Mumbai, November 15, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
Legendary playback singer Kumar Sanu has shared how he works on the pronunciation of words when singing in different Indian languages, saying that he relies on a shorthand technique to closely follow the phonetics dictated by music directors and lyricists.
The singer, who has lent his voice to the song ‘Suniyo Zara’, spoke to IANS at his residence in Mumbai’s Andheri West during the song’s promotions.
Asked about listeners feeling that he belongs to whichever language he sings in because of his accurate enunciation, Kumar Sanu said he considered it a gift from God.
“This is also God’s gift. I can’t say that I don’t know any language except Bengali, Hindi, and a little bit of English. That’s all I know. Whether it is Nepali, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, or Marathi, I don’t know any language very well,” he said.
The singer added that although he has lived in Maharashtra for many years and developed a liking for Marathi music and its talent, he had not formally worked on mastering different languages.
Explaining his technique, Kumar Sanu said he carefully observes how music directors or lyricists pronounce words when dictating lyrics. He then records those pronunciations using a shorthand system that he has developed himself.
“When a music director or a lyricist dictates to me, I pay attention to how they are pronouncing it. I mark his pronunciation in my shorthand. In any of my papers, there is a lot of shorthand. I have created all this. So, I mark how to pronounce it,” he told IANS.
He explained that he refers to both the written lyrics and his shorthand notes while recording, trying to reproduce the pronunciation as closely as possible.
“You can tell from my words. I haven’t worked out on the language. But I developed one thing that through the shorthand, I tried to go as close as possible to the language. I tried that. And I succeeded in that to a large extent. People accepted it,” he added.
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