I don't watch KPop interviews much but why is it that when a group sings in English they sound natural but when a member or members speak in English they sound like they're speaking it for the first time?

1st Official Post

    I apologize if this thread offends anyone, but I've been watching kpop interviews where the members speak in English; but why is it that when a group or a member of the group do an interview in English they sound like they're speaking it for the first time but when they sing an English verse they sound natural idk what the word to say is.


    The only groups that i've seen in interviews where they sound natural when speaking English are TWICE, ITZY, SNSD and BLACKPINK they sound natural as they do in the songs.

    you probably havent watched any monsta x interview in english lol pretty much all members are fluent by now


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    • Official Post

    It's much easier to follow a guide pronunciation for a song (it's why people can sing in Latin, Germin, Gaelic, etc without knowing anything about the language) than it is to form the correct sounds.


    English is a difficult language for native speakers at times because it's not phonetically consistent. The best way to pick up correct pronunciations is by communicating with native speakers. In fact the groups who sound the best typically have members who are born and raised or lived for long periods of time in English speaking countries.


    It reminds me of the first time Jessi was on Knowing Brothers. They mentioned that Youngchul is good at English and Jessi told him he wasn't because he often pronounces words "the Korean way" but once he told her that he had never studied abroad she told him he was great.

    Quote from omnimorphism

    A song you can memorize and have a guideline, an interview you can't. I think every foreigner speaks better singing.

    Yeah, I agree with this. I've seen like behind the scenes on some KPOP artists on how they record (even in a lot of song recording in a lot of genres) they read from a certain paper while they're singing. Whether an interview is scripted or not (usually not though), they still won't most likely have the direct reference. It wouldn't make sense to do an interview reading from a paper while speaking.

    A song you sort of know how to prounce things because it follows a melody and rhythm. However when you have to speak English, or any language, on the spot with zero time to think about what you exactly want to say during an interview it's obviously tough to speak.


    I don't speak Korean but I can certainly copy the pronounciation of a song to make it seem like I know Korean words but ask me to have a conversation in Korean and I have no clue apart from maybe a couple basic phases I picked up.

    I think because, for a song, members have plenty of time to memorize and even practice correct pronunciation. Meanwhile, for interviews, they might only know a few questions that will be asked beforehand but they simply didn't have time to focus on pronunciation. They will only think about whether the answer is enough for that question.


    Can you give an example of which idols that you refer to? No offense here, when I watch BP's interview Jisoo seems awkward to me when she speaks English, but I don't blame her since she still keeps learning and improving and it is not her main language after all.

    Because in interview they have to build the sentence in their head to answer. They can't focus on the pronounciation.


    Whereas in the song, the lyrics are already written before the recording. They can just focus on perfecting their pronounciation - they can also re-do the take if it's not perfect.

    Apart from groups that have a native speaker, most groups struggle in the sense that they utter short basic sentences, and in some cases with pauses, because this is easier for them and I think sometimes they have the answers memorized.

    When you sing a song in any language you don't speak, you only need to memorize the lines and the sounds, and then repeat, repeat and repeat until you get the perfect take. But talking in a language is more than memorizing lines and sounds. It's about fluidity, flow between sentences, naturality and spontainety.

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