Starting Your YouTube Channel in English?

[@superholly]

YOUR ENGLISH IS BOMB!!!!!! 🙌🏼

[@naturebeauty558]

superholly plz subscribe to my channel

[@alancastillo5775]

Holly? Que haces aqui haha?

[@etnibenhurcruzccapa4721]

Super Holly Hola :D

[@LoveLiveLaugh62]

I really cannot believe English isn't your native language

[@rainbowsthundermusic8029]

Me suscribiré al canal de la persona que se suscribió a mi canal.

[@Einzelkinddas]

I'm German and I started filming my videos in English like two years ago. Earlier this month I watched my old videos back and saw/heard how much more confident and fluent I got, which motivated me a whole lot.

[@fattomalepervoi8349]

+fran flubbercrack ciao iscriviti al mio canale, subscrive to my channel please!!

[@Myrtone]

Fran - Do you intend to reach your home audience?

[@emersonjjsouza]

I wanted to star to do the same, I think is it best way anyone to improve your English skills. What is your KZbin channel ?

[@giuliatalkstoomuch]

One of the best things about starting my channel in English for me was getting the chance to interact with so many people from all over the world :)

[@sillyhedwig]

Have you ever felt that by speaking your second language, you are alienating yourself from your native friends and family? One thing I'd worry about would be the "brag" factor, of being able to do something that your friends might not be able to. This also goes for reaching a wider audience, and that feeling that you are starting out thinking about audience numbers in tens of thousands while you might never reach the low thousands.

[@FranMeneses]

THANK YOU for this video Sanne! For me it was quite weird; I started my youtube channel when I was living in Chile and I was doing all my videos in spanish. But then I moved to Germany and every time I met someone and shared my social media links or portfolio, the general responde was: "Your work looks lovely, but I can't understand anything". So I felt stuck: I wanted to keep my spanish-speaking community, but at the same time I wanted to start building a new community where I was living. Since german was waaay out of my language-league, I decided to switch to english in my illustration related videos (to build up a community and to get more job/projects opportunities) and my vlogs are in spanish (to keep my connection with my spanish-speaking audience). All my videos have subtitles, and even though they take several hours to write, I think it's worth the effort :)

[@lauraguerraherrera4179]

+Fran Meneses (Frannerd) Fran i love u :))!

[@spheals]

+Fran Meneses (Frannerd) I'm a German native and I'm learning Spanish ... you just got a new subscriber. :D

[@sophblueberry]

+Fran Meneses (Frannerd) Hi! Just found out about your channel through this video, and I want to say: I love that you've made your channel bilingual and that you go through the effort of adding subtitles! I watched one of your vlogs and you guys speak so fast and with colloquialisms I've never heard that it was hard for me to follow along just listening, but I had so much fun just hearing some of the accents and phrases I grew up with.

[@goncamenteşe]

I am a subscriber of your channel from Turkey and i like to watch your videos.. I am glad to see you here 💕 🌹 💕 i want to take videos of me but i try to be ready.. Best wishes for you 🙂

[@Myrtone]

Yes, it is worth the effort into subtitling if you are a native speaker of another language intending to reach your home audience, but not *just* that audience. You could get someone else to add the subtitles.

[@sofietomkaulitz]

I decided to start my channel in english, even though I am danish. I love english, and because of that I almost only read english books and because of that I think I can reach a international audience. I wanna be able to communicate with people from all over the world as well, through my videos. Thats why I started my channel in english :)

[@gabbiepoppins]

this discussion is literally so great I can't even

[@thementaltraveler2514]

My native language is Spanish but I decided to do my channel in English and I´m so glad I did because just as you said, I read mostly all of the time books in english, and the novels I read are rarely unfortunately found in Spanish.

[@OpheliaVert]

I am an English native speaker but I really want to start making videos speaking French. I am a complete Francophile; I watch a lot of French youtubers and it would be a good way of perfecting my French! Enjoyable, insightful and well-structured video, as ever. Thank you!

[@Joffelicious]

Really interesting discussion! For me youtube has been about practising my english and communicating with people across the globe. I'm Swedish but most of the people I watch on KZbin speak english in their videos, so I guess it just came natural for me to do the same! My english is still not as good as I would like, but at least now I am practising it regularly! :)

[@DaniaMihaela]

I have no idea how to do it !! I am romanian and i have some romanians who follow me but the thing is that they are not that active on the topic i have on my channel and in english i can attract a wider audience but there are so many doing it and ...i just have no idea what to do

[@liliaintechnicolor]

i'm american so i didn't even think about this, but it's a great discussion. i think one of the best options is to do your videos in both your native language and english, like raul at latin lector often does. this gives you that universal reach AND that native connection. plus, business wise, i think more people will want to work with you because they see that their products will have further reach. but i also know its hard and tedious to film two duplicate copies of a video, one in your native language, one in english, so i can see why people don't do this too.

