Does Jolin Tsai have good English skills?
 

I'm curious...the English she says in "Ye Man You Xi" sounds perfect...so I was just wondering...

Does she have songs with a lot of English in it? or Random English words like Ayumi?

Her earlier songs like, "Don't Stop" (a cover) or "You gotta know," had bits of english in them. Her english sounded good in both those two songs.

I have only heard her say a tiny bit of English. It's the first track off the 'Castle' album (Don't know the name), she says: 'Say sorry get out' in perfect English.

I was wondering that too... lol WAY beter than BoA's english lol

Wow cool! i'll check out those songs

rofl...BoA's english is ear bleeding sometimes :X...but In Dreams come True...when she said it at the end....I could have sworn she magicially spoke english well xD

Jolin can speak english. from what i know she has a degree in it.

i've heard her cover "The Rose" and her English is flawless.

lol when she says "Ya, I expect." from the song expect I laughed so hard!

I think when it comes down to learning English, that Chinese are a lot better at picking up the pronouncations of English than the Japanese do, considering the Japanese only learn how to read and write it.

There's always an accent when Japanese speak English. I know this because my friend Ayaka still has an accent when speaking English, but it's understandable. But my friend that came from Taiwan a year ago, she picked up English quite fast and doesn't have an accent.

If anyone has this song I'd like to hear it, or any other example of Jolin singing in English.

Covering a song is no proof you speak perfect english. Artists like shiina ringo can cover english songs perfectly fine but have a problem when singing their own orginal english songs. When you hear a known song several times it's easy to pick the pronunciation and imitate it. Not saying that Jolin can't speak english though, as I never listened to her songs, she probably might be good at it, but I just want to point out that covers are not the best material to judge whether an artist is or isn't fluent in english. Of course you can actually tell those who clearly aren't good at english when they actually cover it with a terrible pronunciation, but the opposite is not a reliable parameter to judge in my opinion.

Really? I always noticed the opposite. I find all the Japanese students I know have little accent, and the Chinese students retain theirs really strongly

English is a really difficult language...there's 3-4 different sounds per vowel and then all the crazy pronounciations of words...I'm proud of anyone who learns english fluently if it wasn't their 1st language

lol Now that you put it that way, it does sound a little difficult if it is not your first language.

Hm. I shall go to an only-English place to learn English.
But I'm sort of surprised that Jolin's English is good, considering that she lives in Taiwan, a Chinese-populated place.

I guess it depends on the person :eyebrow

English is STILL hard for me. I can only say that it's the hardest language to learn for foreigners.

yup Jolin majored in English in University.....

her english is pretty good

This is sort of OT but learning English differs for each person, it doesn't matter if they are Chinese or Japanese. Both of the latter don't have some of the sounds that we make in English, so you can't just say, "Well, the Chinese/Japanese learn the language better."

I definitly didnt mean to imply one learn the language better, I just meant in my experience, in my school with a very large asian population, there are less japanese with a strong accent. I didnt mean anything offensive by it...

Totally! After every class I'm thankful I havent had to go through the process of learning Englisih as a second language. For everyone who's gone through that... you deserve a great big fancy medal. With sparkles.

Exactly what I said ^^-

English classes were always the easiest classes I had in school, but of course it was mostly because they were basic classes :eyebrow I didn't even pay attention to my teachers and would actually secretly study other subjects like maths or physics during such classes. Most of my friends had a very hard time learning it, but hmmm, it was honestly never that difficult as some made it seem. In my opinion, they just lacked the interest in learning it (they also lacked interest in learning other subjects, not to mention the fact that the english teachers usually seemed really kind to pass the students even if they did pretty bad on the subject....they would always do something to help, so that explained why a lot of people had problems in learning the language as they would never take it seriously).

