Hello everyone and welcome to the Langfocus channel, and my name is Paul.
Today this is not a feature video. This is just a special video in which I'm going to make a little announcement
and then I'm going to answer some frequently asked questions that a lot of people ask me
in the comments of videos and also in private messages.
So, the first announcement that I want to make is that I have created a Patreon account.
Now maybe you don't know what Patreon is.
Patreon is a service that allows you to basically support your favorite YouTube creators by pledging
to give them a certain amount of money each month. An amount of money that you decide.
Now I want to say right away: you don't have to do this, you don't have to give any money.
This is basically like a voluntary subscription fee that you can pay if you want.
But the amount is up to you. So it can be as little as one dollar.
That's one of the cool things about Patreon is that everyone can give us one dollar
Not everyone but if you want, you can give one dollar and if a lot of people give one dollar, then that amount of money kind of adds up
And the creator gets you no significant amount. So that's the cool thing about it.
It's kind of a collective way to support your favorite creators as a team.
So the reason I'm doing that is because I put in a lot of time and effort into making the videos and...
basically that's a lot of time that I could be putting into different work that pays money.
I do get a little bit of money from some advertising on Youtube
But it's just a small amount, it's not really a lot.
And that's because, according to my statistics, about 70% of people use ad blockers.
And that's okay. I don't really mind if you do that. That's up to you.
Of course, this is all voluntary. If you want to support the channel, Patreon is a way to do that.
Even if you like to use an ad blocker or whatever things like that.
Basically have a look at the Patreon page that I've created.
If you think that Langfocus deserves a little donation every month, a dollar or whatever you want to give, then...
that would be highly appreciated. But if not, then don't worry about it, because I'll still love you just as much.
You'll still be a valued viewer and all of that. So don't even stress about it.
It's completely voluntary.
And the link to that Patreon page is down below in the description.
So, on to a few frequently asked questions.
So the first frequently asked question is: Paul, how many languages do you speak?
Now this is a strange question to be asked because it kind of feels like...
because I'm making the videos, that people think I'm a language master or a language guru.
or one of those things. And I don't think of myself like that. I don't think I'm a language master.
I'm just someone who's very passionate about languages and very interested in them.
And I'm also very passionate about learning because I'm a teacher, but also I just love learning.
But I know why people are asking that question. So I'll try to give you my answer off.
I'll tell you which languages that I've basically invested a lot of time into studying, that I've studied in depth,
and that I have a significant amount of knowledge of.
It doesn't mean I'm really advanced at those languages but it means I put that time and effort into them.
So the first one that I studied, back in the day, was Hebrew.
In university, I studied Biblical Hebrew but, in my free time, I also studied modern Hebrew
I also studied Biblical Arameic at university.
And, at the same time, I studied Old English or Anglo-Saxon
So we can throw that in there. It's not a spoken language but I'll throw that in there.
I've also studied Arabic. I've studied modern Standard Arabic.
And also some Arabic dialects, specifically Palestinian and, to some extent, Egyptian as well.
I've also, of course, studied Japanese. As you might know, I live in Japan and I've been studying Japanese for a long time
I've also studied Indonesian. I've also studied French.
I've also studied Tagalog I've also studied Esperanto.
And I've also recently been studying Italian.
So those are the ones I've really put time and effort into studying quite a lot.
I don't know if I'm forgetting any but that's probably the main ones.
There are other languages that I've studied to a basic level but I don't really know them enough to say that I know them
And there are some languages that I can also read.
Like I have passive knowledge of them, because I've studied related languages.
But I've never specifically studied those languages themselves so...
For example, Portuguese and Spanish, I can...
I can often make sense of them when I'm reading them, but I've never studied them.
There are also other languages that I just studied from a linguist's point of view.
Like I want to see how those languages work. So I examined them.
Sometimes the language profile videos I make are kind of like that.
Like I'm just interested in those languages. So I examine them and study and learn about those languages.
But I haven't necessarily studied those languages.
Basically, I consider myself a language enthusiast, someone who loves languages.
I don't call myself a polyglot. I'm not going to make a video called:
"Canadian guy speaks 25 languages" or something like that.
Like that's not really the purpose of this channel.
The channel is called Langfocus because I want to focus on the languages.
Not really on me and my own ability.
Another frequently asked question I get is: "Paul, what do you do for a living? Is it related to languages?"
Well, yes, kind of. I'm an instructor at a university.
And I teach English as a foreign language to students in Japan.
So, originally, part of the reasons I made the Langfocus channel was kind of to inspire my students.
So I have some videos to show them and I could show them that my hobby is language learning.
And I could give them some extra motivation to work hard to study English,
because they could see that their teacher is doing that too.
Another frequently asked question I get is: "Paul, what's your educational background?"
Well, I have 2 university degrees.
My first university degree was in English with a linguistics focus.
So it wasn't a literature degree, it was a linguistics degree in the English department.
So that means I studied the history of English I studied English grammar, I studied English phonology,
I studied dialectal differences in English. I studied all of those kinds of things about the English language.
I also had a minor in religious studies.
Basically all of my credits that went towards that minor were courses in biblical Hebrew and biblical Aramaic.
I wanted to study those languages and I figured out that I could get a minor in religious studies,
by just taking those courses. So that's what I did.
I also have a second university degree. That one is in Education.
After I finished my first degree, I went back to university and did a second degree in education.
And that's what allows me to be a teacher and do my current job at the university.
So that's just a little bit about me. It seems like some of the viewers want to get to know a little bit more about me personally.
If you're one of those people, you can check out my Instagram too. That gives you a little bit of a glimpse into my life, my daily life.
And you can follow me on Facebook as well and all of those different social media channels.
So thank you for watching. Have a nice day.