Beyonce Can Sing Spanish but Can't Speak It

Beyonce Knowles Performs at the
2007 ''Today'' Show Concert Series

"I just feel like I have to learn Spanish because I can sing it – I just can't speak it," Beyonce says in the new issue of PEOPLE En Español.

On April 3 she'll release a new version of her CD B-Day, which originally came out in September. This time, she's added six new songs – all sung in Spanish, including "Amor Gitano," the theme to the Telemundo telenovela Zorro, which she delivers as a duet with Alejandro Fernandez.

"A lot of my fans are Hispanic," she says, "and they've always told me, 'You should sing something in Spanish,' but I don't speak Spanish at all. I took it in school [so] I thought, let me give this a try."

And trying it was. "I did these songs phonetically, sentence by sentence, and I spent a lot of time ... making sure it was perfect, because I didn't want to disrespect the language, because it's so beautiful," says the Texas-born singer, 25, who brought help with her to the recording session.

"One of my best friends in the world is Cuban, so she was the test. I brought her to the studio and told her, 'Be honest. You have to tell me if anything is wrong.' So when she approved it, I knew everything was right."