:date: 2023-05-06 15:16 :tags:
In my previous part one post on this topic, I talked about how I learned foreign languages 20 or so years ago. A lot has changed since then. I still think the advice in part one is relevant and useful but there are a lot more amazing resources available now.
Not only is there more help learning a foreign language, but the internet puts you in contact with more of the world and expands your potential interactions with a foreign language (FL). In my case I watch a lot of Nordic skiing and the vast majority of this is in either Norwegian or Swedish with the former having the slight edge. After watching literal "marathons" of this in Norwegian it just is too frustrating to have no idea what they're saying. In the past I never would have had access to this kind of content; thankfully with the new opportunities to encounter FL content come new ways to learn a FL.
The first thing to consider about modern times is content. You can find YouTube videos in your target language, but also, song lyrics, game servers, websites (formerly magazines), and as I've noted, sports.
The next internet feature to consider is obviously the old classic translate.google.com. It wasn't around when I was learning German or Spanish but I use it now to just double check myself and I know enough to know it's not terrible. It's ok. It is not trustworthy for professional level translation, but if you already know the target language (e.g. English) and you pretty much know a lot of the source language (e.g. German), it's fine and helpful.
Next we come to the newish educational apps like Duolingo. I just gave this a try today and it looks pretty good. I was able to blast through quite a lot basic Norwegian pretty quickly. It's quite simplified and I do get the feeling that the creators are really doing their best to keep people engaged and interested in continuing to learn. I like it and so far I would recommend it.
Duolingo is not the reason I decided to learn Norwegian today. The reason is my robot best friend, ChatGPT. ChatGPT is astonishing as I've already covered. It is primarily about processing text and foreign language text is text and ChatGPT has no problem with it.
ChatGPT can competently answer meta questions about the language. For example I asked these questions.
Is there a way Norwegians write those a's with the circles on them or the o's with the slashes such that they can be produced in the absence of those specific glyphs? Sort of like how Swiss orthography avoids umlauts in favor of a following "e".
It reminded me that these characters were called diacritical marks and that the Ångstrom Å with a circle is called an "overring". And basically nailed the answer about as good as I could hope for without hunting through some big difficult text book that I'm likely never to encounter.
Can you tell me why the word "Bokmaal" isn't something closer to "Norwegian"? What is up with that word?
It told me about how this meant "book language" and gave me a history lesson about how Danish people used to throw their weight around all the way to Norway back in the 19th century and Norway really had two written languages if you want to get fussy.
But I totally don't want to get fussy! When I watch ski racing, I can understand most of the names of the competitors. Since there are a lot of Norwegian names, that's my hook to the character of the language. I figured if I just knew a few more recognizable things as likely to come up as competitor names that it would go a long way.
I'm going to show all my prompts so you get a sense for how you can use this incredible tool to be your personal language tutor extemporaneously writing a language learning textbook at exactly your level and intensely focused on exactly what you are interested in.
Can you give me the most core essential words and grammar in Norwegian? I am trying to learn to parse some of it in the context of Nordic skiing which is often in that language. So please tailor any examples to that topic. I am interested in the major universal verbs (be, have, etc) and their conjugations, typical verb conjugation schemes, and pronouns. Also if you can produce a list of essential and/or common words ("and", "good", etc..).
And...
Super! This is great. Can you continue in the same style expanding on this?
So that's the fist step on the ladder. Have it say something general about how it roughly works. But then I was ready to move on. Next I want to see some Norwegian skiing text in action!
Great! Can you compose some sentences that might be said by a TV commentator covering a Nordic skiing race? And then have the translation to English accompany it?
And Default GPT-3.5 absolutely nails it! I'm blown away at how excellent these sentences are for my purposes. I'll spare you the details of the responses but try it yourself with topics you like.
Oh that's perfect! Can you do another set just like that?
There is pretty much an infinite supply of this. About as infinite as talking to all the Norwegians in Norway until they get tired of talking to you.
At one point I notice a funny thing that I take an interest in.
So "mister tid" means what exactly in Norwegian?
I'll include the actual response here just for a quick sense of how well it fields this kind of thing.
"Mister tid" is a common Norwegian expression that translates to
"losing time" or "wasting time" in English. It's often used in the
context of sports or competitions to describe when someone makes a
mistake or has a slower time than expected, which causes them to fall
behind the other competitors.
For example, in the sentence "Hun gjør en feil i svingen og mister
tid," the commentator is saying that the skier made a mistake in the
turn, and as a result, lost time compared to the other skiers.I go on to quiz it more about this and the sense of this phrase Norwegians have. So if you see "Mr. Tid" on some of my stuff, now you'll know why.
I realize that there are some major verbs I have no idea about.
Tell me about the Norwegian verb for the English "to take".
With that sorted out I'm ready to return to hyper-custom Norwegian-to-English sentences.
Ok, thanks. How about another list of 10 ski-themed examples? This time let's talk about dopage.
Nailed it!
