Mihalis Eleftheriou: Language Transfer

Hey everyone and welcome to episode 118 of the actual fluency podcast. I'm really excited to be back and I'm really even more excited to have received so many good messages from you guys lately. Uh as I said in the previous episode, I can't believe that it's been so long. Like, the last episode before the the most recent one was in October. So, we're talking half a year. That's just flown by so fast. So, that was really kind of an eye opener for me. And um I'm I'm happy that the new show has been well received and I I'm happy that of your emails saying how much you're glad that the show is back and it's giving me motivation and energy to continue to do it even though as I'm working a full-time job at the moment, it can sometimes be a little stressful and it can sometimes be a little um tough to organize as well but I'd happily do it. You know, it's my service to you guys and the language learning community as a whole. And uh maybe the world as well, but uh I wouldn't go that far just yet.

Yeah, but it's you know it's a systemic problem because you have all of the language learning material like if you go out to buy something it's promises really unrealistic promises and then, you know, like you open your book and you you read about all of, I mean like the preterite and the continuous and stuff, you know. And you just think, oh my God. Okay, I just must be stupid like, you know, so you have that for one part and then you have what happens at school for the other part, which is mostly just like exposing you all the time to the language because there's not really any real methodology happening there. They're just exposing you and trying to keep a class of children from like destroying the class, you know. So,

Yeah, like, I totally understand the why people feel like that. And I did. Like, I, you know, I changed my degree, I started a law degree, I did that for a year and then I changed to languages. And I had no idea like how I was going to do that. Like, I was like, I just, you know, I was an adult already, like, I I was monolingual and I I was like, how the hell, like I had no idea how it would happen. But I just, it was it just the idea of it just felt so magical and I hated law so much.

Depression.

Okay.

Basically. I mean, you know, I was so excited about going to university and what I would find there and, you know. And living in the university and all of that. And I got there and and, you know, I guess it was just really disappointing on a lot of levels. And, uh, but it was also like a really international university. So, I was surrounded by all these people from all over the world and all these different languages and and it just it just seemed like, okay, you know, if if nothing else mattered, if it didn't matter like, you know, uh, what I should be doing because I had all of these ideas of, you know, like you know, trying to be like successful, you know, those ideas that you grow up with. Sure. You know, being to be worth something, et cetera, et cetera. And and in the UK at least, uh, you know, that was like law.

Wow. That's incredible. And and did you what are you what are your languages going into university? Um, obviously English is is perfect. What other languages did you know at that time?

I was born in the UK. My parents are from Cyprus but they kind of just used Greek to speak in secret or whatever. So, and and, you know, I asked them when I was a kid to talk to me in Greek but, you know, there's also like some other issues there like with cultural assimilation and some families chose not to pass on their language, which I think is a terrible thing. And, uh, you know, so I was totally monolingual, although I had a certain ear for Cypriot Greek, let's say, because I'd grown up around it, but I didn't really understand it. Uh, only bits and pieces and con in context and stuff. Um, so, yeah, it was like just totally going into an unfamiliar world. And also in the UK, it was obligatory to study French until you were 13 or something but I'd been kicked out of that class because of my behavior.

Okay.

So, I hadn't a, yeah, I had like literally no no background in language. But I was so excited about it that in the summer between law and changing to languages, I started to study Japanese like whilst I was working at a call center. That was was like learning the scripts and and, you know, words and structures and whatever whilst I was on the phone. You know, I was just it just filled me with energy but I was totally monolingual when I when I went into it.

Right. What a what a crazy experience. I think I don't think I've heard that anywhere in over 100 interviews, the first guy someone,

I don't know if anybody ever asked me that to be honest.

All right. Well, I think it's important, you know, what what, uh, how did you get started and and

I think people assume that, you know, it's something from your life and and whatever but, you know, it really wasn't in my case.

Exactly the opposite, it seems like. Like, you wanted something else that you had.

Yeah, it was also kind of reclaiming something in a way because, you know, when you're born a foreigner in this way, like, uh, which I I guess it's a complicated way to describe it and it really depends how you feel but let's say like if you're born in the diaspora or whatever. Especially if you're if you don't speak, uh, the other language or your language or however you want to call it. Then, you know, you're a little bit lost. You're not completely one thing. You don't have anything else either.

