Learning norsk with chatgpt? what do native speakers say to my exchange?

9 comments

1. That exchange illustrates perfectly why you shouldn’t rely on ChatGPT (et al.) to learn a language. I can see from a quick glance several errors that it ignored (“da” should have been “når”, “den følgende” should have been “det følgende”, etc).

2. It seems to be quite good to talk to, but it does do some strange translations. Like translating “whistle” to pip, or “squeak”

   But it seems good at explaining grammar.

3. I wouldn’t do it if I were you

   First of all, it is making several mistakes in its own norwegian, so you are risking getting used to incorrect norwegian by using it as input

   Second, the correction it did at the end is wrong, so I wouldn’t trust it for that either. You could say something like «*Jeg kunne ikke plystre da jeg var ung. Det var først på ungdomsskolen at jeg lærte det*» or something (I didn’t change the «da» because I don’t personally know how to use it, but I am fairly confident with the rest of the sentence)

   I also don’t know if it was supposed to correct your other messages or not, but there were definitely mistakes there as well that it didn’t say anything about. They were not much worse than its own mistakes though, so maybe it just didn’t realise

   I personally don’t recommend using ChatGPT in any language you are not very confortable in yourself, but you know, do whatever you want

4. Also whistle is plystre not pipe

5. It’s not awful, but it does make some elementary mistakes. One immediate example I noticed was the translation of [whistle] to [pipe] instead of [plystre].

6. I mean, it’s pretty decent – but the correct sentence would be:

   “Da jeg var et barn, kunne jeg ikke [plystre]. Det var først på ungdomsskolen at en venn lærte meg det.”

7. It’s not always 100% correct, but it’s pretty close for learning. Da/når mistakes don’t matter unless you want to work as a Norwegian teacher. If it inspires you to learn more, just go for it.

8. The answer about dobbel bestemmelse is so confusing I don’t even know where to start.

   edit: There’s an “i norsk” instead of “på norsk”. Also “concerns” translated as “bekymringer” which does not make sense in this context even if it’s not technically wrong, just weird.

   “Det var først på ungdomsskolen da en venn lærte meg dette” doesn’t work. I’m not sure exactly where the logic broke down, but it has nothing to do with “da” vs “når”. You could replace “da” with “at” for a working (if awkward) sentence. As it is, the “da” translates to “when” and invites a second part to the sentence.

9. “Da jeg var barn kunne jeg ikke plystre. Det var først på ungdomsskolen at en venn lærte meg det.”

   Not:
   – Da jeg var *et* barn
   – [the comma]
   – kunne jeg ikke *pipe*
   – *da* en venn