[@steikepanna]

I'm norwegian and when I started my youtube-channel last year I made the decision to speak english in my videos. As many others, I don't like the sound of my own voice - and with a strong dialect on top of that I just couldn't do it in norwegian. I have one video that was filmed entirely in norwegian and I just can't edit it. Speaking in english is also sort of me going into a "role", whilst still being myself ofc, and that helped a lot with my "speaking in front of a camera" fright. Only a couple of months later I have no problem with sitting in front of a camera speaking to myself, but I think it would have taken a lot more time to get to this point if I spoke in my native language. I have also always loved the english language so it was sort of a natural choice (and now I have a good excuse to speak a bit english in my everyday-life). And as you say in your video: you reach a bigger audience and your english will get better. I think the norwegian KZbin-community is not necessarily small, just hard to find :P

[@Myrtone]

The idea that you reach a bigger audience in English may represent a misunderstanding. If you make them in Norwegian without captioning them in any other language (such as English) you will indeed reach a lot less people. But I'm sure adding English subtitles will increase the reach of a video in your own language. That's one of the two good approaches when making videos for both your home audience (Danes and Swedes as well as Norwegians) and a foreign audience, the other is to make separate videos for each group.

[@Caroline1ie]

I asked you about your views on this topic at SITC this year! So happy you decided to put it in a video! I´m Norwegian (currently living in the UK), but I have always made videos in English. The only time I didn´t was recently when a friend came over from Norway and I daily vlogged a road trip we went on. It did not feel natural to speak English in front of someone I´ve always spoken Norwegian with (and expecting her to speak English back) So I made those in Norwegian and added subtitles. Felt like the best thing to do.

[@drumsofautumn]

Yay, my tweet :D tehe :D I think the one regret I have about starting my channel in English is that now that the overall German KZbin community has grown and there's the YT Space Berlin, I always feel like I don't quite belong there because I make videos in English. I feel like if I met people at the YT Space, I wouldn't really know how to like make collabs happen and such with the different languages. But then again I feel soo happy and "home" in the English-speaking Booktube community, that it really doesn't matter. EVERYONE IS JUST SO FAR AWAY :D

[@FreshSalad645]

I don't make videos but I'm from Belgium and mostly watch English-speaking YTbers. I do watch a few French speaking ones (Cyprien, Norman fait des videos, and a few video game streamers) but most of it is unknown to me. It's not because I like English better than my own language, but I think one of the most amazing things about the internet and YT is that you can be confronted with people, cultures, opinions and ideas that are different from what you can find in you own country. So many people from so many different countries make videos in English that you can easily guess the weather all over the world, hear about books, issues or even food trends totally different and unknown in your country. This is what I like about it and I hope many ore foreigners will keep doing videos in English! It's a way of discovering the world that I enjoy immensely!

[@eleventhclara]

I've been thinking for awhile about doing the opposite. I'm a native English speaker but thinking of starting a KZbin channel in French to improve my language skills and make francophone friends...so many of the points in this video worked for me as well, just switching the languages!

[@NatyFlorGleek]

My BookTube channel is in Spanish but I've been thinking recently and I'll might start adding English subtitles, I'm bilingual so that shouldn't be a problem. The BookTube community in Spanish is HUGE, for example, in many countries we take part of activities at International Book Fairs and events that many people attend to, also the most famous booktuber in Spanish has like 300K suscribers and that's quite a big number. I really loved your video, don't ever stop uploading content to your channel :) Greetings from Argentina!

[@santiagoarenas4580]

fa :3 ;)

[@jennnieeeeee]

i find this so interesting, and as a native english speaker it's something i've never had to think about + something i definitely take for granted! i feel like this is something that doesn't take place just on youtube + that this is a big part of the media culture - whether that be in film, television, or music. the people at the top, those with global popularity, are predominantly english speaking people. and the same transition from a person's native language to english can be seen with a lot of actors + musicians also!

[@kovacsivett98]

Thank you so much for making this video! I really want to start a KZbin channel, but I was hesitating between doing it English or Hungarian (which is my native language). After this video, I think of it more positively. Before this, I thought that if I made videos in English, they should be perfect, otherwise I would get hate comments and nobody would appreciate my work. But now I see that it is a good way of practicing and learning a language and also I can make a lot of friends. It's so good to see all these non-native English speakers making videos in English and enjoying it. I hope one day I will be one of these people!

[@adelavmb]

I started in Romanian since it's my native language and I stuck with it. 2 years ago there were only 4 people who were doing it and I find it amazing how much the community has grown. I am the number 2 most subscribed to Romanian Booktube channel and knowing I've inspired so many others is making me feel more accomplished. So many kids are watching and saying how seeing me make videos about books made them realize how cool reading is... Sometimes it makes me feel so happy I end up crying. I feel like KZbin is saturated with English Booktube videos and the audience has to chose which to actually follow, like actually invest time in watching their videos. You have to be really good at it and the popular channels are already so big... For me, I believe I made the right choice. I prefer a smaller reach, people I can connect to. Plus after the first 6 months we got the local publishers' attention and support. Seeing it all grow like this, being a part of it... no international audience could beat that for me

[@fattomalepervoi8349]

+Vanilla Moon Books ciao iscriviti al mio canale, subscrive to my channel please!