I I don't know if that makes much sense or if I want you to include that. Well, well, I think it makes sense. It's perfect sense. I mean, it's a very deep topic about identity and sort of how you feel you belong in the in the community in the society and and

It's always my problem with interviews because all of the, I mean, Language Transfer was just a very organic product of my life, you know. So, I I always have to get into this kind of really deep stuff and, um,

Yeah, people love it. I try to be brief and coherent but I think I achieve the opposite most of the time. That's not a problem. I think that's people love this stuff, you know. Like, when when they hear some real issues and it's not just like, well, do flash cards three times a day and and you'll be fine, you know. When you hear the the real life issues or not necessarily issues but also

It's also interesting because a lot of people write to me with a similar story, you know, like, hey, uh, my grand my grandparents are Greek or my parents are, you know, and they didn't teach me the language because of X, Y and Z and now I'm taking it back and Language Transfer has been like the tool to do that. And so that's really nice as well, you know, to see like and I always enjoy replying like, hey, surprisingly, this was kind of my experience, part of the experience which led to like building this.

Yeah, I'm I mean, I'm even think about my own experience. It's not exactly the same, I I will say, but I was sort of stuck in an English degree which is aimed at making you into like a high school teacher for English. Um, and I just didn't know what to do with my life. And I was just bored. The degree wasn't tempting and the job propositions was just terrible and I couldn't imagine myself doing that. So, I just quit everything and I was like, what is the one thing that I could imagine being valuable that I would really enjoy being good at that I could find a use for anywhere in the world and I just went into languages. And I didn't really have much experience with it either. So, in a way that's that's similar to what to what you did in uni.

Yeah, and uh, I just learned that I'm the kind of person that needs to be excited constantly, uh, to like, you know, stay on top of everything and and I don't know, I guess it's just I it's it's magical things in the world which fascinate me which is like nature and, uh, language and music. I mean, it's a it's it's a type of magic if you think that, you know, you can transpose the idea of a pink elephant or whatever into somebody else's mind, which as far as we know, an elephant can't do that or a giraffe can't do that, you know.

Yeah, agreed totally. So, how do you how do you stay excited about, let's say, you're learning a language and there's a lot of nitty-gritty, you know, you have to put a lot of effort in, you have to put a lot of hours in and the progress isn't always uh smooth. So, how do you stay excited about it when you're struggling for the fifth time 500th time about some kind of grammar point or some kind of silly little thing.

I think, I really think it's about the material, you know, which is why I made Language Transfer. I had all of these frustrating experiences until I started to look at language this way and then, you know, like I I was speaking and almost had no idea where it was coming from. And then I was fluent and was just like, where is this coming from? You know? And the thing with the Language Transfer courses is that every single class you know how to say more stuff and it's not memorized stuff. They're not sentences and, you know, colors and how's the weather and all of that frustrating things. You're just, you know, piling into your memory. You're learning how to convert your ideas, stuff you want to say, into the new language at the same time, you know, that you're, uh, hacking words and learning more about the structure and increasing your language consciousness generally.

Hmm.

So, yeah, for me it's, uh, mostly about just really terrible material that's doing the rounds again and again and again. There's not a lot of thought behind it. There's a lot of thought behind how to sell it but not so much behind, uh, what is being done there, you know. And then the people that pay the price for that are, you know, those that go out and buy it and lose their motivation afterwards and believe that they're incapable of learning another language.

Hey guys, just taking a quick break from the episode to talk to you about this show sponsor, which is Glossa. I'm super excited to have Glossa on board. A really reputable and trusted language course producer. They're producing courses in many many languages. I think there're over 50 to choose from at the moment. And you get access to all of them with a single subscription. And if you want to give it a try, you can go to tryglossa.com in one word and, uh, yeah, get started with a free, see if it's anything for you.

Well, I always worked at like, uh, I did kind of social work like NGOs and this kind of stuff. And from the inside, you know, it was kind of painful to see how money was used, how things were done, and the mentalities that were there. And I kind of like, uh, decided for a while, this was when I was living in Buenos Aires, you know, I kind of thought, this, uh, I just want to play my violin.

