ChatGPT, the mother of all evils or a useful tool?

In the week school restarted after the Weihnachstferien (Christmas break), temperatures plummeted to -11°C, the Deutsche Bahn – and consequently, the S-Bahn – was on strike and Berlin’s streets were invaded by tractors driven by angry farmers, I have plenty of material to write about but I’ve decided to focus on a totally unrelated topic: ChatGPT.

Since its release at the end of 2022, the chatbot developed by OpenAI has been in the news constantly. We’ve seen headlines about generating fake articles, spreading disinformation, causing security threats and privacy concerns, as well as providing incorrect answers. Moreover, AI poses serious risks, such as job losses, social manipulation, the potential for bias, extinction and "loss of control". I recently read that it also has an extremely negative impact on the climate.

One particularly intriguing story involves an influencer on Instagram, Emily Pellegrini, who, in a few months, has acquired thousands of followers, including famous football players, billionaires and tennis players. The twist? Emily doesn’t actually exist; she has been generated by AI. Apparently, she’s supposed to be realistic, but I’ve never seen a woman with a body shaped like hers.

Wary of the controversy and negativity surrounding AI and ChatGPT, I hadn’t used the tool until recently. However, my curiosity led me to enroll in a course on ChatGPT for writing in November, and the experience turned out to be eye-opening.

For all its faults, I have found ChatGPT to be a valuable tool for generating and correcting text. As a non-native speaker living in Germany, grappling with the intricacies of the language is a challenge. The problem with German grammar is that it’s quite complex. There are three genders, “only” four cases, adjective endings that change based on definite and indefinite article, gender and case… just to name a few difficulties. So, writing in German is especially tricky.

If, like me, you hate making mistakes and feel embarrassed about sending work or official emails, including to your child’s schoolteachers, that have not been proofread, here is where ChatGPT can help.

For years, I’ve been relying on my husband to correct emails and text messages, something he dislikes because of my perfectionism (what’s wrong with that?), a concept he struggles to understand. For him, it’s all about sending out emails and text messages in the shortest time possible, even if they are incomprehensible to the recipient. Mostly I end up replying to him: “Huh?!? What’s that supposed to mean?”

But now, I no longer need to ask my husband, I ask ChatGPT to correct what I’ve written in German and it does a pretty good job, probably as good as a human being. Unfortunately, it’s made me realise that I still make loads of mistakes – which is rather depressing after all these years – but now I have a proofreader and teacher all in one. After all, learning from one’s mistakes is a valuable lesson.

ChatGPT is also useful for brainstorming, analysing complex text, translating and writing Instagram posts (it also suggests emojis). In conclusion, ChatGPT can be helpful for language learners and writers, but remember that you first need to use your own brain before you use artificial intelligence. So don’t send anything out unless you have fact-checked and proofed it yourself.

As I write this on a Friday evening, the temperature is hovering around zero, the Deutsche Bahn strike is coming to end, but the farmers have not yet returned to the countryside and are threatening more strikes. Life is never boring in Berlin, with or without ChatGPT. 

*Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

A tricky telephone conversation

Anyone who speaks a foreign language will know that certain situations are particularly tricky: for example, when you’re on the telephone (and can’t see the facial expressions and lip movements of the other person); when you’re on the telephone and the person at the other end is giving you distressing news; when you’re on the telephone, the person at the other end is giving you distressing news and can’t pronounce the German consonant "z" properly (the German consonant "z" sounds like "ts" in English).

Last Friday, I had just sat down at my desk to write a post about my experience with crowdfunding, when the phone suddenly rang. It was a local Berlin number, caller unknown. When I picked up, the male voice at the other end of the line sounded excessively jolly; the man was clearly trying not to alarm me. As soon as I heard the word Schwimmhalle, or swimming pool, I realised this would not be a jolly conversation indeed. He was calling to inform me that my son had just had an accident and had injured his "Fahn". He repeated the word that sounded like "Fahn" and I wondered what on earth he meant. I had never heard of a "Fahn". What could you injure in a swimming pool? How worried should I be? He also suggested I should make an appointment with a doctor of some sort. By now I was getting quite frantic.