[@utterlyuncool4914]

Sanne what a great topic to discuss! I am Italian and I have recently started a BookTube channel in English, the main reason for that is that most of my readings are in English and it is much more easier to express your thoughts keeping the language you have read in. The con is that I am less "natural" when I speak in English and I actually look frightened O.O (but I hope it is because these are my first videos ever!). I love to be part of a bigger community and I'd like to keep the connection with my native language by talking about translated fiction hoping that more and more Italian authors will be translated in the future.

[@GinVlogs]

I really liked this video! My native language is Lithuanian, but I live in the Netherlands. So about a year ago I started my youtube channel and I decided to speak in Dutch. That was quite okay, but I wasn't happy about it as I'm a very international person and have friends all over the world, so most of them couldn't understand my videos. So now I started a new youtube channel in which I speak English. I think that's so much better, because this way more people understand what I'm saying. :)

[@michellelee03]

Interesting topic. I'm a French teacher in Canada and I'm currently creating a unit about French KZbinrs which has been incredible for me discovering these insanely popular channels that are in French. Like Cyprien. Almost 9 million subscribers and I've never heard of him. Im really enjoying exploring KZbin in other languages - I've found some great content that I never would have known about if I hadn't actively sought it out! Foreign language KZbinrs, keep creating!!

[@alrightspock]

I have a small dream of starting a KZbin channel (about books, DIY and maybe a bit of lifestyle) and I would speak English on it for all the same reasons you listed. I study, read and write English so naturally I want to practice and become as fluent as possible which is also one of my motives for wanting to start a channel. I don't even know if there even IS a Danish-speaking booktube (or DIY) community which is my bad of course. You bring up a good point about subtitles.

[@glossyrup]

As a viewer, I don't mind KZbinrs making videos in their native language as long as they subbed their video. I kinda enjoyed Kicki Yang Zhang's vlogs for example. Her videos are mainly in English but when she's filming vlogs, she speaks German with her friends & I love it :)

[@jodiedarlingauthor]

Never knew you were Dutch!! We actually just moved to the Netherlands from America :)

[@joshuajeep6121]

love this video! I only started making videos in English because I lived in New Zealand for a year and now it just feels more natural to me to speak English (also because all of my friends who still live there can watch my videos) ^-^

[@ayadkhalil]

that was useful, thank you for sharing your thoughts :) I've been struggling for years in choosing between Kurdish and English. I have been creating in my native language with English subtitles so far but I guess I'll be focusing more on English content from now on.

[@padlocksncocoapuffs]

If you were to make some videos in Dutch (with subtitles) I would love to watch them. I love listening to people speak their native language.

[@zjenci]

+padlocksncocoapuffs Yes, me too. I just feel that people can express emotion more easily in their mother tongue (this also goes for singers singing in English vs mother tongue).

[@sophblueberry]

Awesome discussion! Spanish was my first language, but for a long time I've been more comfortable speaking English. So for me it wasn't even a question what language I was going to do my channel in. Also, at the time I wasn't even aware that there *was* a community of Spanish-speaking BookTubers. Nowadays, I have a peek in to Spanish BookTube every so often - it just kind of fills me with awe that I have access to the stories of many other people in the world which I otherwise wouldn't have (thanks Mom & Dad). Thanks for mentioning Fran - I went over and subscribed instantly :)

[@SezonLiteracki]

I'm Polish and when I was about to start my booktube channel, the Polish booktube community was really small. It still is, but every day more and more people start to making videos about books in my native language. I was thinking about doing it in English, but I'm just afraid of people's reaction. I mean, it was very hard for me to start making videos in Polish, let alone English. But subtitles are a very good idea! I will think about it :)) Also, I've been watching your channel for years now and I must say I'm very impressed of your skills. I think Dutch has a very strong accent and I don't hear it when I'm watching you :) You're English is so good!

[@visennamhw-tv4bi]

It's good that I watched this video, otherwise I'd have a hard time searching for Polish BookTubers :)

[@Myrtone]

@@visennamhw-tv4bi and Sezon too, yes, subtitles are a very good idea. If you intend to reach your home audience, make sure you use your mother tongue. Apparently, the Polish, as soon as they leave Poland, must cope with the fact that another language will be spoken, basically the very reason why Poles even think about whether to start their channel in Polish or another language, usually English. The fact that native English speakers living in countries like the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, etc hardly ever think about whether to make videos in English or another language is due to the geopolitical dominance of developed English-speaking countries. The legacy of the British Empire and America's world domination has meant that viewers from non-English speaking countries already have an incentive to learn English not only if they have an incentive to immigrate to an English-speaking country but even if they stay in their own. Poles must also cope with that fact that non-Polish vloggers almost never make content in Polish, again because there is only one Polish-speaking country and hardly anyone outside Poland has an incentive to learn Polish, let alone learn to speak it, as opposed to, say, reading.