That's awesome.

Which is, uh, something I I was learning. And, um, so I quit the NGO. And, uh, I I was just giving English classes to pay for my violin classes. And by the time I'd got to Barcelona and then Cyprus afterwards, you know, and I was I I'd continued to give these classes, I realized like, oh, this is my activism, you know, because I was having experiences with people that just thought they were incapable of learning or were crying about it, you know. And then the the change in their confidence and their abilities, you know, through the classes and just that experience, it just made me realize, oh, this this is my activism.

Yeah, it's amazing. And now can you give us an idea of some stats of of where you are now? Like, how many courses do you have and and downloads and and those kind of numbers?

Um, as far as I can detect because there's a lot that I can't detect, uh, the courses are used 20,000 minutes a day. So, every 24 hours, there's 20,000 minutes of use time. Uh, there's nine courses. There's introduction to French, introduction to Italian, Turkish, and Arabic and I'm working on complete Arabic now. And there is complete Greek, uh, complete Swahili, which is still releasing, complete German, uh, which is half released. Um, introduction to English for Spanish speakers. So, introduction to English. And I think there might have been one I forgot there if I haven't said nine.

Right. So, so a lot of different languages. And do are you like in charge of all of them or do you have people to sort of overlook? I I assume you don't speak all these languages really fluently.

No, um, like I haven't had a conversation in half of them. So, you know, the idea with Language Transfer was like I would do what I did with Spanish, you know, learn the language for myself and then share it. Uh, but I didn't get the support really to do that. So, the kind of like learning it for myself could be bypassed because, you know, all I need to do is look at a language, understand what's going on in it, and think about how I would explain that and how I would teach that. And then I need to check everything, of course, with with native speakers because I don't want to record wrong sentences and I want to check all of my ideas because I'm not just reproducing grammatical rules, you know, I'm reducing them to overriding ideas but I need to test those as well. So, I don't know, like, you know, Swahili, uh, Turkish, Italian, I've never had a conversation in. Um,

Right.

Is that a challenge when you when you're making the courses or or do you have a system now that allows you to sort of bypass that and just work systematically at at making these.

I mean, the I do and I don't have a system because the course the courses are so specifically thought out for each language. So, it's not like I have a template that I apply to everything. But of course there are ideas that are applied and re-applied. But then every new language gives you new ideas because that language necessitates it's explained and presented in a different way. You know, so like French, for example, which has like quite little correspondence between what you write and what you pronounce. You know, this course is really thought much more in regards to how it sounds rather than how it's written because it makes much more sense French when it's thought about in that way.

Right. And that's great. I I I think that's already doing it much differently than most of the traditional publishers who would just sort of do one thing and then copy paste it for the other courses.

For sure. And also they will translate it. So, if you're going to teach Russian to a Spanish speaker and you're going to teach Russian to an English speaker, you can't translate that course.

No.

You're working with from a base of different languages, you know. And and to clarify because sometimes people ask me, you know, do you need to be a native English speaker to do the course? And, of course not. You just need to know English, you know. A lot of my recording students aren't natives. But you are still referencing that language, you know. So, if that course was in Spanish then it's totally rethought for a Spanish speaker.

Yeah. And that that's I think that has to be done but like we said before, unfortunately not all language companies do that. They see it more as a quantity over quality, I I feel like, where if you can dish out a lot of courses quickly and and cheaply, then that's better for everyone. But of course that creates these very generic courses that don't really have an impact.

Yeah, I mean, I think I think there's just not the impetus to be honest to create better material. You know, there's just an impetus to sell more stuff and this is the the the systemic pressure in which we live, whether you call that capitalism or the monetary economy, whatever you call it, it's it's the rules of how we live, you know. You move money around or you don't survive.

Yeah. It's it's a shame and I I do believe what you said earlier is totally correct that this kind of thing is what's causing a lot of language problems because people buy these like Italian in a week or whatever the bookshop has because they probably sell really well, but they never get the results or maybe, you know, they read five pages and they're like, this is really boring. I'm not getting anywhere. I'm not learning anything.

