Thread

1. jeanbza · 1789506854 · focus · HN ↗

   My first language is Afrikaans, which is a somewhat niche language and hard to find teachers/conversation buddies outside South Africa. (I live in USA now)

   I've been using Gemini to live chat in Afrikaans and do impromptu Afrikaans grammar lessons during my solo drives around town. It is phenomenal at speaking the language - like, it really shocks my family members when they hear it.

   This is probably the most joy I get from any of my usages of LLMs/AIs. It's been really, really nice getting to speak my language regularly again. =)

   So, I'm excited about this release and live chat getting better. I also hope the other frontier labs pick up niche languages like this as well so that I have more options.

   1. manzout · 1789549837 · focus · HN ↗

      Did this with shona.On the road trip we (3 human occupants) spoke to Gemini in ndebele, karanga, portuguese and ndau and have switch seamlessly to another lanuage like german without loosing the thread of the conversation. what impressed me was its ability to recognize the subtle dialects of shona being spoken, articulate its unncertainty, ask for clarification and carry on. when asked to speak those dialects it politely lamented it could not. when pushed it insisted and basically apologized in a technically correct but awefully pronounced sentence of the dialect before going back to english.

      1. zimprop · 1789568221 · focus · HN ↗

         Hey I literally just did the same thing after seeing the Afrikaans reference ndikawona kuti zvirikushanda! I was incredibly surprised, its shona was really formal but that makes sense when thinking about getting training data.

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