[@alyxandriaang]

Such a great discussion. I mean definitely for sure English speaking booktubers have a bigger reach. I think this is just because of the overwhelming amount of people that speak in English. Starting booktube in English wasn't very hard for me and I've grown confident speaking in that language on screen. I also try to mimic how other booktubers say things :D

[@JustEssayIt]

One additional point is that if you choose to make videos in English, you'll obviously become part of an English-speaking community, which means you'll be interacting a lot with people from the US, the UK, Australia, Canada etc. I made some good friends here on booktube, but all of them live quite far away because of this, so it feels like I'm this isolated island of a Swiss person sometimes. It's just harder to make friends that live close to you and that you can actually meet somewhat regularly if you choose to make videos in a foreign language. (On the other hand, I think it's quite cool to have friends in the US and the UK, so it's not necessarily a con.)

[@tessaafinessaa]

I love English so much, that's why I do my KZbin Channel in English. It comes more naturally to me than any other language. Besides, everything I do is also in English so that makes the decision a lot easier!

[@SibelTemirci]

Your English is excellent! 💥💙 I have already a youtube channel in my native language which is Turkish. But i also am planning to make videos in English for the reason you mentioned your video and so on. This video helped me to push myself to create videos in English. Thank you ! 😊💙

[@Taleofthegreat]

I'm from Russia but I've been studying English since the 3rd grade and since I'm reading books in English and also planning to move away, I decided that English was the preferrable choice. Even though I'm able to hold a conversation in English easily there is still a barrier when I'm trying to express myself in videos but I find that public speaking makes it easier and also teaches me a lot about self-presentation. So I think it's a win-win situation: I get to read books in the original language (mostly), I practice speaking every week, and I also broaden my vocabulary... I hope I learn to express myself much more fluently as quickly as possible because I hate being at a loss for words.. :S

[@ioannastamati9473]

Lesia's Tale omg ... I have the same thing. I want to start a youyube channel and since i was little i wanted to move away so its the natural thing to choose english. But everytime i sit in front of the camera .. Im just thinking about my accent and my english and that i am going to mess it up

[@Jellafy]

For me English was a no-brainer. Similarly, I've always watched KZbin in English, the majority of the books I read were in English, so I actually never thought about doing reviews in German or any other language. I don't know if you have a similar experience with Dutch, but imo it's not easy to sound conversational and casual, when you speak German in videos. Most of us present a more "hyped up" version of ourselves, because the video format takes away some nuances of our speech and intonation. And whenever I see someone do it in German, it just sounds really pretentious to my ears, although I know it's not meant that way.

[@gemmaroberts3673]

+Jellafy Dude! Your English is epic, I never had a clue that you were German!!

[@AdrianaDonado]

That exactly what happens to me with Spanish, I don't enjoy the videos that much, I prefer English. I've been wanting to make videos for a long time and I think that if I speak in English I would feel more comfortable and would actually enjoy making them.

[@DonnaJulia]

As someone who has only spoken English her whole life (though I've been desperately trying to learn French) and has an English youtube channel, it was really interesting to see both sides of this discussion! Thank you for sharing, I feel like I learned a lot!

[@Fleurinexx]

I'm as you know, a Dutch BookTuber for a reason. The community was very smal when I started my channel but now it's growing so much! I love to talk Dutch and my English isn't great so that's why! ❤️📚

[@IrinaCiteste]

This is exactly what I had on my mind when I started my channel. 2 years ago, Romania did not have a booktube community at all, but I still decided to make videos in Romanian, although I read almost everything in English. Even though the community is way smaller, I think that the connections are...stronger, in a way. Amazing video!

[@DutchBookChick]

I love the way you discuss both sides of this 'problem'! I'm a Dutch BookTuber (I think we'll both be at the ABC windows in Amsterdam, right?) and started in English to 1) improve my English and 2) because most of the books I read are English. I have to say that since I occasionally review Dutch books on my blog, I also vlog in Dutch sometimes. My channel features two lists of videos: Dutch and English. I like English better, because my blog readers are 50% non Dutch speakers so English works better in my vlogs too. For me it kind of works, but I have to upload videos more frequently ;) Anyways, I feel kind of proud that you, as a Dutchie, have made it this far! :D

[@LuciaMontesEN]

The same happened to me! I'm Spanish but decided to make videos in English because back then (2012) I only watched American you tubers and I wanted to be a part of it. Since then more Spanish people have been making videos but I think I made the right decision and I've been able to make friends from all over the world.

[@fattomalepervoi8349]

+Lucia Montes ciao Lucia ! iscriviti al mio canale per favore!