Yeah, or even even just general material like vocabulary material, it's often just not thought out. Like, I remember buying some vocabulary cards for Greek just to see what they did and couldn't believe like, you've got a noun and they don't even put the gender of the noun. It's just literally a card that will say like table and have the word on the other side, you know. And you have three genders in Greek. Like, how much effort is it for you to even just think that it would be useful that you put the table on the other side. So, we know what gender it is. You know, like, I mean, it's it's it's fascinating for me even.

That's bad. Like, for instance, from from my German, I remember when I was a kid, I didn't really care about genders in in in uh in words because I thought, well, okay, I'll it doesn't matter which one I say. And so now my German is completely random, I just guess, but if somebody had told me back then, no, this no, no, Chris, this is really important. And this is the, and this is there, and this is us.

Exactly. Oh, just the habit, it's just the habit of the way you convey information. Every time you say house, you don't say house is house, you say the house is the house.

Exactly, yeah. I I missed that definitely. So, I see the the damage that's done because obviously relearning every word, which is what you're doing.

And the publisher of of these cards, I mean, the author of these vocabulary cards is a name you see again and again in the little modern Greek material that there is, you know. It wasn't just a random thing I picked up either. So, I mean, for me, it's a huge problem and they really have a moral responsibility to think about what they are teaching people about how much they can or can't learn.

Yeah, it's such a shame. But I don't know if I mean, obviously you're doing a lot to to change people's success with language learning, but I don't know if there's anything to be done about like all the crap stuff out there. I guess we can produce reviews online that gives them one stars, you know, to to say, don't use this, but I feel like it it's always going to be a problem because they're usually bought in in like, um, retail places, like bookshops, for instance, where you can't easily see what people are saying about it or, uh, reviews. So, it's more of an impulsive buy really, uh, in these places.

I mean, what I would say is that, uh, stop stop buying this stuff because you vote with your money generally, you know. And if and also if it's sealed and they don't let you check it out, don't buy this kind of stuff, you know.

Well, that's great. Yeah, I mean, that's the platform, right? That's the that's what I can contribute with anyway. But I've always been impressed how much you just give away for free. I remember coming across your website a few times in the last few years and it's always like, what is what is the point of this? But now hearing you say it, it it makes perfect sense.

People do get confused about that a lot. Um, like like why? How? What? You know? And I've also thought a lot about it because it's it's easy to just repeat the popular rhetoric of, uh, you know, like why you're doing it and and focus on that, but there are so many different interplaying elements to why I feel like I have to work like this. And an important one would be like just the way I want to interact with the world. Like I feel like we should live in a system where one can just say, okay, like I'm a tree. I want to make my fruit. That's what I know how to do, come and water the tree. You know, like, aren't we far too advanced to be still living just with competition as as like a basic overriding ideology for something. Like, so the point here also is like, hey, look, collaboration makes more sense. You know?

Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense. And I I saw obviously the reason that we're having this discussion now is, uh, because you had a, a, a, uh, ask me anything on Reddit the other day on the Language Learning subreddit. And I I I thought it was a perfect opportunity to to get you on and, uh, and and talk about it because obviously there was a lot of responses to that thread. You know, the Language Learning subreddit is not the biggest one on Reddit by any means, but there was a lot of, uh, comments in there and also that was even somebody asking when this interview would go out. So, you definitely have a lot of, uh, of fans of of what you're doing and I think a big part of that is because you're doing it in this way, you know, you call it positive activism. I think that's that's definitely, uh, true as well.

Thank you.

No, you're welcome. Uh, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how you yourself have progressed as a language learner because you've been doing Language Transfer for quite a while, I assume. When did you start doing it?

I mean, I started, uh, I think in 2011, but really seriously since 2013, 14.

Okay. So, what how what kind of changes have you felt as a language learner or evolution have you gone through as you

No, I feel like I've done something very dangerous that I can't undo to my brain.

Explain.

