> Chat-GPT gets basic concepts like verb suffixes wrong, that is, explaining those concepts and generating example sentences
This matters if you ask it for grammar. But you can get to a pretty advanced level before this starts to affect you when trying to have a conversation which is usually far more forgiving. And while ChatGPT certainly makes errors, even for a minor language like Norwegian it gets it close enough that I can get it to have a perfectly fine conversation in minor regional dialects.
I think the best thing to do is to pair something like this with a more traditional course for learning the specific rules, because starting to speak as early as possible is a great way of building a level of fluency that takes ages otherwise. Not least because ChatGPT will still understand you pretty well if you mix two languages within a sentence, so you can start talking almost right away and tell it to translate as needed.
You can already ask this app to translate things to your own language - I had it both translate French to Norwegian, and asked it a question in French which it translated to French before responding.
Even then you'll find a conversational environment far more forgiving, because of a combination of context and a feedback loop. There's a reason childhood acquisition of language works just fine without an explicit practice of grammar rules.
The point isn't that you wouldn't benefit from it doing better, but that it doesn't need to be anywhere near perfect to help a typical language student improve.
This matters if you ask it for grammar. But you can get to a pretty advanced level before this starts to affect you when trying to have a conversation which is usually far more forgiving. And while ChatGPT certainly makes errors, even for a minor language like Norwegian it gets it close enough that I can get it to have a perfectly fine conversation in minor regional dialects.
I think the best thing to do is to pair something like this with a more traditional course for learning the specific rules, because starting to speak as early as possible is a great way of building a level of fluency that takes ages otherwise. Not least because ChatGPT will still understand you pretty well if you mix two languages within a sentence, so you can start talking almost right away and tell it to translate as needed.
You can already ask this app to translate things to your own language - I had it both translate French to Norwegian, and asked it a question in French which it translated to French before responding.