are from South Korea.
Are you (informal) at the restaurant?
The coffee is cold.
She is a doctor.
The children are in the park.
This soup is delicious.
It is Monday.
You all (Spain) are happy.
Are they your brothers?

I haven't shown some of my work; I've shown only what sorts of exercises and lessons ChatGPT has been giving me (if you really wanna see my work, leave a comment). One thing I'm learning from ChatGPT is that, in Spanish, you sometimes put accents on certain vowels to indicate stress, and sometimes you don't, i.e., some vowels can be stressed without having accents. So I've asked ChatGPT, for the next lesson, to provide some kind of rule or guideline to help me know when to add an accent. Next lesson is on Wednesday. 

Favorite tip today—I wrote:

My understanding is that "ser" is for long-standing or inherent conditions, while "estar" is for more temporary conditions (emotion, location, etc.).

ChatGPT gave me this bit of wisdom:

Pro Tip:

If you can put "right now" after the verb in English and it makes sense, you probably want estar.

• Estoy en casa (right now). ✅

• Soy en casa (right now). ❌

Working with ChatGPT, it's all writing—no listening comprehension or speaking. I know some of the basics of Spanish pronunciation, though, so I read aloud just to get my speech organs used to handling the language (speaking also gives my ears something to listen to). Besides, Babbel has a listening-comp aspect to it, and it uses AI voice-recognition software to test your pronunciation's clarity (like the incident with the idiot cabbie recently).

Moving on...

Here's a snippet of vocab and sentences I'm doing with Babbel (which placed me in intermediate Spanish, after a placement test, despite my lack of basic knowledge):

hacerse rico (to become rich)

el empresario (businessman)

la pastelera (pastry chef)

la administración (management, business)

La administración no funciona bien en este país.

Los políticos solo están con los grandes empresarios.

Mi madre se convirtío en una gran pastelera.

Él se hizo rico a pesar de la crisis.

El proyecto cuenta con la subvención estatal.

Nunca llegó a ser director del departamento.

La echaron porque no solía hacer nada bien.

There are dialogues involving the above vocab, tenses, and grammatical expressions. I get the impression that lower-level people should already know a lot of these expressions, so I've just downloaded Anki spaced-repetition flashcards to help me get to know these aspects of Spanish better. It's tough, but it's fun, and it keeps the brain working.

As I make my way on this weird linguistic journey, there's been a good bit of interference from French. I keep writing "le" when I mean "el" (for the definite article, not "él," the subject pronoun for "he"). And as with most European languages, learning which preposition goes with which expression is a nightmare: it's different in every language. But again, this is fun, so I'll slowly keep at it. Babbel also hectors you about "maintaining your streak." Over the weekend, I studied no Spanish, so Babbel told me today that my previous streak had ended. Fucker. When I start designing my own apps, I'll try to be less of an asshole, but I do want to make a nasty-asshole version for people who have the stomach for it. Anyway, this was just a taste of what learning el español has been like with ChatGPT and Babbel. At some point, I'm probably going to need to put out an ad for a language partner.

I'm thinking I might also want ChatGPT to teach me the 1800-ish hanja (Sino-Korean characters) that Korean students learn, plus a list of maybe 500-1000 hanja representing Buddhist phrases and concepts, as well as a list of 500-1000 hanja terms frequently used in the news and in politics so that I'm not always nonplussed every time I see a headline with Chinese on a Korean newspaper. My one frustration with my reading level is that I'm always having to grab a dictionary. Obviously, this means I need to read more to develop that skill. Maybe I can get ChatGPT to help me with that, too.

For all of ChatGPT's left-leaning tendencies, it's okay as a teacher for some things. Just don't ask it to teach you code because, frankly, it won't teach you so much as it'll talk at you. Without ever checking your knowledge or prompting you to construct something in code. By the time I got around to asking ChatGPT to keep my knowledge, I already had one mental foot out the door. Who knows, though? I might return to the coding lessons at some point. For the moment, I'm not working with apps that require me to know coding. We'll see.