Sometimes I worry about it because it's a muscle. Your brain is a muscle. I wish I could, uh, convey because I don't think anybody understands just how much I have to think about, how much stuff I need to think about to build a course, especially in a language that I don't speak because it's woven together in a way that you're constantly needing to check, you know, is this going to make sense in every other situation? Where am I going from here? You know, when you're testing the sentences, you're going to ask for in the audios and, you know, you're having 100 thoughts at the same time of how and why and I I just, I mean, it's such a mentally intensive work. Like, sometimes my forehead heats up and my glasses steam up, you know, like my dog comes to lick my forehead. You know,

What's the process like for you, let's say, if you're starting to learn a new, no, not starting to learn, sorry. Starting to make a new course. Uh, I can't even imagine how complicated that must be. Like,

Yeah, like, I mean, so I just read about the grammar, I start thinking about how I would explain it, how I would weave it together. You know, I I start course writing pretty soon. I write and I rewrite and I rewrite and I rewrite. And because, you know, every time you're sure of where you're going, you're inserting that in before, you know, part of the weaving. Uh, so, you're writing is much part of the learning for me as well. But like I mentioned before, every language sets its own rules in this sense. So, you know, about like how have I developed, you know, personally through this. Um, you know, every single time I have to make a new course, it makes the method stronger and the outlook of language more varied and possibly varied.

But does it does do you feel like it helps you, I don't know, if you're if you're actively still learning new languages, but do you feel like it's helping you or it's all new language learning you're doing connected to a course just for efficiency reasons?

I mean, I feel like it's helped me generally with thinking and problem solving like in in a general way. And that that is odd and interesting. Uh, of course, for languages, now I just I know what I need to know. That's a big part about language learning. What do I need to know? Like, when you go into a new language like and you haven't done it before or you haven't been taught in a way that makes you learn about language, you don't know what you need to know. But now I know what are the boxes to check, what are the possible things that might happen in this language because this thing happens in Swahili or that thing happens in German. You know?

Right. So, you've it's a huge personal growth as well. At the same time as the courses are becoming better and more efficient.

Yeah, for sure.

That's really interesting. And what when you do the courses, maybe give a little not a sample, but maybe for people who haven't tried Language Transfer before, could you just give a little like how is it structured? You you mentioned a bit of grammar. Like, how much grammar is there? I want to also ask you about that because there's been a big move, I feel like, in in modern language learning to get away from grammar and go more into, well, we'll tell you we'll give you some content and then the grammar will sort of assimilate over time. So, we don't spend as much time actually explaining the grammar rules, which is a direct response to, I think, schools used to teach languages as like math, you know, where you just you just basically drill in grammar rules all day and you never learn to say anything. Which is still a problem in in some some parts of education system, but I guess let's start with that. How much how much grammar is enough for and how do you approach it in Language Transfer?

I think one of the an interesting point about language generally that comes up through your question is how, you know, like we all have idiolects and we all understand different things different things from different words. So, when you say grammar, some people will automatically jump to, you know, I think what you mean, which is, you know, like just teaching the rules. And other people will jump with that idea to thinking about prescriptive grammar and how you should write and what is the official way to speak. You know, and how in English you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition, but of course everybody does. So, the grammar for the courses is, you know, how people speak. But,

Okay. So, it's very practical. Yeah.

Yeah, but it is seen in its entirety, you know. So, like every everything a verb might do, you know, everything a noun might do. Uh, and it's not also like the introduction and the complete course is not like beginners, you know, and then hard stuff either. It's just like the first five hours and then or seven hours or whatever and then the next seven hours.

Right.

Because the way the course is weaved, even if you've been trying to learn a language for a long time, you will still start at the beginning and be learning things from the beginning because it's woven in a way, uh, you know, that isn't, uh, vertical, you know, so you're not like going like simple stuff, hard stuff. Um, but we do see we do see everything. And, you know, like we don't call it grammar either, you know. And, um, apart from like noun, adjective, and verb, which we constantly define and we use those words like, you know, I mean, in Spanish, for example, the subjunctive, I like to call it the mood tense because what it does is shows some kind of mood, you know. So, uh, we don't use grammatical grammatical terminology so much. Like we refer a lot to to things by like what they do or how they look, which makes much more sense. Uh, so you're not always making that translation in your own head about what what a grammatical term means. We look at what we are doing in the language we are teaching in. So, obviously, obviously, a lot of the time it overlaps. When you say would in English is where you would say would in Spanish. There's no reason under the sun to describe the grammar of would and the kind of situations that you use would, um, you know, like in a conditional or regret or this or that or, you know, when it's the same in both languages. Why would you confuse the learner, you know, by teaching grammar in that kind of prescriptive way instead of just like increasing the consciousness of what they are already doing in their language and how much of that transfers over to the new language and how much of it doesn't.

