@ belleza

OMG he's super adorable! I think I'm in love, even though I have no idea who he is.

Also, no accent!

The girl, Tiffany?, she has basically no accent. If anything, she sounds kind of like a valley girl.

So wait, these singers are born and raised in the States and travel to Korea to get a career?

When I was younger (17 or so), my mom wanted me to go to the Philippines to become an MTV VJ or actress, but I had no idea how to speak the language. I wonder if they already knew or if they had to learn.

And if their bandmates think any differently of them because of it.

Interesting.

@ 50 Taohua

You heard a Jersey accent?

I didn't hear one at all. All I heard was maybe someone trying to speak with a little slang, that's it.

I don't have a Jersey accent (at least I don't think I do!!!) since I went to boarding school out of state, but my friend Autumn does and when she talks, you can tell.

She'll say: "Let's go to tha mawl" aka "Let's go to the mall".

With Brian I didn't hear a Jersey accent.

"If anything, she sounds kind of like a valley girl. "

Exactly. If you meet a SoCal AzN girl with a valley accent, she's either from the Valley . . . or she's Korean. ;)

"I didn’t hear one at all. All I heard was maybe someone trying to speak with a little slang, that’s it. "

Brian's talking hood, but it sounds East Coast-y to me. I'd love to hear if he has a Guido in him. :D

Brian's speaking with a bit too much respect to be speaking guido. *shudder*

I'd like to see him with his other Jersey friends. The Asian Guido syndrome probably pops out then.

Things I've heard from an asian guido at my college frat parties? "Yo yo yo, can I get yo number. You lookin' real fine girl." It's just. Laughable.

I notice it with a lot of my Asian friends. Stick them with a group of white people and they adapt their tone of voice/language. Take them out clubbing with guidos and they sleaze it up. I remember in high school, the majority of my friends were black, and I was considered Blasian. Oh man, have you ever seen an Asian guy try to act hood? Well imagine a 5'2, 86 pound Asian girl acting hood.

BTW, that new reality show about the Jersey Guidos make me deeply ashamed to be from Jersey. Although I have to say that most of those guidos are from Staten Island (NY!!!!) and not from NJ. I mean, the worst are from Staten Island. Jersey Shore has its share of guidos, but not nearly as bad or as much.

"Well imagine a 5′2, 86 pound Asian girl acting hood. "

LOL welcome to K-town in the City of Los Scandalous.

"Things I’ve heard from an asian guido at my college frat parties? “Yo yo yo, can I get yo number. You lookin’ real fine girl.” I"

Ahahahahahaha!!!!! Muscle shirt/wifebeater too? :D

BTW for the SoCal fam, here's an Asian guido. So macho it's homoerotic. So stupid it's pre-homosapien.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC3cTXGICkM

@mishane
Sounds south Jersey to me but it's been years since I've been around Jersey speakers with strong accents..and maybe it's because I grew up in Jersey City...and growing up all the kids tried to sound cool by speaking slang and he sounds like a lot like them (oh could there be a more ghetto-y place? And I speak this with love :) . But even still I woulld've pegged him from the NY/NJ area. North East Coast-y definitely.

Oh and you don't have to know the language necessarily to join a Korean idol group. Jaybeom the former leader for 2pm who left because of a myspace controversy didn't speak Korean before joining 2pm. And Nickchun another member of 2pm is not Korean (he's half Thai/half Chinese and was scouted by JYP in the US), neither is Han Geng in Super Junior who is Chinese. And I think all of them can speak Korean to some fluency now.

"So wait, these singers are born and raised in the States and travel to Korea to get a career?"

Pretty much. They might be able speak and sing perfect English, but they would never make it in America and hence try to start something up in Korea.

"I think the best English speaker is still Jung Rye Won (spelling??). Even though she has an Australian accent, her English was basically PERFECT in MNIKSS."

You really think so? I thought her English was decent, but by no means perfect. Come to think of it, I can't recall a k-drama in which there was a actor or actress who spoke perfect English.

How cool would it be if all our favorite k-drama stars were to gain the ability to speak perfect English? OMG just the thought of Kim So Eun with a Californian accent would be like, totally awesome dude ^_^ Actually....no. After just visualizing (audiolizing?) that in my head, I'd rather her stick to Korean and do Oppp-ppaa all day long :D

@ 55 Belleza

Ahahahahahaha!!!!! Muscle shirt/wifebeater too? :D

Kinda. Black muscle tee and jeans. Greasy spiked hair.

And that video is scary. Although I do like that Benny Bennasi (sp?) song.

@ 56 Taohua

Yeah, I hear the Jersey accent most on the shore. I went to college in Union, near the Newark area and my friend lives in Jersey City and I don't hear the Jersey accent much there. More of just slang.

That's cool about the boy band thing. Maybe I should have taken my moms advice then.

Time for an embarrassing story:

Back in high school, remember when Chingy came out? Yeah. I kind of talked like that. "Right thurrr right thurrr. I like da way you move it right thurr right thurrr".

@ 57 Kobe

I thought JRW English was great but it has been over a year since I've seen it so I might be wrong. I compared it to everyone else that I've heard, and it was the best. Also, I thought the Australian accent was cute.

BTW I'm watching Creating Destiny right now and MAN has Eugene's accent gone to shit. I thought it was adorable in Wonderful Life. In episode 4 of CD, it's cringe-worthy.

Rain's in Ninja Assasin wasn't terrible but it wasn't great. He messed up a few times and it seemed like they filmed most of his speaking scenes with his mouth away from the camera so it was probably dubbed in later.