[@JulieJoanne]

I'm Dutch too and I make videos in english. Main reason for me is probably 'reaching more people' and being able to connect with a different kind of community. But besides that, I don't really watch that many Dutch youtubers (anymore) so I feel more at home in the uk/english community than I do there. And I live in London at the moment which helps a lot. That does't mean that I haven't thought about 'going dutch' (goede grap wowie), because I owe a lot of my personality to the certain dutch words I use and the jokes I make, and those things just don't always work in English. Maybe in the future I'll make a second Dutch channel, we'll see :) kusjes!

[@Myrtone]

I sent you an email about this.

[@Rougeimaginaire]

I've also been thinking about it a lot! For me it's even more complicated, because I'm constantly hesitating between three languages. My native language is Dutch, I'm not that bad at English, but I'm studying Swedish and I feel more comfortable speaking Swedish than English, and I think it's more fun than speaking Dutch. But then again, I don't want to limit my audience to just Swedish-speaking people. So now, the solution that I've come up with is that I make my regular sitting-down videos in English, sort of as an umbrella language, I'm planning on doing my future vlogs in Dutch with English subtitles, and every now and then, I do a more spontaneous video in Swedish if I feel like it. Also, I really do feel like doing videos in English has improved my spoken English a lot, and just making videos in general has also made me feel more comfortable doing presentations in school :)

[@everythingbylau]

+rougeimaginaire WOW I'm so impressed

[@evalolacookie]

You should try Spanish theres a big market for it.

[@BasicallyBrittx]

I'm Dutch as well but I also make videos in English! First of all, I think that English is just such a beautiful language and I always feel happy when speaking English! And secondly you can get a much bigger audience on KZbin when speaking English which means it's a win-win situation!

[@HomeWithMyBookshelf]

I've recently started a booktube channel, and I decided to do it in English. I'm bilingual, so the language barrier is small. In addition I wanted the bigger reach and to join the general discussions going on in the English-speaking booktube community. I will probably incorporate Norwegian into my videos (I already did, and subtitled it), and possibly make some videos in Norwegian. Since most people in Norway understand English really well, I'm not too fussed with subtitling my English videos.

[@JeannyMeyer]

I started with my native language (German) and recently started a second channel in English because I want to connect with people from other countries.

[@katandjessie540]

oh boY do i relate. so kat (who's form england) and i (a smol german) just started this channel and it does give me a lot of anxiety sometimes (mostly because i want my british accent to be PERFECT and ehhhhh). prior to actually starting youtube i did kind of relate to that conflict of wanting to be part of the german community as well - that's gone away now though, because i don't really watch any german youtubers anymore. other than that, it's great fun - i love the english language so much. holy crap i love it. - jessie

[@BookishWardo]

I'm from Brazil and I did have a channel in Portuguese with a couple of friends. However, we were a little discouraged by the fact that a great number of booktubers in Brazil depended a little bit too much on our publishing companies. That's only natural, obviously, but that's the thing, most (if not all) of our reading was done in English so we had very few things in common. Maybe we just didn't look for similar channels very hard and maybe this has already changed, I don't know. But I'm ok with the fact that I've switched to English because I've had the chance to talk to some great people from different places in the world. Plus, I've started to make content about lusophone authors and I'm glad that I get to spread it, at least a little bit, with a wider audience.

[@hannamelba375]

I was just thinking about starting my booktube channel but I am French and even though I study English and mostly read in english, I am really shy and I feel like there are so many booktube channels that it is intimidating... And actually you had a really good point as I was thinking about doing videos both in English and French and add subtitles... I guess I just need the courage... Thank you for your amazing videos though! I'm addicted

[@VS-pn7vx]

I run a blog in English about healthy food simply because everything I read/listen to/watch about the topic is in English so it feels more natural to write in English. A couple of my friends keep telling me to start writing in my native language (Czech) too but I really don't want to. As strange as it sounds, I feel more comfortable writing in English, it comes easier to me. Probably because I've been interacting on the internet in English for about 7 years straight - literally everything I do on my computer is in English. I do want to start a KZbin channel but I'm putting it off because I don't feel comfortable speaking out loud in English yet, in front of a camera anyway. I can go on and on about something in written word but I tend to stammer and forget words when I'm speaking out loud. It's so frustrating.

[@altafmalikenglish]

love to start channel in english. I also started. Thank you

[@Yennyislosinghermind]

Thank you for speaking about this! I'm Mexican and I make my videos in English. In one side, it has helped me so much with my fluency, my pronunciation and my confidence to actually speak in English. It improved my listening skills and my writing skills since I have to write the scripts directly in English. I've learnt a lot of vocabulary to be able to express myself and I've met some very nice people in other countries. In the other side, although I offer the option of subtitles in Spanish, the language limits my viewers a lot and my possibilities for collabs or working with local brands are nonexistent. But to be honest, I don't regret the decision at all. I take it as a challenge to improve myself and my content (I'm still working to achieve that). Sometimes I feel frustrated because it is difficult to face the camera in a foreign language, but you have to work for the things worth having, right? If I ever try to make content in Spanish, it would be on a different channel.