In university, it's kinda essential that people have at least basic knowledge in english (well at least in medicine it is essential), because we constantly have to read english articles, like the New England Hospital case reports. English is one of the languages that have a lot of material available for learning, different from most of the other languages. You can easily find movies, games, songs, books, articles, there are just way too many fonts you can learn from. I don't really feel sorry for people who have to learn english as their second language at all. :laugh

^'cause English is super awesome! *does a dance*

lol break it down!

Yep, learning languages is actually awesome in my opinion! I'm constantly trying to get better at my english (even though I'm far from that :() and it was so awesome when I was taking German classes....but because of the lack of time, I had to give t up :(

^I didnt know English was a second language for you, so kudos :)

Yeah I want to start up French again... but yeah, the time factor... have to take it one language at a time :)

Wow :) haha...I'm planning to Take up Chinese, French Japanese, and Italian in college ^^- i'm excited for that ^^- languages are definately very awsome :3

Very off topic, maybe I should make a thread... but I'm interested in what careers I can have with languages involved... I'll make a thread :)

i have it. :yes

Sugar Sugar
Bridge Over Troubled Water
The Rose

i'll upload it later.

i used to love her when she still look innocent (chubby face. :laugh) and didn't copy ayu's dress...*sigh*

EDIT: wow, listening to Jolin's old songs reminds me many sweet memories.... those old good times...:scry

cool! could you upload them?

honestly, i think there is still alot of room for improvement. :yes :yes

:P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P :P

depending on people who are born here. I taught ESL for a while. language is learnt easiest when you're before 12. However, if your environment is filled with people not speaking english, then you will retain your accent. Places I've lived in don't have a big asian population at all. Koreans and Chinese in those places have good english skills with no accent THe Japanese still keep their japanese accent because they pronounce the english words the same as they pronounce some of the japanese words. For example I know when they say sexy it's like secshi... which is weird. This is my experience.

Also learning eNglish as a second language actuall learning any language as a second language depends on your age and effort. I learnt ENglish at eight years old in 6 months. I remember reading Dr. Seuss two weeks after I started learning.

here ya go. :)

English song...

01. Sugar Sugar
02. Bridge Over Troubled Water
03. The Rose

Chinese song with several English lyrics...

04. Good Bye
05. Lucky Number

THNKX FOR ENLGISH MP3! Appreciate it! Her english is so AWESOME!! Though I could here a lil accent :yes

[edit] HAHA! She actually says heart instead of hert! *cough* BoA! *cough* (i still love u BoA! :yes) lol

She recently released a book about how to learn English I think. Seen her speaking english on axn "Hi I'm Jolin, you're watching Axn" i thought she wasn't really good in it when I heard her pronounciation. But she can certainly speak english, as to whether good or not, ha I can't judge.

Thanks for the songs! She really sounds surprisingly good.

her english is fine, isn't it ?

Yea...my question has been answered :)...She's even got a degree in English ^^-

have you guys heard BoA and Westlife's 'Flying Without Wings' before? her voices sound terrible in the song....

wow buddy X_x...terrible doesn't even start to describe her english there..

:laugh

jolin has a bachelor's degree in English literature
but during english interview, her english is so limited to little simple sentences
so people are wondering if jolin really is good at english
but she is better than most people, but not the most fluent

Chinese does speak English. Most merchants know how to carry out a simple conversation. Yeah. Simple. :D

I'm Chinese also. (Though from Canada...)

My dad learned to talk and read english all my himself. XD

Lol. I didn't mean Chinese by ethnicity. I mean Chinese living in China. XD

I don't know what kind of college she went to, but I had a few friends that went to a interenational school in Taipei and have perfect english (they had all filipino instructors). She probably rarely uses english though and since she is not in school... if you don't use it, you lose it @_@

People probably don't know this fact, but Jolin has said herself that she speaks English better than Mandarin. Amazing eh?

But it's quite easy to tell, esp when she gives interviews in Mandarin, can see she isn't very fluent in it, she pauses alot to think of how to say things.