BTS members’ languages: V speaks Japanese and coined the K-pop phrase ‘I Purple You’, while Jungkook created ‘AFOBANGFO’ as part of the Army’s fan code – but who speaks English the best?

Dec 10 , 2020

BTS are all comfortable in front of a microphone – unless they’re being asked to speak Mandarin, that is. Photo: @_unside0901/Twitter

BTS’ new single Life Goes On broke records as the first Korean language song to top the US Billboard Hot 100, but what other languages do BTS members Suga, V, Jungkook and the rest of the K-pop supergroup speak?

BTS did it again in late November when they topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart with their single Life Goes On. Meanwhile, their first English-language release Dynamite – which hit the number one spot on charts across the world in September – remains in the top 15 and is even up for a Grammy.

The success of Life Goes On is significant, marking the first time a Korean language song has risen to the top of America’s main single chart. Thanks to the group’s global popularity, international fans are learning words from the Korean language and about Korean culture, and at the same time becoming curious to know what other languages BTS speak.

Read on for English language tips from RM, how not to speak Mandarin at a press conference, and examples of the unique language and phrases BTS group members share with their fans.

RM speaks beautiful English

RM’s speech at the United Nations in September 2018 not only garnered a strong response from his audience and fans around the world for its powerful message about being yourself and learning to speak out – and also showcased RM’s impressively fluent English.

On The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2017, RM revealed that the secret to his brilliant English was the fact that he grew up watching the sitcom Friends. He said he owed a lot to the popular programme, since he went to more than 20 different English academies but none of them did as much for his vocabulary as watching episode after episode of Rachel, Ross, Chandler and the gang.

At a 2017 press conference reported on by DongA, he elaborated further, saying that studying English just through books had been meaningless for him. At first he said he would watch Friends with Korean subtitles, then with English subtitles, and then remove them completely.

At another press conference in 2015, RM said that his fellow group members “also study English and Chinese but leave English up to me, so I’m studying thinking that [I have] the English speaking role,” he explained. According to Dispatch, RM also speaks decent Japanese and Mandarin too.

Several BTS members speak Japanese