Of course, you can always speak Italian with AI.

You can ask it questions, and it will answer. You can instruct it to start a conversation and keep it going, so that you’ll answer.

You can also ask them to correct your mistakes. Or you can ask them to translate something for you.

AI is a really cool tool. I use it for a variety of purposes, and one of these is… to summarise, as I tend to write a lot! 🤣

“Please summarise this post I’ve just written!” And there it goes, quickly making it shorter for me.

And yet… it doesn’t sound like me. It sounds dry (or should I say… robotic!) and unnatural.

So, I always go through it again, take what I like from it, and delete or edit what doesn’t sound like me.

This is exactly why I would never ask AI to write something from scratch for me and copy and paste it — in any language!

And this is also why I would never use AI as the main way to learn to speak Italian: it doesn’t offer the full learning experience you’d get from having a conversation in Italian with a real human being.

It doesn’t always offer you the words we use in a real-life conversation, or the tone of voice we use, or the spoken and visual cues we use to build (or break!) rapport, interjections, those expressions that make a conversation natural and alive, cultural references… because it’s all these things together (not just the words) that allow us to build rapport with the other person.

If you just speak to AI, you may learn some new words for sure… but you won’t learn to build rapport using the Italian language. Because that’s a whole new skill that comes with speaking with real (Italian) people.

Plus, how fun  is having a conversation with a screen…?

And if you want to speak Italian because your main aim is to connect with Italian people… maybe it’s real people you should try to speak with.

My workshop “Crea la tua Cerchia di Italian” is next week (18th October). It’s all about creating your Italian tribe so that you can have unlimited opportunities to speak Italian with real people you resonate with. Learn more about it on this page right here.

Whether you come to the workshop or not, this post is my way to wish this: may your Italian learning journey be filled with engaging conversations with like-minded people that you love to speak to.

May you find the courage to speak to them, keep the conversation going, make mistakes, and learn even more… 

Because that’s one of the most enjoyable paths to finding your Italian voice — and then you’ll be able to tell if AI is actually doing a good job if you ever ask it to summarise what you said!😉

Ermy***

P.S.The above is an English translation of one of my Italian articles written for my subscribers (if you’re not one, you can become one here ). If you’d love to get more articles like this but IN ITALIAN, join my Italian learning club right here.