The German language is renowned for its compound words. The word for doctor is Arzt and the words denoting most specialist doctors are compound nouns ending in arzt. For instance, a paediatrician is a Kinderarzt (literally children’s doctor), a gynaecologist is a Frauenarzt (women’s doctor), a dermatologist is a Hautarzt (skin doctor), while a dentist is a Zahnarzt (tooth doctor). If only I could understand what doctor he meant, then I might be able to guess which part of the body had been injured. After the man repeated the word Zahnarzt several times, I suddenly realised that my son had hurt his tooth.

I put on my face mask, jumped into a taxi and gave the driver the address of the swimming pool. During the short taxi ride, I kept replaying the sentence in my head “Hopefully the tooth can still be saved”, which I realised is what the man had actually said. That didn’t sound too reassuring. When I got to the pool, I saw a group of schoolchildren waiting outside; they were being instructed in the AHA rules. I made my way inside and followed the yellow arrows on the floor, courtesy of the coronavirus regulations, and eventually found my son talking to the Bademeister or pool supervisor. After signing the accident form, we were joined by the swimming instructor, who first told me about the accident, but then proceeded to complain about the other children’s poor breaststroke technique. Somehow it didn’t seem like an appropriate conversation, given that I’d been called there for an emergency.

For anyone who hasn’t learnt to swim in Germany, you should know that children in this country first have to master breaststroke perfectly before they can learn any other stroke. I read in a German newspaper once that this tradition stems from the army: you need to be able to swim with your head above water to hear commands and to keep an eye out for the enemy! 

When we eventually got to the dentist, my son was seen very quickly, and we were reassured that his Zahn wasn’t loose, while his gum would heal rapidly despite looking, in the words of the dentist, gruesome. I will spare you the gory details, suffice it so say, it involved a piece of gum and some bleeding. By Monday morning, the gum had healed as if by magic, and he was able to go back to school. All’s well that ends well.

To go back to the beginning of this story, in order to be able to speak a foreign language on the phone, it’s not enough to be a good listener, you also have to be good at guesswork.

*Photo by Sharjeel Khalid on Unsplash

Io parlo Deutsch

 Growing up with three languages part 2

I have recently read some interesting articles and studies about bilinguals, but I have found very little on trilinguals.

When I was a child and teenager (back in the 80's and 90's) being bilingual was not that common. I remember being on a school trip and phoning home from a telephone box, with my Italian class mates listening in fascination as I spoke English to my Mum. What was normal to me was special for most of them.
These days being bilingual is not such a big deal, but being trilingual still is.
I know a few children being raised with three languages and my son is one of them. As with most parenting issues, I tend to ignore the advice I don't agree with and follow my own instincts. In this case my instinct told me that we should try to raise little one with three languages right from birth.
His first words were a mixture of German, Italian and English and by a very early age he could already distinguish between the three languages. When he was two years old and started constructing actual sentences, there was a prevalence of German, which is the language of the country we live in. But whenever we spent some time in Italy or England, his vocabulary would suddenly expand and he would become more confident in the other two languages.
By the age of three, Leo's Italian was at the same level as his German (especially after spending several weeks in Italy over the summer holidays), but his English mainly consisted of simple "yes" and "no" answers and some basic words. 
During the past year, he has often surprised us with his growing understanding of English sentences. Before he turned four he could follow most of what we were saying in English and watch Peppa Pig or Thomas the Tank Engine in English without any problems. Then around his fourth birthday and after spending time in Italy with his Italian and English family, we had a breakthrough: little one suddenly started speaking English, constructing full sentence and using different tenses.
"That was amazing!"
"We are going to the airport."
"The bridge collapsed." 
"When Henry arrived, Thomas left."
"Thank you for flying Lufthansa, on time!"
Now not only does he speak English, but he can switch from English to German and/or Italian and back without any trouble.
He knows exactly which language to use depending on the country, the person, the book or the character of the story. For example, if he is playing with Thomas the Tank Engine, then he only speaks English. If he is a pilot talking to the manager at Frankfurt airport, he speaks German. If he has to explain something to me he switches to Italian.
Sometimes he mixes words from different languages or he adds "en" to an Italian word to make the German equivalent or "o" to an English word to make the Italian equivalent.
For example: "Der bridge ist schon damaged" -->German & English
"In dieser Direzionen" ("direzionen" from the Italian direzione) -->German
"Ora metto il Deckel e poi squeezo il dentrificio" ("squeezo" from the English squeeze) --> Italian and German
As with "squeezo", the results are often hilarious.