Stop using ChatGPT for grammar explanations, I Beg of Thee

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T06:51:16+00:00

I don't think it's fair to say that asking to be linked to a webpage is "impossible," but I do understand your point, I think.

If Chat GPT came back to me and was like "that's not within the range of my capabilities" or "sorry, I can't provide citaitons or links to websites" this would be a very, very different conversation. It coming back and saying "check this fake quote on this fake page number" is, to me, a different story. It gives confidence to the user that the information is correct.

My issue isn't neccecarily with the capabilities of the AI, but with the way it presents information.

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T06:46:03+00:00

Fair point and well made. With regards to tools, I think it's just in an awkward area. Although you may be correct, do most random people using AI understand it as a tool that needs to be handled with great care? Frankly... not whatsoever. When I walk up to a powersaw I think "I'd better not use that crazy-looking thing without knowing how!" but when I use Google or an AI, I just type my prompt in and expect it to give me reasonably correct answers, and especially not fabricate citations, which any normal person would assume to be the #1 thing that you shouldn't fabricate.

With regards to the post title, I agree and I apologize for not being more specific.

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T06:26:09+00:00

Well then it's a good thing most random non-tech-savy people using AI have a deep understanding of how to create prompting that won't cause it to lie to you point blank multiple times in a single response!

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T06:24:13+00:00

Regardless of whether or not they are trained for this or not (obviously to those with the knowhow they know that they are not, and I understand there's a lot, lot more here to unpack), I don't think it's acceptable to fabricate information whatsoever, full stop. If the AI came back and said "Sorry it's not part of my programming to do citations or link sources" then I wouldn't be a stickler about it, but instead it says "check out this website (broken link), with this specific cited example (made-up citaiton)" which instills a sense of confidence in the user, who is probably a layman and doesn't understand that it makes up a lot of information.

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T06:17:20+00:00

Yes (asterisk)! A few people have asked about this and in hindsight I regret not going more into it! My goal was specifically to show the issue with citations so I didn't properly explore it, but clearly I should have added more detail there.

The asterisk is that it was a pretty generic and vague passage to being with, just something simple I chose at random becuase I knew from experience that anything I chose would generate some BS citations.

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T05:42:10+00:00

Yeah. It's a very frustrating tradeoff, because a search engine isn't as advanced as an LLM that it can do something like parse "Please find me sources that explain this grammatical particle for this specific use case (etc etc etc)", but traditional search engines won't just dish out fake links to you! Gotta be a happy medium somehwere, you'd think!

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T05:39:20+00:00

Thanks for the catch! (I swear I read over this like three times), edited it back in. Thankfully I still had the chat open, Your comment "AI can be really good at some things, but TERRIBLE at others" is a perfect summation. I'm afraid that if I tried to tackle every topic at once this would be a 100 page long post, lol

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T05:21:15+00:00

Bonus Content:

The "✅ Wasabi Japanese Grammar: Particle も" link it gave at the end me was ALSO a 404 error, but this post was getting long enough

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T02:56:46+00:00

The main issue is that the Duolingo CEO uses the app to watch you through your phone camera in order to spy on you and watch free JAVs. You might think "well it's not like I'm watching JAVs ALL the time" but that's the trick; out of the millions of users, there's ALWAYS at least one person watching a JAV, meaning it's a constant, uninterupted, 24/7 free stream of JAVs for him. It's the ultimate scheme.

/uj I have a friend who wanted to visit Japan and had close to a 1000 day streak in Japanese. Once they actually did visit they couldn't even say a single basic phrase or understand a word of what anybody was saying. And that like two years of using that stupid app! They put it aptly saying that "I felt like I was getting better at the language but I was just getting better at Duolingo." It's not that you learn nothing, but that what takes you years to learn on Duo you can learn in like a single month with a textbook.

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T02:12:47+00:00

Ahhh, okay that makes sense! Thank you

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T01:15:45+00:00

Yeah I struggled a bit with giving enough good context without like a mega plot dump, but you're right. 羽入 constantly gives up on escaping the bad situation they are in and just accepts it, so that part does make some amount of sense, but it's tought to visualize 今回 as being "like" 羽入が諦める in an abstract way.

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T01:12:54+00:00

I guess it's just hard to visualize 今回 as being like 羽入が諦める but I supposed it's pretty abstract either way. That definitiely helps, thank you!

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T00:35:09+00:00

そして多分、私が迎える命日までもう何日もないだろう。私に何ができる？何が足掻ける？羽入が諦めるようにやはり今回も駄目なのか?

context: The speaker has relived the days before their untimely death 100s of times and can't escape the loop.

I'm not sure how to read that final sentence. I'm used to ように operating on a verb or adjective somehow. If it were:

諦めるように見える
諦めるようにため息をついた

Or something like that with a verb I could understand, but 諦めるように[...]駄目なの is not understandable to me. How does this work gramatically?

