Initially inspired by that time I was in the Netherlands and paid attention to the language for the first time and lost my mind because I thought the posters at stores were talking about death. Compounded by hanging out one time with a French person and a Dutch person. Germany’s most famous poet wrote a poem about the skull of his dead best friend that he stole btw.
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™.
The 75 most common words make up 40% of occurrences
The 200 most common words make up 50% of occurrences
The 524 most common words make up 60% of occurrences
The 1257 most common words make up 70% of occurrences
The 2925 most common words make up 80% of occurrences
The 7444 most common words make up 90% of occurrences
The 13374 most common words make up 95% of occurrences
The 25508 most common words make up 99% of occurrences
This article has an excellent summary on how to rapidly learn a new language within 90 days.
We can begin with studying the first 600 words. Of course chucking is an effective way to memorize words readily. Here’s a list to translate into the language you desire to learn that Derek Roger suggested! 🙂
EXPRESSIONS OF POLITENESS (about 50 expressions)
‘Yes’ and ‘no’: yes, no, absolutely, no way, exactly.
Question words: when? where? how? how much? how many? why? what? who? which? whose?
Apologizing: excuse me, sorry to interrupt, well now, I’m afraid so, I’m afraid not.
Meeting and parting: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, hello, goodbye, cheers, see you later, pleased to meet you, nice to have met.
Interjections: please, thank you, don’t mention it, sorry, it’ll be done, I agree, congratulations, thank heavens, nonsense.
Space: into, out of, outside, towards, away from,
behind, in front of, beside, next to, between, above, on top of, below,
under, underneath, near to, a long way from, through.
Time: after, ago, before, during, since, until.
DETERMINERS (about 80 words)
Articles and numbers: a, the; nos. 0–20; nos. 30–100; nos. 200–1000; last, next, 1st–12th.
Demonstrative: this, that.
Possessive: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.
Quantifiers: all, some, no, any, many, much, more, less, a few, several, whole, a little, a lot of.
Universal: everyone, everybody, everything, each, both, all, one, another.
Indefinite: someone, somebody, something, some, a few, a little, more, less; anyone, anybody, anything, any, either, much, many.
Negative: no-one, nobody, nothing, none, neither.
ADVERBS (about 60 words)
Place: here, there, above, over, below, in front, behind,
nearby, a long way away, inside, outside, to the right, to the left,
somewhere, anywhere, everywhere, nowhere, home, upstairs, downstairs.
Time: now, soon, immediately, quickly, finally,
again, once, for a long time, today, generally, sometimes, always,
often, before, after, early, late, never, not yet, still, already, then
(=at that time), then (=next), yesterday, tomorrow, tonight.
Quantifiers: a little, about (=approximately), almost, at least, completely, very, enough, exactly, just, not, too much, more, less.
Manner: also, especially, gradually, of course,
only, otherwise, perhaps, probably, quite, so, then (=therefore), too
(=also), unfortunately, very much, well.
CONJUNCTIONS (about 30 words)
Coordinating: and, but, or; as, than, like.
Time & Place: when, while, before, after, since (=time), until; where.
I started Hebrew, which is why I’ve been dead on this blog, but I don’t think I can ever properly convey to you guys the sheer cultural whiplash of spending years learning Japanese from Japanese teachers and then trying to learn Hebrew from an Israeli
Japanese: you walk into class already apologizing for being alive Hebrew: you walk into class, the teacher insults you and you are expected to insult her back
Japanese: conjugates every single verb based on degree of intended politeness, nevermind keigo and honorifics Hebrew: Someone asked my teacher how to say “excuse me” and she laughed for several seconds before saying we shouldn’t worry about remembering that since we’ll never need to say it
Japanese: if you get one stroke wrong the entire kanji is incomprehensible Hebrew: cursive? script? fuck it do whatever you want, you don’t even have to write the vowels out unless you feel like it
Japanese: the closest thing there is to ‘bastard’ is an excessively direct ‘you’ pronoun Hebrew: ‘bitch’ translates directly
So what you’re saying is, Hebrew is just a full on sass language.
I love how potato in French is pomme de terre, which pretty much means “earth apple.”
like what stupid frenchman saw this:
and said “zis petite légume looks like a, how you say, APPLE! hmmm… but it grows in ze earth… HON HON HON! MAIS OUI! C’EST UNE POMME DE TERRE!”
j’adore comment ananas se dit pineapple en anglais, ce qui veut littéralement dire “pomme de pin”, genre quel type anglais a vu ça:
et s’est dit : “ow cette étrange big fruit ressemble à une, how do you say, POMME! hmmm… mais plutôt une pomme qui pousse dans les pins… HU HU HU! OH YES, IT’S A PINEAPPLE!”
(z’avez vu, on peut le faire aussi… hon hon hon!)
I can’t even read French and I’m laughing my ass off
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