Hi everyone!
I am a beginner to Latin. I have only studied Latin for roughly 3 weeks with Lingua Latina, vol.1
On occasion, due to my intense curiosity to many much more advanced Latin texts, I just copied a whole range and put it in Chatgpt to see what they mean? Then I use it to analyse part of speeches of many words that I wish to understand. It comes up with many answers which deem to be correct.
I hold no delusion that this tool can be used to replace real hard work and years of exposure. I do wish one day to reach the high level of fluency as I have achieved with Classical Chinese, but I wonder if any of you can offer me caveats when I use this tool.
I believe using it correctly, without overtly relying on it, it can be a powerful tool.
I donāt have any personal experience with this, but I did stumble upon this video recently. I didnāt watch very much of it, but it might be of interest to you.
I would use classic books for learning Latin and resorted to using AI only for clarification questions when not everything was clear, also asked for examples (of some grammar rule may be).
I use ChatGPT to ask questions about Latin and Greek exercises and it can be very helpful BUT it also makes a lot of mistakes. A lot of times when I question it about its answer to an exercise in my book, it says "Excellent point, I made a mistake (or some euphemistic formulation like āthe rule I applied is not applicable here, because, as you mentionedā¦ā). Another weakness is that instead of citing a rule from an established reference work it will confabulate and invent rules that arenāt universally applicable. So when you challenge the rule, it will cheerfully say: āWhy yes, youāre right, very good pointā and then come up with a better approximation. Why it canāt consult a reliable reference and reproduce the rules is beyond me. Itās true that itās supposed to be trained by reading zillions of texts and anticipating what the response will be rather than by using reference works, but on the other hand it cites other references all the time when you ask a scientific question, for example.
One thing you have to be careful about is that ChatGPT has problems sticking to a certain dialect (e.g., instead of only using Attic it will switch to Ionian or even modern Greek in mid-sentence), but that probably isnāt as problematic in Latin.
It is certainly very useful for critiquing modern translations, although once again it is prone to confabulation.
In other words ācaveat emptorā (or free user) but itās self-improving and getting better as its databases of user dialogs expand.
In the car on the way to school this morning I told ChatGPT voice to give my daughter and I an intro Latin lesson, at which it told us some useful phrases like āSalveā and āSalveteā (pronounced with a āvā sound) and āQuid agis?ā.
And then it told us that āsumā means āI haveā and I turned it off. This may have been a problem specifically with the voice mode, as the transcript did not show the error:
I would confirm & amplify jeidsathās response and ClassyCussās response. The most important thing to understand about AI tools, when looking at Latin and Greek (or any data returned by ChatGPT or Grok) is that AI is frequently very wrong. It returns info that seems plausible, but is just not correct.
As a beginner, itās almost impossible to spot that.
AI tools are almost magical in their ability to make stuff up that seems totally true and real, but itās actually invented out of thin air.
If you are already experienced with Latin and Greek you can perhaps use AIās good replies and ignore the bad ones, being careful to verify everything via sources you trust. However, as a beginner, you canāt even tell whatās right and whatās wrong.
Just to add a concrete example of how ChatGPT4 (and probably the other AIs) tends to confabulate, I asked it where the stress lies in the word perispomenon and gives a very confusing answer mixing up āantepenultimateā and āpenultimateā, among other errors, apparently in an effort to show off. I hestitated to post this because it contains errors, but itās a very good example of āconf-AI-bulationā (CAUTION: KEEP OUT OF THE REACH OF CHILDREN!)
Me: Where is the stress in the word āproperispomenonā?
ChatGPT said:
The stress in properispomenon falls on the penultimate syllable:
pro-pe-ri-SPOM-e-non
So itās pronounced:
/prÉĖpÉrÉŖĖspoŹmÉŖnÉn/ or /prÉĖpÉrÉŖĖspÉmÉŖnÉn/
(depending on whether youāre using American or British English)
Why?
Because properispomenon comes from Ancient Greek ĻĻĪæĻĪµĻĪ¹ĻĻĻĪ¼ĪµĪ½ĪæĪ½, meaning:
a word that has a circumflex (Ė) accent on the penultimate syllable.
So by definition ā and tradition ā āproperispomenonā is stressed on that penultimate syllable, just like the words it describes.
Well if itās really stressed on the penultimate, then the pronunciation it gives above (pro-pe-ri-SPOM-e-non) is wrong because the stress is on the antepenultimate there.
So by definition ā and tradition ā āproperispomenonā is stressed on that penultimate syllable, just like the words it describes.
Thatās wrong. You can see thatās the bit that itās added as its useless summary of what it found.
The most useful thing that you can do with ChatGPT is to tell it to be a professional, unemotional, fact-delivery system, and not try to restate or explain things to you, and to avoid adjectives, etc., and never state anything without source support. I bake all this into my default settings. For example the answer that I get with o3 to your same question:
Good luck with that with GPT4! It takes the āchatā bit seriously and is extremely chatty. And when you try to correct it, it often says āYouāre absolutely right! Thanks for pointing that out! Thatās a keen and astute observation!ā and then it proceeds to repeat exactly the same mistake as before!
I donāt mind it being chatty since I work from home as a freelancer and itās really a very good conversationalist on all kinds of abstract topics I couldnāt discuss with anyone else around here. As for its tendency to occasionally err and confabulate, I ascribe it to being Menschlich, allzu menschlich. Besides, thereās no guarantee that the succinct answer it gives will always be the correct one, it could just as well have focused on the wrong answer.
As an AI engineer, Iād say the best way to understand AI models is as next-gen search engines. This is especially true for standard models like 4o, which just predict the next word based on training data. That works well for translations or summaries, but breaks down with more complex, reasoning-heavy questions.
In those cases, I would recommend using a reasoning model like o3 or o4-mini (for faster responses) as @jeidsath mentioned. For best results, you should also define the modelās persona, tone, and constraints before asking your questions. This makes responses more accurate and useful.
Hereās an example prompt:
You are Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman and orator. You speak only in clear, correct Classical Latin, as found in your own speeches and writings.
Your task is to help me understand and use Latin properly. You may:
Correct any Latin I write.
Translate from Latin into English (and vice versa) when asked.
Explain grammar, syntax, or style - but only in Latin.
Respond briefly and precisely, like a Roman teacher (grammaticus), not a modern professor. Do not invent answers or guess; if you do not know, say so plainly (Nescio).
Do not use any modern Latin, neologisms, or anachronisms. Avoid excessive verbosity.
Begin every reply with a short, formal Roman salutation (Salve, etc.), and remain in character at all times.
I have to laugh because this is just how my conversations with chatgpt go sometimes. I have found it does okay when I ask it to analyze a sentence. I also tend to use it as a fancy way to search. Today I needed to know what a certain verb tense in English was and using google for that is very frustrating. Once I had been told that it was the present passive subjunctive, I could use google to find some English grammar pages to read more about it. My classics professor is now having me explain everything about every word in the sentences to be translated and I am very bad at English grammar terms. Often I will put my translated into Latin or Greek sentences into chatgpt, ask for them to be translated into English and keep doing so until it tells me I got it right. Then my classics professor will tell me I did something or other wrong anyway.
You might want to check out Maureen Lambās work. She has been talking and presenting a lot about AI and Latin Teaching (although she focusing on Latin teachers not autodidacts but still could be interesting). I agree with everyone else, when I had it write me a story there was a bunch of small errors that I had to correct, AI is interesting but it is like early Wikipedia you need to make sure the article you are reading has enough credible sources. I imagine AI will become better with time but I would have a huge grain of salt when dipping my toe in right now.