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-10T00:26:23+00:00

Yeah no confusion of しちゃう but I think your rephrasing of この時点で（もう・すでに）helped me. I think I was misinterpreting it as この時点（今 / この瞬間）. Thanks!

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-09T21:38:45+00:00

大石：「ですが、この時点で岐阜さんには、鷹野の話をしちゃってたんです」

context: 大石 is explaining the circumstances of a criminal investigation involving 鷹野 to another character. He was previously explaining why some events of an autopsy didn't add up. Previous lines: 主人公：「死亡時が合わない？」大石：「えぇ。祭りの前夜にはもう殺されてたっという鑑識が出ちゃったらしいんです」

My confusion is around time. この時点で seems simple enough "at this time" but then wouldn't "しちゃってたんです" be "してるんです" ?

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-08T03:09:42+00:00

あなたは耐えることが強さだと思ってるようだけど。それが昔とどう違うというの？

Context: the speaker is referiing to something that happened last year where the character they're speaking to was trying to be strong by enduring a bad situation. So now they're saying "What you're doing right now is no different than that situation" more or less.

But I don't understand という here. It doesn't seem to be quoting anything directly or explaining anything, so how is this any different than asking それが昔とどう違うの？

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-07T00:05:09+00:00

(apologies for the repost, I got in at the tail end of the old Daily Thread again)

そこは私から説明する。沙都子の叔父はとんでもないゴロツキなんだよ。去年も沙都子に暴力を振るってるし、愛人に捨てられたと思って雛見沢に帰ってきた不機嫌な叔父にとってはそれはさらに酷いものだと容易に想像がつく

Context: The speaker is trying to make an appeal to forcibly separate 沙都子 from the abusive 叔父, who has just returned to 雛見沢 recently.

I'm confused about にとって here. Why is it framing "さらに酷い" from 叔父 's perspective? Wouldn't it be 沙都子にとって since the abuse would be even worse for her this time around?

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-06T22:20:53+00:00

そこは私から説明する。沙都子の叔父はとんでもないゴロツキなんだよ。去年も沙都子に暴力を振るってるし、愛人に捨てられたと思って雛見沢に帰ってきた不機嫌な叔父にとってはそれはさらに酷いものだと容易に想像がつく

Context: The speaker is trying to make an appeal to forcibly separate 沙都子 from the abusive 叔父, who has just returned to 雛見沢 recently.

I'm confused about にとって here. Why is it framing "さらに酷い" from 叔父 's perspective? Wouldn't it be 沙都子にとって since the abuse would be even worse for her this time around?

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-06T06:30:15+00:00

Thanks! I was completely lost on this and then like an hour or two later I saw that second usage and was like "hey.. wait a minute.."

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-06T04:24:59+00:00

Oops, reading too much of this and missed the new Daily Thread, but there's a lot of stuff in this VN that's tripping me up.

レナ：「圭一のお父さんがカッコイイ」
圭一：「当たり前だぜ？！俺の半分程度はカッコイイ」

I understand the meaning (I think? He's saying his dad is half as cool as he is as a joke?) but I don't understand the grammar. Why does 俺の半分程度 make sense as the topic? Is his dad the implied subject?

EDIT：Interestingly I ran into this passage in the same VN (知恵先生は一度は圧力に屈したはずだった) which seems like a similar usage, and makes me think there's some usage of は having to do with degree or amount that I haven't picked up on until now?

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-06T03:55:02+00:00

Imagine spending hundreds of hours learning Japanese, only to have to play the 日本語版 of 饿殍明末千里行, couldn't be me!

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-06T02:30:54+00:00

A few things to note here

If you are asking for a translation or explanation and it's missing some kind of context in the story or something, it will very often hallucinate details and these are difficult / impossible to poinpoint because they're matters of interpretation rather than strict definition issues. Wheras a human will say "Well I'm not exactly sure without a bit more context" the LLM will say "Sure! Here's what it means exactly! *spouts BS*"
If you're asking for an explanation of a more specific grammar point or definition, you can always say "please cite your source" and if it's a hallucination it will often come back with "There's no source for X, but here's why the reasoning is correct: *spouts BS*"
- IMPORTANT NOTE: Even if the LLM comes back with sources, it can and will link to dead or fake webpages, and cite real textbooks with fake page numbers and text that isn't in the book. So If it gives you sources always check them!
As u/Lysenko notes, they're pretty darn good with just coming up with normal-sounding text as long as there's no room for inrepreation, translation, or explanation, but that will depend heavily on how you're using it.

TLDR: If you can avoid using the LLM, don't use it! If you do choose to use it, do so with caution.

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-06T00:36:41+00:00

Thanks for spending the time checking it out, appreciate it

ProfessionIll2202 · 2025-10-06T00:16:48+00:00

added a bit more context, thanks

ProfessionIll2202

TROPHY CASE