And I feel this helps a lot when you start to learn more languages as well. That's not you need to to Language Transfer necessarily, but I've found the more that I learn in, let's say, Russian and uh I was doing some Hungarian as well. The more I know about other languages, the way they're made, the easier it is for me to understand new ones. And especially if the if the teacher is also aware of a couple of languages because they will say stuff like, oh, it's like this in that, you know.

Yeah. I'm always asking in my workshops like, what languages are spoken here, you know, so I can improvise a little bit and and mix it up a bit more like that as well.

Yeah, that's great. So, so take us through like a a typical like setup. How many people are involved in each, uh I don't know if you call them lessons or episodes, but but in each part of the the courses, uh who how many people are involved? How many people do you listen to in the call and are there different like skill levels or or how do you structure them at the moment?

When you say how many people are involved, you mean in the production?

Yeah, yeah, like like everyone from the, I don't know if you have an audio guy and a and a

No, are you kidding me? Like, it's just me. This is why I'm complaining all the time. Yeah, like, uh I mean, the the thing that I'm I I won't do anymore, like once I've, uh, released the current audios is release more audios because, um, oh, that's hell. Like, around 60, 70% of my energy is on editing audios of myself. And that's been like a five-year tunnel taking the spit sounds out. You know, and I have, okay, so I have native speakers that check the audios, you know, but I still need to check with an eagle ear myself because, you know, native speakers they can miss anything. Even though you wouldn't you would expect that something wrong would jump out uh at their ear straight away. But the way the course is is woven, you know, it's it's really not so simple. So, you know, I need to listen to each one five times with an eagle ear and check all of my doubts and but, you know, there can be anything from like two to eight, uh, native speaker checkers from the audios.

All right. And how and how do you make sure, I mean, I know you get it checked, but how do you learn the pronunciation, uh, you know, to to teach? I I know you don't need to be 100% perfect to to teach. I'm thinking of for instance Michelle Thomas was a famous example of his, I think, people criticized him the most for for a terrible accent and in most of his languages. But but how did you as a, you know, a a a fledgling course creator as as it were, uh, come up with the, you know, the pronunciation? How did you teach yourself pronunciation in a language that you maybe didn't know as well as as your, let's say, native language?

Um, I had a similar attitude to Michelle Thomas as far as that was considered to be honest because I think that if you're a non-native teaching a language, you just have to make, well, maybe there we differ because you should just make your accent not painful. Well, maybe his at times was a bit painful. Um, and, uh, yeah, like, you know, you're going to be speaking to natives. That's what that's what you're getting the language for, right? So, I mean, you're not going to base your your pronunciation on mine. But at the same time, my pronunciation should be correct. You know, so like I listen to recordings of the words before online and this kind of stuff.

Can definitely imagine that. So, that's the that's the future of of Language Transfer or do you have ever any other sort of big plans? Uh, do you plan to go back and add to previous courses or, uh, what do you call it?

Hopefully. Hopefully, that's the future because, you know, it it all depends on the the support received. Like, there's 1,600 and something dollars at the moment on the Patreon campaign. The only way I'm able to survive on that and pay for the LT costs is because I got very lucky in Barcelona. Like, I have like a sublet that's very cheap. That's a favor and I'm not sure how long it will last. You know, like, um, so, and and unless I get to the 2,000 regular, I say, regularly clearing the 2,000, uh, dollar milestone by 2019, I will go part-time on the project.

Great. Good good job putting that in there. I was going to add if you didn't. Um, yeah, so I think that's obviously a great cause and I really encourage people to, you know, check out the courses first, maybe, and then put it put up the money afterwards. But, um, having it for free, having this kind of like donation where as it were, I think is a is a really great concept because there are loads of people out there who want to learn languages but probably don't have much in terms of, um, you know, ready income to spend on it. Even, you know, $10, $20 is probably a lot of money for a lot of people. So, having the opportunity that people who have the money to do it to kind of subsidize the people who don't, I think.

