A lot of times in K-Pop, and in other Asian music, they try to add a little bit of English into their song to try to make it more hip, more accessible to English speakers, etc. Sometimes this works, and other times it doesn't, because English has a lot of sounds that Asian languages don't have. And because the grammar is completely different.
The loof is on fire. I'm a oolf. Careless, careless, shoot anonymous. I'm ready to bingo. Hey do you now. We gonna take it to the next revel. These are just some examples of how English gets turned into Engrish.
A lot of my friends and co-workers claim this as a reason for their disliking K-Pop as a whole, or as a part.
But for me, there is some sort of magic that comes from their use of Engrish. It gives the songs flavor, and that special attribute that only they have. Without the Engrish, it wouldn't be the same kind of K-Pop. Yes, a lot of times the English phrases don't make sense, and a lot of times the individual words they use aren't spoken correctly. So what?
Of course, sometimes people complain too much about it and then the producers fix some of the pronunciation for the album. That always makes me upset.
One of my favorite examples of this is B.A.P's Hurricane. In the music video, Himchan says The loof is on fire. What he meant to say is roof, but just the way he says loof while wearing an intense stare made it endearing. However, a lot of people laughed and made fun of and complained about it when the MV first came out, and so for the album, the producers had Himchan re-record that part, this time pronouncing the word a little bit closer to roof. It still wasn't perfect, but it wasn't loof. The problem with this was it didn't have the same integrity and just plain adorable-ness as the MV version. And so even now I still sing loof, even when Himchan sings roof.
To me, Engrish is just an endearing part of Asian culture, and one of the things that I like about. I hope it doesn't change anytime soon.
Sorry for the late post, and thanks for reading!
I remember our second Japanese exchange student having a hard time and one night before bed she asked if I would "Play with her." My first thought was heck no I'm tired and don't want to play with you. But then I realized that she was asking me to PRAY with her. That I could do. I love Engrish. I'm boring so I'm going to the Library!
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