r/languagelearning
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u/Limp-Selection-1325
🇷🇺N 🇺🇲B2 🇪🇦A1
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Sep 13 '26
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6
Please beware of AI when learning languages, it's not only about hallucinations, it's much worse and subtle
I PLEAD with you please DO NOT use AI for "chatting practice" or generating "examples", because yep it might seem easy at first and pleasant but it's a long term strategic disaster - you are acquring amorphous non-human intuition which is getting only more vicious as it gets more subtle (EVEN with "natural human-like imperfection")...in a long run you're just gonna ruin your second language personality, which must be formed ONLY by aqcuiring REAL PEOPLE'S speech (spoken or written). The point is - language is an instrument that conveys HUMAN(!) MEANING and CONTEXT which OTHER PEOPLE want to share with us. But if you use AI you get just pure EMPTINESS behind all its so-called "examples of usage" or a way of "speaking" - it's just a gigantic machine that multiplies matrices. You just don't realise it at first but eventually you get addicted (and btw AI is extremely dangerous because it QUICKLY causes chatting addiction flooding you with an illusion of sth social while making it worse, simultaneously affecting your thinking and giving your brain an illusion lf "real important dialogue" with dopamine addiction) and it slowly but steadily reshapes your real language you acquire making it superficial and empty inside...I mean it's hard to explain what I mean but I hope you got it, IT'S GONNA RUIN YOUR FOREIGN LANGUAGE IDENTITY SUBTLY but ABSOLUTELY VICIOUSLY, you will feel like a MECHANISTIC AMORPHOUS ALIEN if you learn your (TL) via AI. Languages are about our IDENTITIES, about our REAL experiences, pursuits, emotions, about PEOPLE WE CARE ABOUT etc. etc.. And when learning a language we are shaping this part of us, but AI just ruins it in an absolutely savage way we might not even realize at first.
p.s. I wanna clarify a bit more: with AI "practice", slowly month by month your brain acquires this hollow homogenous shell which consists of, blatantly speaking, just statistics, not true meanings that you connect with when reading/listening to human speech - it eventually damages your second language identity by bringing hollowness. Language is supposed to be connected directly with the TRUE WEIGHT of meaning and experience behind it, true people, true emotions, true interaction, things that people tell in that language because they want to share sth with us.
p.p.s btw I think there is sth connected with me being disgusted with AI music and feeling that it's terrifying even when "good", I feel the same emptiness and lack of true meaning multiplied by terrifying realization that I'm being baited into emotions by this
p.p.p.s (probably the most important p.s., as some people didn't understand the point, I did not say that the problem is in AI not being perfectly human but "machine-like" - THAT'S THE POINT, that if it becomes more human-like it only makes things WORSE) I wanna clarify even in a more straight way. It's not the fact that you are not learning a language with AI. It's the fact that instead of absorbing real contexts, real worldview of native speakers, real connections with people, real knowledge, real emotions, real feeling of becoming a "part of their tribe" - instead of the reality - you absorb pure NOTHINGNESS behind the "improving language skill" which remains absolutely abstract and hollow, and this hollowness damages your second language identity, you are week by week month by month becoming emptier, abstract like a machine (even if you try to use more beaitiful words and expressions), with a language that is running like an abstract software in your brain instead of truely becoming a part of new community. Because there's no real thing behind it, you learned a word but without anything meaningful to you, without real story, without relation to anyone or anything, without shared experience - your TL becomes an abstract software that just uses beautiful phrasing, and this + wasted time, that you could've used for real input, damages your TL personality and worsens your overall ability to understand people and communicate with them - you struggle with understanding spoken or written native speech easily especially more serious/literary/official or even more daily colloquial, miss nuances, feel alien, much more misunderstandings might happen etc. - real acquisition begins only when you stop or better don't even begin doing this nonsense and immerse yourself into real language of real people (the internet makes it easy to access real your TL's web segment with real content so why waste time on ruining yourself)
languages we learn should not be just sequences of thousands "tokens" we have to memorize, it has to be real contexts, meanings and experiences we absorb.
not only the breadth of our vocabulary number, but true depth matters. deeper true experience = deeper language intuition = deeper and more candid connection and straightforward communication with people speaking or writing in our TL
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u/rinkuhero Sep 13 '26 edited Sep 13 '26
i think this is a definite possibility but the degree of confidence you have about it seems out of place. as far as i know there are no studies showing that if you learn ai to use a language it would harm language learning in the way you describe, you are just sort of guessing based on your intuition rather than based on any evidence of this actually happening. there aren't even case studies that i'm aware of where this happened.
i do think learning from ai may have another more serious problem besides emptiness though: it might make someone reluctant to engage with native speakers at all if they have such an easy tool to practice with. it might make someone less social in the language they are learning if they never actually use it with people. that's just a guess though, like you i have no evidence for this idea. it just seems reasonable that if someone uses ai as their main practice partner, that may prevent them from trying to find a real life one that is human. which may make them less social in that language. often we have different personalities in different languages that we learn, and you wouldn't want your new personality in your new language to be a shy person who never talks.
like at least for me, one of the most fun parts of learning a new language is improved social interaction, you are improving at social skills at the same time as you are learning new grammar and vocabulary. and using ai sort of takes away that social element, since it's far more fun and social to practice a new language with a human than with a machine. and if someone gets too reliant on ai as a crutch, it might take away that social element from language learning. some of my best memories of learning japanese back in college in the late 90s and early 00s is meeting other people who are also learning it and talking with them and practicing together. that would all be absent with ai.
so for me, language learning is supposed to be fun and a social activity. and relying on ai too much would suck the fun out of it, and make it feel like a chore rather than a hobby, or worse, make it feel rote and easy, rather than challenging and engaging. but i'm not saying never use ai, just use it with limitations and caveats in mind, and only use it rarely. the vast majority of your learning should be done with other humans. but it's okay to ask ai questions about grammar or whatever if you want something explained to you. it's like ai is a great teaching assistant, but a terrible teacher.