LBH i GI Joe was also mediocre. Still accented. A few awkward scenes.

Yeah, I'd love to hear a Korean actor (in a Korean drama, not US) speak perfect English but I don't think that would be possible. Like people mentioned above, it's hard to remain bilingual with perfect accents. You'd have to constantly be talking in it.

I kind of wonder how Daniel Henney got hired in Korea. Aren't Koreans insulted that he doesn't try to learn the language? Like, let me go over to the Philippines and be an actress but not speak the language. It doesn't make sense.

Oh on that Girls Generation video, where is the girl with the short hair from (Tiffany? Jessica?)? The brown haired girl sounds LA but the girl next to her doesn't. And if she moved to Korea when she was 10, I'm surprised that she kept her English. Kudos to her!

On JRW's English...I thought in MNIKSS it wasn't supposed to be fluent since she had only been in the US for a few years based on the plot line. I remember watching Which Star (Planet?) Are You From? later and realizing that her English is actually better than what she spoke in MNIKSS. It was almost like, "She's really fluent?" Kind of how I felt when I saw a clip of Lee Sun Ho in Snow Queen and thinking "Oh that weird way of speaking Korean in Tamna was him just acting."

It would be good news if she really take a role in a Hollywood film! Good luck to her!

The girl with the short hair is Jessica. The one to the left is Tiffany.

Interesting discussion going on here. HYS definitely has an accent, if you're not hearing it you've been hanging out with Koreans too much. It's perfectly intelligible and fluent, but her accent is dead obvious. She has unnatural use (or lack) of articles, the atypical word choice affectations like "those stuff" and "the fashionable out[er]wears" (note the extraneous 's'--i half expected her to say "those stuffs" as well). Definitely identifiable as a Korean-influenced speech pattern.

Tiffany doesn't quite have an accent but if I only heard her speaking I might guess that she's Korean (or, as she might put it, "Krean"). I'm not sure how to describe it--she kind of talks like her mouth is small, and cuts vowels a little shorter than would be standard for American English. BTW in my experience that SoCal Korean accent (not quite the same as a Valley girl accent) isn't limited to Cali Koreans.

As for Brian...I'm not hearing the Jersey accent, but I live here and I don't think I really have an accent so I may not be the best judge.

I don't really know much about Twilight, but from the impression I get, isn't HYS older than what they would be looking for?

"SoCal Korean accent (not quite the same as a Valley girl accent)"

First time I heard a "hard" SoCal Korean accent (when I was a kid), it sounded like Chinese-meets-Mexican-meets-Valley accent to me. By the end of high school, I was talking the same way. Sometimes I don't hear it anymore because where I currently live is surrounded by it still.

I have a Chinese-American accent too. If you look for it, you can hear it.

"I kind of wonder how Daniel Henney got hired in Korea. Aren’t Koreans insulted that he doesn’t try to learn the language?"

Actually a rather big deal that a mixed-race guy was even accepted at all, let alone loved, in a K-drama (as opposed to Japan, which fetishizes that.) Very rare. FWIW, he can converse in Korean now.

"cuts vowels a little shorter than would be standard for American English. "

That's part of the give-away. The point of resonance is lower than typical American or English. The vowels are flattened a little.

"She has unnatural use (or lack) of articles, the atypical word choice affectations like “those stuff” and “the fashionable out[er]wears” (note the extraneous ’s’–i half expected her to say “those stuffs” as well)."

Nicole of Kara is really interesting. Her English pronunciation is fluent, but the words come across as if she's thinking in Korean as she's talking.

"I don’t really know much about Twilight, but from the impression I get, isn’t HYS older than what they would be looking for?"

Yes, but allow for the Asian Age multiplier and her Hollywood age is now 19-21 years old. She might even still get carded. ;)

There's an Asian dude playing a HS student in Twilight. He's 28 years old.

I think it would be nice to have her in the hollywood movies:D the edge she has over rain, lee byeong hyun and jeon ji hyun is that she can speak english! and she has a nice voice:D heh heh. fell in love with her in tazza...

This is an interesting thread... are any of you linguistics majors?

@65 belleza Nicole's Korean isn't that good...she's attending a few university classes for a show, and she failed a few of them because her limited Korean. She's very fluent in english since she was born and grew up in the US. I've noticed though that at first her english was fine, then she had a bit of an accent, and now she speaks haltingly. Probably getting a bit rusty? She did just move to Korea 3 years ago, from Glendale, California

Anybody here have an opinion on Crown J's accent? :P http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xBmGPCeeiU

"I’ve noticed though that at first her english was fine, then she had a bit of an accent, and now she speaks haltingly. Probably getting a bit rusty?"

I think when she speaks English, she's now thinking in Korean. That happens a lot when you stay in a foreign country for a long time. So even if English was her first language, the sentences come out interesting. Han Ye Seul is doing that too. Her pronunciation is fluent (yes, there's the heavy accent), but the way she puts sentences together is sometimes off from what would be colloquial English in America. (which is suggesting she's still kinda thinking in Korean even when she's talking to Americans.) That's more pronounced than it was a few years ago.

"Anybody here have an opinion on Crown J’s accent?"

TICAL!!!!! Where Meth and Redman at? :D

someone might have already point this out, but eclipse is already on the post production stage.. so primary shooting is already finished and if its in breaking dawn... there are no character she could fit in... sorry....

Jaymee is right. She can't play in Eclipse cause it already finished shooting. But I think in Breaking Dawn could be, the reason is there will be the part which many Vampire from all over the world come to help the Cullen against the Volturi. However, according to the description of characters in the book, seems she couldn't fit in any.
Anyway, who know...????