[@BetweenStories]

What a great discussion video :) It took me some time to decide on English before I started but I do not enjoy watching German youtubers in general and I read nearly everything in English as well so it was kind of a natural decision to talk in English. And I really enjoy the community and the chance of making friends all over the world and it's also a big learning experience like you already mentioned :) the only thing I hate is that I sometimes want to talk about German books I loved but they're not available for English speakers so that kind of sucks but all in all I don't regret my decision! I really enjoy making videos in English ;)

[@LearnSpanishWorld]

Very interesting. In my opinion it depends. No question about it! English is an extremely important language and has an incredible international projection. However, There is a huge Spanish community also and some of the biggest KZbinrs such as Hola soy German 2nd in the world, elRubius3rd and Fernafloo 5th are Spanish speaking channels....Take the example of Inna Moll who started her vlog in English back in Feb last year, later on switched to Spanish and her channel reached almost 1M subscribers within a couple of months. I'm in the process of creating a channel for Spanish speakers to learn English...It ll be interesting to see and compare which channel performs better.

[@ricardaseven6083]

It's so interesting to read about everyone's reasons to do videos or blogs in a specific language! For me, the decision was quite easy since I started my channel at a time were I was still convinced to be moving to the UK soon. That didn't happen yet, but it will at some point and until then I'm studying English at uni so I'm in a similar position as you are with reading mostly in English and stuff....I did however already think about doing like one video a month in German but I'm not sure if that works with my sort of videos and my uploading schedule, so -for now- it's just an idea.

[@episodically8643]

My channel is so new and fresh that I don't even know if I have a right to participate in this discussion :P However, even though I literally have uploaded my first video just yesterday (!) the process of creating this channel and thinking about it has started almost a year ago (!). So my channel is a little different, because what I post is fiction. So for me the first question was - what language do I write in? And even though I'm a native Polish speaker, the most natural response seemed to be "English". And that's for many reasons. 1) Of course, there's more people who can potentially understand me. And it's important to me not because I want to become famous or something like that, because I don't think it' really possible (or desired). It's actually quite opposite - I think some people may like what I do, but I don't think it has a chance of becoming super popular. So the more people can understand it, the bigger chance those rare ones who ACTUALLY may enjoy it will find it. Does it make sense? I don't know how can I explain it better (hello my imperfect English, we'll get to that in a second) 2) I have been studying language since I was 8 years old, I have spoken it quite fluently since I was 15. I have read so many books, watched so many films and shows and listened to so much music in English. I have travelled quite a bit, I have many foreign friends. Heck, I have even lived in an English-speaking country (USA) for a little while. What I'm trying to say is that there's an untranslatable part of me that was formed in English. So it feels natural, it really does. 3) We live in this global village now, English is not only a "lingua franca" of modern world, it's the language of the internet and social media. I want to focus on the times we're living in in my writing, I can't imagine doing it in any language other than English. 4) As imperfect as my English is, it's actually an advantage for me. I tend to overdo words and sentences in Polish, focus to much on the style etc., whilst English is more straight forward for me. I just say what I want to say, more of a content, less of a form. The only downside is the frustration that does come sometimes. That I will never be as good at English as I would like to be. Bad days come sometimes and you feel like crap because all you see are your mistakes and you keep on comparing yourself to native speakers and that never ends well. Plus there's just always something lost in translation, but that goes both ways - sometimes I can't express myself well in Polish or Portuguese or any other language I speak because the only right thing to say in that moment would've been in English etc. But that's just a part of being multilingual and I feel like it's actually a whole different story :)

[@kirazoe1320]

When I started my blog, I decided to write it in English because it actually felt more natural- all booktubers I watch speak English so all my Book-vocabulary is English, too. Also, I find it quite fascinating to see what people from other countries read, so offering a place where people also can get an insight into the German bookmarket feels like a good idea as well. It's just much more open and interesting to communicate with people from all over the world. Isn't that one of the great things about the internet?

[@poundlandvodka]

He's not a booktuber, but one of my favourite youtubers is a guy called PDRさん. His main and second channels are in Japanese, but he also has two much less-often updated English channels (he speaks both natively). He was in a Dan and Phil video so he and his wife Mimei have a pretty big anglophone audience, and he captions all his Japanese content in English. I think a big reason for that is that while there is a pretty big Japanese youtube community, he's made no secret of the fact that he feels quite divorced from it and I think he's decided to capitalise on his bilingualism to extend his reach; interestingly, he doesn't caption his English content in Japanese. On an unrelated note, I speak some French, Spanish and Japanese, but I've never thought of making videos in my target languages to try and improve my fluency. Thanks for the idea! :D

[@dixieAQHA]

My native language is English, but I enjoy watching other KZbinrs speak their native language. Even if I can't understand what they're saying it does bring out a different side of their personality. I have also found as I studying other languages watching people speaking their native language helps me learn.