Well, yeah, for sure. For sure. And another reason it's it's free is because, you know, people, uh, might not get around to trying Language Transfer before trying everything else because it is quite an odd thing if you compare it to what is the norm. You know, and by that point, most people would have already spent too much and not be willing and, you know, have already given, you know. So, when somebody contributes to Language Transfer, they're not choosing to pay for something that's free, you know. Like you say, they are building a bridge between those people that wouldn't make make their way to Language Transfer if it weren't free. And, you know, it's been built often I get asked, why don't you start charging so you can continue and stuff, you know, that was never the agreement. You know, that was never what I wanted to do with the project either. Um, so it's going to stay free always.

Yeah. I think that's a great great way to grow about it. I guess you could always do like you mentioned before, like the workshops and stuff for the most dedicated students. That could be like an add-on but having the the core materials and the like the courses that you need to learn the languages free.

And also, you know, something that's really important for me is that, you know, you go to Language Transfer and you don't have any adverts. You go to the YouTube videos and there is nobody telling you that you should be cooler before you start learning. You know, there are no adverts there. I mean, they're not monetized the videos. Uh, you know, you go to the website and you don't have a logo there, you know, kind of peeing on the corner of the website. You know, taking ownership over something which is just a guy giving something. And I think it's important that you see that because that also empowers other people that just want to be a guy or a girl giving something. You know? And so that's also what you contribute towards. You know, no adverts and no sponsorship as well.

A good experience, like there's no interruption in the lessons either, you know, to promote stuff. It's just pure basically.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, for me that's like, if you're going to like, you know, it it's been a lot of love and effort and sacrifice to make Language Transfer. And if you make something with all of that, you know, why are you going to be so willing to let, uh, you know, somebody come and like, I really just feel like it's like peeing on a lamppost, something, you know. Like, that's mine. And, uh, yeah, and I I I you know, if I I if I were to do something for money, I will I will do something else. Like, work on Game of Thrones. I really want to work on the upcoming spin-offs of Game of Thrones. I want to be the language guy. I emailed the current language guy. I asked if they needed any help.

Well, I'm sure people on Game of Thrones production team are listening. I'm I'm sure. So, uh, yeah, give me a give me a to, uh, to be your new language, uh, junior language guy, I guess. You can, uh, move up the ranks that way.

I I want a whole language for myself to make.

Right. Have you experimented with that before or?

No, but it's like half of what I do already. I mean, if you think about it, uh, you know, dissecting languages, you don't speak to work out what's going on in them. Ah. to teach them as opposed to, you know, just looking at a culture and seeing what kind of language they might have and inventing it yourself and making the rules. I mean, yeah, for sure.

So, it's the other way around, in a way.

Yeah, it's the other way around and half the work. Like, I might make somebody angry by saying that, but if they're listening to the whole interview, they will they will understand how much I work.

Yeah, I think it makes sense. Like, you just have some building blocks but you're still breaking them down to ideas. And if you started with nothing and you went to make your own language, you would have to start with the ideas and and make the building blocks from.

Exactly. Like, you know, you're not checking if you're right all the time. Like, you are God in that in that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah, unlimited power.

Yes, yes. And I love that idea. I love the idea of like, okay, you know, you have these people, this is the way they live. This is their culture. And, uh, you know, make them a language. I think that's awesome.

Yeah, that's really cool. But, um, I think we're we're about to reach the end here. Do you have any final shout-outs or any other links or resources that you want people to check out before we end?

Uh, nope, not really. I think we've said it all. Just do try this. Uh, even if you find me slightly irritating,

Transfer.org.

do try the courses. I promise, uh, you won't regret it. And, yeah, if you love what you see, please share, please support if you can. If you want to see more of this stuff in the world, then it is within your power to make it happen. A dollar a month tends not to hurt.

Right. And you you can learn a language.

And you can learn a language. I mean.

Perfect, Michaelius, thank you so much for coming, uh, on such a quick notice and and for bearing with all these technical problems and time zones and everything.

Yeah, not a real pleasure. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.