• I was in a situation where I was all set up to learn basic/introductory mandarin in person in a classroom setting for no cost but my time, and covid hit and wrecked everything.

    that opportunity is gone now, but if I can every orchestrate something like that again, I am going for it.

    I’ve tried conversational audio lessons on my own, and have done that for basic skills in a few other languages… but the tonal thing with mandarin throws me and I can hear myself as being way off. baby needs in person instruction!

    • Inui [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      7 days ago

      I know AI isnt very popular around here and for good reason, but this is one of the legitimate uses I think. Just like anything else, stuff like ChatGPT will hallucinate if you ask it direct questions, but its actually pretty helpful if you say something like “I’m going to speak to you in Mandarin Chinese, repeat back to me what I said in English and output my text in Simplified Chinese characters”. I’ve used the new conversation feature of the mobile app to help me drill sentences and practice tones, along with stuff like Hello Chinese that has speech recognition for its lessons too.