[@VandaagSanne]

Ik kom ook uit Nederland, en ik vind dat je echt goed engels spreekt. Bij de meeste nederlanders die engels praten hoor je wel een beetje dat ze uit nederland of een ander land komen, maar bij jou merk ik dat echt niet! Keep up the good work😉

[@elplanetadejosi]

I'm really surprised to know that english is your second language! You have no accent left whatsoever, you sound totally natural. I'm studying english translation (I'm from Argentina and my native language is spanish) and I definitely feel more comfortable speaking/writing in english because every single book I read nowadays and every class I take is, well, in english haha. By no means I'm going to start a youtube channel, but I found this video really interesting! :D

[@ReadVlogRepeat]

Loved this video! I chose to film my videos in my native language (italian) but I'm actually thinking about opening another channel in English since it's a language I love and I would have the opportunity to face a much bigger audience.. A thing I have to say tho is that there is a huge booktube community in Italy, lots and lots of people make videos about books and they are really welcoming, so you (referring to the italian girl on twitter) must have never looked for it if you never found it.

[@queenfadoua7208]

Hello everyone, Thanks a lot for this video. I'm from Morocco. I want to start my channel KZbin.But, I'm still confused about the content should i focused on. I adore English language. It is my favourite subject. Also it is an international language that help us to communicate with people easily

[@dreamanddwell]

So interesting! And I was thinking of Fran the whole time as well then you mentioned her!! :)

[@sierraconnor7736]

I love you fiyoow

[@AmberMaryAnne]

I think it's great people speaking their native languages it really helps me with learning German as I'm not quite fluent yet

[@xdanishcarrot]

This is such an interesting discussion! I made videos from 2009-2012 (actually initially inspired by your Team Twilighter collab channel, haha!) Back then I didn't even consider doing my videos in Danish; it seemed stupid because I pretty much knew all of the Danes in the KZbin community at the time. However, a couple of years ago when I considered taking up KZbin again as a part of a literary blog I was running, I did have a good think about whether to do the videos in Danish. I knew that KZbin had grown in Denmark, so doing my videos in Danish certainly would make sense. I came to the conclusion that I have always felt that since my own experience as a viewer has been restricted to videos in English, it just wouldn’t feel natural for me to do my own videos in Danish. Maybe also because staging myself, as one does when filming a video, came easier to me when speaking in English; I was already distancing my “KZbin-self” from my “real” self by not choosing to speak in Danish.

[@everythingbylau]

I'm so glad this video is here! I needed this. Personally, I never even considered vlogging in Dutch, because I feel a lot more awkward in my native language than in English. It does make it extremely difficult to find some vlogging friends, though.

[@nonono6537]

such an interesting video! as a blogger i kind of had to make the same choice, although for me it was easy because english is my favourite language, and at this point i probably speak it better than german. x

[@MissSophieReads]

I'm from Germany and I have an English KZbin channel (it's quite small). I read hardly any German books and most of the time I'm so immersed in the English language that I have a hard time explaining English books in German. That and having the opportunity to speak English more often were the reasons I decided to do my videos in English. Also, I really want to be part of the big English speaking booktube community, but at the same time I'd really love to be part of my native KZbin community as well. I don't think there is such a big German Booktube Community and there are hardly any women that don't do Beauty themed videos. But I don't think I'd feel comfortable switching to German, as it will feel a bit awkward talking about English books in German; also, I think a move like switching back to your native language will only work if you've either got a lot of subscribers already who really like your content and want to keep following you or there is already a big community in your native language. This is a really hard decision and a very important topic! I never even knew there were people doing their videos with subtitles which I think is great!

[@dulcemoonchild]

The 99% of the books that I read are in english, my blog audience was mainly People from the USA or Europe so It felt natural to write in english and when I started my little channel I choose English because it was easier than translate the reviews that I already had, also I love the language and they way you connect with people from other countries thanks to that

[@kemiwel7607]

I'm american but I'm studying german (and next year I'll be living in the netherlands/studying some dutch) so it really really helps to watch native language youtube videos, especially with english subtitles since I can't understand everything. I just wish more people would do it though because it's difficult to find them!

[@diinalens]

this is one of the things that keep me from starting youtube because i can't decide wether i want to make my videos in english or Italian (my native language)

[@Metamorpheu]

You already sound pretty Brit! :) I am wondering wether to start in Portuguese or English, although I have my channel for a long time, never really took the time to vlog and make content for youtube specifically. Thanks for giving your insight about it. I'll probably go for english as well :)

[@202rawrpinguin]

I love how you open your video's with hooi and say doei at the end!! ♥ best of both worlds I'd say!

