Why can I memorize lyrics to songs in other languages but not my own?

Question

I don’t really enjoy listening to music in English anymore because I can hardly ever remember the lyrics. However, whenever I listen to songs in Korean, Japanese, Spainish, German, etc. I memorize the lyrics by listening to the sound twice. I have songs on my playlist that I haven’t listened to in 3-5 years and only heard a few times in another language but as soon as they pop up again I can easily remember the lyrics and sing along. Am I just weird or is there a reason for this?

Answer 1

The reason for this may be because you are a native English speaker and therefore, you don't have to think hard about the words. You don't have to try and figure out the sounds or the phonemes, but in other languages, you don't have to just figure out the sounds and words, but also the meaning. In our native language, meaning is lost on us because we generally don't pay that much attention to the words we're hearing, but it other languages, people are often compelled to look up the words and figure out the meaning.