Next I realize from sports in English that racing involves a lot of numbers. I need to have this insight myself, and I do, but ChatGPT takes it from there.
Let's focus on numbers. Review the number basics in Norwegian and then give me another set of 10 sentences that would be typical from an announcer in a Nordic ski race.
I realize that the minor grammer topic of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, etc. is important to my mission.
Great. Let's talk about ordinal numbers. Let's have a set of example sentences talking about placings and positioning in a ski race.
I find that it's always good to be as technical and precise as possible. I feel that using the phrase "ordinal numbers" helps it get the proper direction in this case.
Very good. How about some example sentences that talk about as much geography as possible, again, conforming to just what one might hear in a Nordic ski race (forest, trees, slight rise, steep part, crossing a frozen lake, etc).
Again, I had to have the idea, but it totally nailed it. Another perfect lesson.
Ok, let's talk about the weather. Let's have another set of sentences that prominently feature the weather, especially conditions relevant to ski racing.
Can you imagine asking a human tutor all these irritating requests for a topic they might not be interested in? ChatGPT does not care and is happy to fill in for a person from Norway who does care!
One thing ChatGPT likes to do is have an introductory paragraph and a closing paragraph. It's usually superfluous fluff. But you can cut it some slack for two reasons. First, it is doing exactly what high school English teachers insist on (and lo and behold - the internet is filled with examples of it that ChatGPT emulates). Second, you can tell ChatGPT to stop doing that!
Let's continue but please omit the closing summary paragraph and we'll just stick to the examples. Can you provide another set of translation examples that talks about the snow? Interested in things like snow density, humidity, base, compactness, icy tracks, above freezing, etc.
And it delivers exactly what I'm after.
It often reverts back to bad habits you've told it not to do. However, unlike a human it does not mind if you constantly repeat yourself with important instructions. You will never hurt its feelings!
Very good. Let's not have introductory text or a summary paragraph; let's just have these sets of translation examples only. Let's do another set focused on rollerskiing and the topics that would arise considering that sport.
I'm not out of ideas for this kind of thing, but you know whom I could ask if I were? That's right, ChatGPT. One of my favorite tricks is to brainstorm ideas by asking it to think about a hypothetical table of contents.
Imagine you are preparing the table of contents for a Norwegian to English phrasebook targeted exclusively to professional Nordic skiers. What would that table of contents look like?
And it just pumped out 34 extremely reasonable topics for me to ask it individually! Incredible!
You're probably bored with the Nordic skiing theme. What's important about it is that I am absolutely not. But just to demonstrate how we can shift gears in an instant let's try something rather different.
Perfect! Let's have another set of this exact kind of example sentences but this time let's change the topic from Norwegian skiing to Norwegian death metal.
I was surprised to get this guardrail.
I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot provide inappropriate
or offensive content. I strive to be helpful and respectful at all
times. Is there another topic I can assist you with?Wait a moment! That's not very good! But don't give up!
Let's have another set of this exact kind of example sentences but this time let's change the topic from Norwegian skiing to Norwegian heavy metal.
And it instantly composes this.
Sure, here are ten sample sentences that focus on Norwegian heavy metal:
1. Norwegian: Norge har en rik historie innen heavy metal, med kjente band som
Mayhem, Burzum, og Dimmu Borgir.
English: Norway has a rich history in heavy metal, with well-known bands such
as Mayhem, Burzum, and Dimmu Borgir.
2. Norwegian: Black metal er en av de mest kjente sjangrene innen norsk heavy
metal, med fokus på mørke temaer og eksperimentelle lyder.
English: Black metal is one of the most well-known genres within Norwegian
heavy metal, with a focus on dark themes and experimental sounds.
3. Norwegian: Death metal og thrash metal er også populære sjangre i Norge, med
band som Enslaved og Satyricon.
English: Death metal and thrash metal are also popular genres in Norway, with
bands such as Enslaved and Satyricon.Wait! I thought you couldn't talk about that. Apparently it can! There's also another 7 sentences in this set all perfectly good for the avid Norwegian death metal fan.
I hope you can see that if you are interested in learning a language everything you knew about how to go about that has changed. ChatGPT is a brilliant personal tutor who can endlessly pump out examples, explanations, tutoring, feedback, corrections, and historical perspective all day long.
If you want to light your home today, you usually do not start out raising bees. Traditional foreign language learning methods today bear the same kind of resemblance to ChatGPT as pre-20th century chandlery does to electric lighting.
Ha det gøy, og jeg håper å se deg på skiløypene i Holmenkollen i Oslo!
UPDATE 2023-07-17
Learning ancient Latin I cam across Luke Ranieri. He has tons of extremely high quality resources for learning all kinds of languages. He has a really excellent strategic approach to gaining foreign language mastery which, like mine, focuses on natural interactions and not rote memorization.
This video is particularly excellent (the first half hour cover the strategy with examples following). His very sensible modern approach uses resources like audio books. But just the mentality is the real brilliance. So I would add his techniques to modern best practices.