myoongjoon:

Let’s talk for a second about how impressive Astro is, okay?

This isn’t about their widespread international popularity, their already dedicated fanbase despite being barely a year old, or even the fact that all of the visuals members have amazing vocal and dance skills.

No, this is about languages. As somebody who is very fascinated with language and language learning, I am both impressed and incredibly happy that Astro has covered 5 songs in foreign languages, including Japanese, Mandarin, Indonesian, Thai, and Spanish.

For any of you who have never tried to seriously learn a foreign language, let me tell you a little something to put this in perspective:

Pronunciation is very hard to nail down, especially for a language far from yours. When babies are born, they already have an understanding of language (including being able to recognize their mother tongue in the womb through its rhythm), and after birth they can even distinguish different sounds in other languages, for example the r and l sounds. As the child grows, they lose this ability, and when they are introduced to foreign language later in life, they no longer have the ability to distinguish the sounds, making it much harder to imitate the correct sound. All this, along with the fact that Korea is a very homogeneous country, and while they have their own beautiful and unique culture, it is not as if they hear languages like Spanish or Indonesian regularly. We (especially Americans) forget that its not a normal occurrence in some countries to go to the market and hear 3 or 4 people speaking something other than English into the phone. For Astro to be able to cover these songs, it undoubtedly took tireless practice in pronunciation and memorizing words in languages they don’t know, and for them to be able to do this and dance a routine (in the case of La Bamba), it is even more impressive. This is the highest level of effort I’ve seen from a kpop group thus far.

That’s not to say that other groups aren’t talented (or that other groups haven’t covered songs in another language), and I may or may not be a bit biased considering my love of foreign languages, but I am genuinely amazed at the amount of effort Astro puts into everything they do. They cover a song in the native language in every country they go to. They pay attention to the difference and they care.

They put in an incredible amount of effort to be able to communicate to Aroha in their native language through music, which is beautiful. They could sing just in Korean, because they’re from Korea and wouldn’t have to justify the use of their native language, but they don’t. They want to connect with Aroha on a larger scale. Could they do just English covers, considering many non-English speaking countries teach English as a second language? Most definitely, but they don’t, because it’s not nearly as personal, and they want to connect with Aroha on a deeper level. They (and Fantagio) understand that language is as much art as it is communication, and spoken language is a beautiful part of each culture and Astro is using that to be able to show Aroha how much they love us.

Long story short, don’t let Astro’s effort and talent be ignored because of the ‘cute concept’, and don’t think for a second that covering a song in another language doesn’t take dedication and incredible talent. Astro did that™, and they are continuing to do that™.