[@coombeslauren]

This is literally the fourth video I've watched from you and I'm amazed to learn that you are Dutch, you sound very American to me! -Love from a Londoner :P

[@xpanosxgr2713]

im from greece and will try to make my gaming videos into english your video gave me courage thank you

[@fabulousmua]

This video helped me made up my mind about this I’m making my videos in Spanish because it is my first language but I really want to have a bigger audience and reach an I am not getting that and I may never will because of how small the opportunities are. I will definitely start doing my videos in English I speak fluent English and I think it’s the best for my channel

[@MissMymooReads]

That's a great video! I already have a BookTube channel in French since 3 years but I recently started another one in English. Yay for multitasking, because I love both. Obviously, the it's very time consuming and I may not be as regular in my English channel than on my French one, but it's a work in progress and I can only hope to figure out the perfect combination. 😊

[@Gandorfwandorf]

Im watching your video for the first time and your english is perfect, and your accent sounds really slightly irish which is awesome! I would have never guessed it wasn't your first language

[@Bookupied]

I'm from Sweden, but I felt it was natural to speak english when I decided to film videos because I was talking to other (english speaking) content makers. I thought it would be more fun if they understood my videos as well. Also, I've barely seen and swedish booktubers. And I read a lot of books in english just because I love the language and want to learn it better!

[@SilviaKay]

Thank you so much for making this video, it encouraged me to go for it and start my own Booktube channel in English, which was a big step for me as I'm quite a shy person. Even though I do most of my reading in English (and the rest in any other languages I'm learning at the moment xD), speaking is somehow much more intimidating. By the way, I'd never have guessed that English wasn't your native language - your accent is very American!

[@nienke7713]

I think something that is also important to consider is how commonly English is spoken in your country/region, I know that many people in the Netherlands can at the very least understand English, and plenty of people are quite good at it, so the chances are that you'll still be able to have a strong community reach to your country even if you do it in English.

[@sonnymolly4586]

I'm checking out so many new channels just from the people commenting I'm so happy right now

[@VeronicasShelf]

My first language is swedish, but I always look for ways to improve my english and booktube is one of them. I'm really not that quick to learn new things but if (when) I learn how to ad subtitles to my videos I think I would really like to make some videos in swedish as well. I mostly read english books because I have a hard time with translations sometimes, but the books I read in swedish I would feel more comfortable to talk about in swedish. I really liked the video, it gave me something to think about! :)

[@jindijoosten8562]

I'm Dutch too and I LOVE making videos in English :) I also enjoy listening to English videos much more and I recently made a video about this too! So lovely to find someone that talks about this :)

[@enriquemorris]

Hi, am from Colombia. Thank you very much! For this big inspirational video. It was Very helpful for me to stay in my channel in English. Thank you very much for share your own experience😊🙏🏽.

Hi, thanks for this video, watched and supported. Your voice is strong and clear

[@riverthoughts2400]

great video! i speak english bc i live in Canada and grew up here.. however, you made a good point about improving your foreign language by making videos speaking in a foreign language. it would be a lil awkward at first, but now im thinking of making videos where i would speak in french and spanish (languages im learning) as a way to improve and even get feedback... def an interestig discussion!

[@1nformatica]

What is the best way to make a video in dual languages? I want to make a video in English and Spanish. Best to make 2 videos one in each language or one video dubbed in two languages? Thoughts please!!

[@peterk3145]

Both languages are huge so it doesnt matter which one you choose

[@thureem]

Yep, started my blog in English (Swedish is my native language) and have thought about lots of these things! Still not sure if I feel 100% comfortable with it

[@MariaWilton]

I'm portuguese and I only watch 1 or two portuguese KZbinrs out of the 100 and something KZbinrs I watch on the regular. I've wanted to start my channel in English before because I only read in English and only watch content in that language but I feel like it takes A LOT MORE WORK and time to gain subscribers when making English videos because literally everyone does them.

[@lazysun1]

hey! how about your accent, which sounds kind of american? was this a conscious choice? is this what you were taught in school? did you have a preference? can you switch to a more british accent if you choose to? does this bother you when you now live in the uk?

[@ingevliek6156]

I talk with my internet best friend through voice messages everyday which really improves my english. Also youtube and music helped me improve it :) I'm so happy that I can talk English almost fluently. I'm dutch too by the way lol

[@lelengtintin2404]

Although I live in the Philippines, I have decide to do my videos in English. So that everyone can understand me and at the same time, I can improve and be confident in my speaking ability in English.

[@ViralHorses]

We are Dutchies too😬🇱🇺! We were hesitating about which language to use. Having that native connection sounds important, but i think english is a good way aswell to reach people worldwide. So i guess we gonna stick with the world-wide-language😆

[@alexrodolfomagana]

thank you for opening my mind.

[@ToniConiLatina]

THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO! Surprisingly enough I haven't found many videos that talk about the subject! I'm just starting to vlog and I feel comfortable enough with English to create content in the language, but it just doesn't feel right to not produce content in Spanish. The one suggestion I found intriguing and the one I'll try out to see how it works out, is to make the videos 50/50 and adding subtitles. Ps. I just did a video in Spanish and found that sometimes the jokes could not translate into English, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun with the subtitles, so I added some extra jokes in the subs to compensate! :D