31st March 2025

Using a language model as a tool to learn a language?

I was really interested in seeing more coordinates from Chinese lolitas, so now that many people from the US started to use Xiaohongshu (or Rednote), I made an account since the company managing it began to translate some of the UI into English and add features to enable multi-language communication.

Although they added features to translate, I've also taken it as an opportunity to learn some Chinese. Although I spoke negatively about AI in a previous post, I still believe that it can be used to better the world, and an area I think this is incredibly useful for is for interactive language translation - learning while doing. In a short period, I've begun to understand very basic grammar in Chinese, as well as learning a few words by heart (including the hanzi).

My method of composing a comment is as follows: Create the comment using a dictionary, and then ask questions to a language model, in order to verify meaning of certain words, make sure I got the grammar correct, and ensure that the tone is appropriate for a social media comment. The language model may suggest corrections, and I am able to ask why it made these corrections. From this, I can decide whether I agree with the correction, or whether I'd rather keep it how it was before. In this way, I can use the language model like how a teacher might mark your work in class, but the work is all related to things I am actually interested in, and I am able to ensure that I understand the corrections.

Using this method, well, Chinese people can tell that I don't speak Chinese like a native Chinese person living in China. However, it allows me to engage in a way that is understandable for those reading. I have had some people not realise that I am not Chinese. Since a lot of people joined from the US, there are many Chinese people on Xiaohongshu that make Chinese comments in a way that is intended to be easy to put through machine translation, I have noticed that a few Chinese people believed that I am doing this. Yesterday I had a comment telling me that they thought I had lived in England for so long, that I even construct my Chinese with an English mindset. I was born here, it's my first language! They were surprised when I told them.

My intention with doing this isn't to trick people into believing that I am Chinese, and I am fairly open on there about being from the UK. But I want my Chinese to sound somewhat natural, and for people to fully understand what I am saying. I also am more interested to learn Chinese that is useful for the contexts I am interested in.

Using a language model is also useful when translating back from Chinese, most of the time the meaning of the comment is quite straightforward, but it can help me to understand comments that I don't totally understand, for example by uncovering contexts that I might not be aware of. Actually, a big area that this is useful, is how Chinese people often use idioms to get an idea across. Sometimes it isn't clear how an idiom is relevant, so this can be useful in understanding the intended meaning from the comment. Although, it isn't perfect, and sometimes I come away without fully understanding. Can't lie, it happens in English too sometimes. Such is life!

If I wanted to take it a bit more seriously, I could involve more language learning methods, such as incorporating flash cards to increase vocabulary, and adding written practice so that I can get practice writing out hanzi by hand and learn them better. Well, I'm only learning it casually, so I'd like to take it easy for now.

Wardrobe thoughts

The problem with being a huge fan of lolita fashion, is that there are way too many dresses that I really like. Since I am quite well compensated at my place of work, it is way too tempting to just buy everything I like. But unfortunately, this has resulted in me being completely overwhelmed with clothes. Every time I try to get dressed, it becomes exhausting, as it is difficult to find the clothes I am looking for under all the other stuff. I no longer have space on my rails. It's too much. I know for a lot of beginner lolitas, this probably seems like I'm showing off, it's a real first world problem, but it really makes me feel quite depressed when I am unable to find an item of clothing, or when I find it and it turns out that it's been damaged by poor storage.

The reality is that I'm probably going to need to start selling some of my lolita items off at a bit of a more rapid pace than I am doing now. It means I need to be more selective about the clothes I own, and ensure that the things I'm keeping in my wardrobe are things that I actually want to wear and I'm not just keeping them for fear of regretting selling them.

Well, this is the kind of advice that was given to me early on, and so I've always known it. I had intended to focus on getting rid of older items so that I could keep space for my lolita items. But now I am at the point where it has become overwhelmingly difficult to manage my belongings, it's just too much.

And the question is, where do I want to keep my focus? Do I prefer more gothic styles or more cute oldschool styles? And then, I really enjoy to wear gothic styles in pink, but I don't want to wear that all of the time. I love wearing purple, but I find myself owning more items in red, and often finding the reds easier to style. I love velour fabrics, but I find that I am too warm for the majority of the year, and I'm often put off by the thought of cleaning them, so is this an area I should begin to reduce? It's so hard to decide.

Whatever direction I decide to take it, it's certainly a definite truth that I need to refine my style more, as currently there are just far too many items I never even wear. I'll have to think on it. My focus right now is on clearing out poorly-fitting items, or items that just feel uncomfortable for my personal sensitivities. But first I should begin to consider which items just don't fit my style as well as I thought they would. As well, I still have some older items from before I wore lolita fashion, that I think would be good to clear out. I hope that soon I will have a much cleaner space so my lolita wardrobe can feel refreshed. Also, I need to stop buying more things!!! As it's ridiculous. Some of the things I keep looking at, I KNOW I won't want to wear, because they have a high neck which is usually very uncomfortable for me.