Who is K-pop’s ultimate polyglot? Blackpink, Red Velvet and Shinee all boast members able to speak a whole host of languages – so which star impresses most?

Dec 29 , 2020

K-pop stars Jennie from Blackpink, Wendy from Red Velvet and Henry Lau all spent time learning other languages. Photos: @jennierubyjane; @wendy.redvelvet; @henryl89/Instagram

For a K-pop star to be widely loved across the globe, being able to communicate with the largest possible audience really helps. Some of our favourite idols speak enough languages to wow their fans living in multiple countries – but who’s top of the crop?

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Blackpink’s Jennie speaks Korean, English, Japanese – and now French

Blackpink member Jennie. Credit: YG Entertainment

If you are a huge fan of K-pop or Blackpink, you may already know that Jennie is a talented linguist. Since she lived in New Zealand before moving back to Korea in 2010, she speaks English fluently as well as her native language. Meanwhile, her Japanese-speaking abilities were in fact well-known to K-pop fans even before her debut, and they later became obvious for all to see after scenes emerged of Blackpink chatting to local fans in Japanese when they travelled to the country for a series of concerts.

Incredibly, despite already having three languages under her belt, Jennie recently added yet another – French. In October, members of Blackpink appeared on Knowing Bros, where Jennie revealed she had begun studying French because she found the culture attractive and had already wanted to learn the language for a long time. She introduced herself in French and even explained how to say “knowing brothers” in the language. If you want to know what languages other members of Blackpink speak, check out the video below.

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Red Velvet’s Wendy speaks Korean, English, French and Spanish

Wendy from Red Velvet. Photo: @ladadiwendy/Twitter

Jennie is not the only multilingual K-pop diva that speaks French. So does Red Velvet’s Wendy. When she was in her fifth year of junior school, she moved to Ontario, Canada, which not only gave her English a huge boost, but taught her some French too. She then moved to the US to attend Shattuck-St. Mary’s boarding school in Minnesota where she became an honour student and athlete, and earned various awards for academic and music-related activities.

In 2019, Wendy appeared on the television programme South Korean Foreigners, a show where Koreans and foreigners team up to solve quizzes related to the Korean language. On the show, Wendy’s impressive qualifications became a topic of conversation – it emerged that she’d even received The Obama Presidential Award, which is given annually to students with excellent grades. She said the main reason behind her talent with languages is that she doesn’t fear them. “I learned them at a young age and felt like I was playing games, so ended up learning them quickly,” she explained.

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Shinee’s Key and Onew speak Korean, English, Japanese and Mandarin

Key and Onew from Shinee. Photo: @kibumhourly/Twitter

Learning English appears to be the standard for most K-pop stars hoping to make it big, but some add other Asian languages too. Key from Shinee is fluent not only in English, but Japanese and Mandarin. In one episode of Super Junior’s Super TV Season 2, Key confessed that he wasn’t very confident in speaking Mandarin. However he later said several greetings perfectly well, proving that he was just being modest. F(x)’s Chinese member, Victoria Song, also praised his language skills.

Another member of Shinee, Onew, also speaks English, Japanese and Mandarin. During his trainee days, Onew made sure to learn the three languages in a bid to improve his chances of becoming a global star. When he visits China he doesn’t require an interpreter, and he usually takes the lead when Shinee has a concert in Japan.

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Is there an unwritten rule that artists signed to SM Entertainment need to be able to speak this specific combination of languages? Apart from the two Shinee members, several other SM Entertainment artists – including Boa, Amber from F(x), and Seohyun from Girls’ Generation – can all speak them fluently as well. Impressive.

Henry speaks Korean, English, Cantonese, French and more

K-pop star Henry. Photo: @5youyou5/Twitter

Henry Lau, better known as Henry, is a member of Super Junior-M and known as one of the ‘three idiots’ on I Live Alone. He is a Canadian national since he was born in Toronto, but his father is from Hong Kong while his mother is Taiwanese. Thanks to this special background, he speaks English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Taiwanese Mandarin and even French.

Henry has said in the past that his parents had the biggest influence on his ability to speak so many languages well. His mum and dad alone speak five languages and dialects between them, but Cantonese was the main language Henry used at home.

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K-pop idols

Blackpink’s Jennie speaks French while Red Velvet’s Wendy speaks Spanish and even received an award from Barack Obama for her top notch grades – meet the K-pop stars getting ahead with their language skills