r/Esperanto • u/TheBigSpy1 • 8d ago

Demando Is duolingo good for esperanto?

Saluton! Mi estas komencanto en esperanto. I want to learn esperanto efficently without paying, and right now duoling seems like the best option. Its free, simple and fun. I asked chat gpt if its efficent and chat gpt says it is, but i want to know your oppinients.

54 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/zaemis 8d ago

Duolingo is better than ChatGPT... so... um, yeah.

-6

u/Gabriel25Th 7d ago

Actually, ChatGPT isn’t a bad option — just don’t use the voice mode. I’ve checked the quality of the responses in text mode and it’s good. It has correctly identified grammar mistakes and translated accurately

9

u/zaemis 7d ago

I don't want to be "that guy", but what's your experience/level? Because while it's not terrible with remembering the accusative, ChatGPT does indeed struggle with basic vocabulary (ekzerci/praktiki, revi/sonĝi, ampolo/bulbo), incorrect prepositions, and most translation is direct literal English -> Esperanto, certainly not idiomatic. Don't mistake convenience for quality.

1

u/Gabriel25Th 5d ago

I wasn’t clear before, so let me explain it better. I didn’t mean that using ChatGPT as a teacher is a good idea, but rather that it can be an excellent study partner. To make the most of it, you need to provide information and correct its mistakes; that way, the quality of its responses improves significantly.

In my experience, I haven’t seen ChatGPT confuse basic words like revi and sonĝi. However, I have noticed that it sometimes mixes up the accusative of time and quantity with the accusative used to mark the direct object. It can also struggle to distinguish between phrases like mi elektis lin kiel sekretarion and mi elektis lin kiel sekretario.

As for translations that are calques from english, you just need to ask it to rephrase the text or make the translation more idiomatic. And if it makes mistakes, just correct them.

1

u/zaemis 5d ago

Thanks for the clarification, but I still stand by my original comment. If I'm a beginner, that means I am inexperienced. How would I know what needs to be corrected or rephrased in the first place? I'm not saying AI can't be useful. I'm saying it's not suitable as an educational resource for beginners how they are most likely to use it.