Who cares if the machine understands wug? Maybe the issue is more to do with trying to teach language learning as a end on its own. Nobody studies language with

Who cares if the machine understands wug? Maybe the issue is more to do with trying to teach language learning as a end on its own. Nobody studies language without purpose, there’s always a next step. If you’re friend is telling you about their cat and what a wug it is, the goal is to conversate, make the other feel heard, entertain them, kill time until something next happens, impress them, and so on. Most of these don’t require even picking up on “wug”, they require understanding the other’s state of mind: “my new cat is so cute - I love them!”. Getting caught on solving wug seems like an uneccessary triviality, more important is the tone they say it with, they body language, your past interactions with them. You could form a proper reaction if you only heard every other word and had those other details. Humans don’t rely on deciphering “wug” - they don’t need to. The whole interaction is just negotiating mental states, intentions, and actions. Deciphering “wug” is unnecessary.