버클리 출신의 언어천재가 외국어를 빠르게 익히는 방법 알려드려요!

Welcome back to Lunch Hour English, where you can improve your listening skills and hear inspiring stories from around the world. Today's guest is a musician from China who is living in Dubai, recently released a new single, and can speak more than 7 languages fluently. Please welcome Sunny Lucas! Hello!

Hi! Thanks for having me.

Thanks for joining me.

What's up guys? My name is Sunny Lucas. I am a Chinese pop R&B singer-songwriter. And currently I have a new single called Déjà Vu, which is out now. It is like déjà vu when it comes to me and you.

It's so good, guys. I listened to it. It's really nice.

Sing it!

How did you get started in music?

I started at a very young age, actually. I was forced to play the piano, just like every traditional household in China. I didn't really like it, but then I picked up the guitar at the age of 13, and then I was all self-taught, and I started doing a bunch of covers. And then I discovered Justin Bieber, and then he really, really made a huge impact on my career. It was kind of like my tool to impress, you know, the crush that I had at that time.

Serenading all your girlfriends. Serenading.

Not girlfriends, no.

Potential girlfriends. Where did you study abroad?

So growing up in Hong Kong, I went to Canadian school, and then I actually studied a little bit out in Shrewsbury in the UK. And then after that, I went to high school in Taft in Connecticut, then Berklee College of Music.

Wow, so international! Did you study music, or what did you study at Berklee?

Berklee College of Music is a music school.

Cut that out. I meant to ask what was your specific discipline there.

Oh, got you. Yeah, um, well, I studied music production and engineering.

Wow, you're very talented. So tell me about your new single Deja Vu. How did that come about? Like, what was your inspiration for that? Deja Vu.

It's French. It's a very, very like a touching story. I'm just really, really happy that it came together so perfectly, and then now it's finally out.

Congratulations! That's a big accomplishment. You said that Situationship was released prior to Deja Vu. I like that song. It's so catchy.

Situationship. I try to like blend like Mandarin and English together and try to like make it like super Y2K R&B-ish. That song actually I finished writing in like a week. Wow.

Knowing so many languages, does that affect you as a musician?

Honestly, I only write in English. My whole thought process is in English, but you know, whenever I can incorporate Mandarin or Cantonese into my songs, I would definitely do that. I'm also recently trying to incorporate a lot of Spanish because I speak Spanish and I'm a huge fan of reggaeton music. So, you know, why not?

That's cool. Mix it up a little bit. Can you explain the meaning of situationship?

It's kind of like a gray area between friendship and relationship. It's kind of like an unconfirmed, unofficial relationship which doesn't want to be yet labeled. It's like, oh, we don't want to commit. It sucks. It would be cool if you're the one that's rejecting. But if you're the one that's being rejected, it's kind of like, ooh. I catch feelings instantly, honestly.

I do too. You wear your heart on your sleeve. Two sensitive souls here.

Are you Capricorn?

I'm a Virgo.

Oh, that's why.

You're Capricorn?

Actually, yeah.

So do you have any plans for shows coming up or a tour or anything like that in the works?

For sure. Summer we do a bunch of like school tours in the States and then we do a lot of music festivals in China.

So US and China?

Yeah, great relationship.

Nice! Let's go! What about Korea?

So Korea, I'm definitely gonna be doing a lot more, especially after this trip. I'll be back with a banger.

Awesome. What languages exactly do you speak?

Let's just go with like all the languages I know.

English, Mandarin Cantonese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Arabic, Parsi, Persian, Urdu, Hindi, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian. I ran out of fingers already.

Like, I know all the Southeast Asia, Vietnam.

Wow.

Tagalog.

Are they extremely different from each other?

I mean, Malaysian and Indonesian is kind of similar. Spanish and Italian is kind of like similar. And then Mandarin Cantonese is completely different.

How do you even begin to start learning these languages? Languages?

Honestly, I just have like a huge curiosity for like learning languages. It's like my passion. It's like what I do during free time. Like I would just go to the coffee shop and, "How do I ask for this in your language?" You're so proactive. I think you just got to be proactive. It's good to be open-minded. Just, just learn as much as you can.

We have a lot of people that are like studying English, and I feel like a lot of people say that they're always nervous to practice speaking. They don't want to make a mistake. Do you have any kind of like advice how to overcome that?

Honestly, I think just go for it. Some things might not be 100% accurate. I ask a lot of questions. I don't pretend to know everything. Don't be scared.

Fake it till you make it, right?

You just gotta fake it. And don't worry about the accent, honestly. Like, as long as you can speak the language, people understand you, that's what matters. It's not complicated at all.

Yeah, not hard at all. Just knowing like 15 languages, you feel like you can go and like order coffee comfortably.

It's so easy.

Can you talk politics?

For me, politics itself is a language. So it's a language that I don't want to learn. I prefer to learn love language and body language.

Check out the song Situationship.

Push on that.

So what was the hardest language for you to learn?

I feel like the hardest language is definitely Russian. Vietnamese is also really, really difficult. Mandarin honestly is pretty hard too, I would say, in a very non- biased perspective.

So when you start learning a language, it can be really frustrating because it's so difficult. How do you kind of overcome that?

Time and patience and just hard work. It depends on how much you want to learn the language. You literally gotta like speak it every day. Whatever you're doing, just like repeat to yourself. If you get a couple of phrases or words more than like 10 times, it's automatically ingrained. But you gotta like build that familiarity, so you just gotta keep repeating. It's like how do you memorize the song, right? You just gotta repeat. Treat it like your favorite song, put a melody to it, You know, for example, "Bop bo hey ju say yo." You know?

"Bop bo hey ju say yo." That sounds like a real song.

We got an album coming out soon, the end of this year. And I got a couple more singles. I'm gonna be featuring a lot of different artists around the world. We got a couple of Korean artists. Next time when I'm back, I'm gonna be speaking fluent Korean.

Nice! Thank you. I really enjoyed our conversation. You had some really great insight. Thank you. Yeah, and I wish you All the best. I'm really looking forward to all your future music. I'll be watching closely.

Thank you guys.

Thank you guys.

Please go subscribe to her channel and my channel too, but mine first.

Okay, interview's done. Bye!

Language challenge. I love you. We're gonna start with Mandarin. 我爱你.

我爱你.

10 out of 10. Cantonese. 我爱你.

我爱你.

Okay, French. Je t'aime.

Je t'aime.

Perfect, bang on. Spanish. Damn. Italian?

Ti amo.

Portuguese? Eu te amo. Russian? Okay, that's, that's fun. Tagalog?

Indonesian? That's not it.

Thai? Perfect. Vietnamese? Japanese? And then we're gonna end with Korean.