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I have spoken to Ziad Fazah | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| Midnight Diglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4638 days ago 54 posts - 111 votes  Speaks: Czech*, English | Message 65 of 104 25 April 2012 at 10:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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First Person: Ziad Fazah As told to Ed Hammond Published: June 21 2008 02:27 | Last updated: June 21 2008 02:27 I had been living in Brazil for two years when soldiers came to my home and ordered me to come with them. It was 1973, and the country was under a military dictatorship. As the jeep rumbled through the darkness I felt sick with fear; I thought I was being arrested as a spy. At a police station in Porto Alegre I learnt that it was the CIA who had had me picked up. They showed me photographs of me going about my business and said they had been following me for some time. They wanted to know why a 20-year-old from Lebanon was fluent in Russian and Chinese and, more importantly, who was I working for? I wasn’t working for anyone, not in their sense – I was just really good at languages. I was 11 years old when I realised I had a gift for languages. It was 1964, and my parents and I had moved to Beirut from Liberia. I was starting to learn English in school. Within three months I had learnt the language completely and was hungry to learn another. Something in me had been awoken. At home I would be up before anyone else and at night I would be the one closing the curtains. Within six months I learnt French, German and Armenian; before the school year ended I was fluent in all the Scandinavian languages as well. At this time there was a bookshop in Beirut where you could buy language guides and tapes for all the languages of the world. Whenever I had any money I would buy as many guides as I could, building my own methodology for learning. It was very simple. First I’d listen to the tapes, which allowed me to get to grips with the phonetic of the language. I could master this within a few days. Next I’d study the grammar, which was more time-consuming – especially if there was a new alphabet to learn – but would allow me to express myself even in complicated situations. Within three months I’d have mastered a new tongue – writing, speaking, reading and listening. This system for learning meant that I was able to tackle three languages at a time and master them over a period of three months. During my teens word began to get out that I had a special talent. The Chinese consul challenged me to learn Mandarin, saying it was impossible for anyone to conquer the language in three months. Three months later, I telephoned him, in Mandarin of course, and he could not believe that it was me. He even asked me to visit him so that he could speak to me in his language – and to his complete shock I could converse perfectly. But my language skills have not always brought good things. When I was 16 three men contacted me, saying that they were from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, that they were planning to hijack Israeli aircraft – and they wanted me to be their interpreter. When I said no they gave me 48 hours to change my mind. I was lucky: one of my brother’s friends knew people in the PLO, and they caught these guys and punished them. A few years later a man claiming to be from Mossad, the Israeli national intelligence agency, asked if I would work for them. I turned him down and swiftly left Lebanon to start a new life in Brazil. Now I’m a language teacher and have been settled in Rio de Janeiro for 30 years – despite earlier hiccups in Brazil like the CIA having me picked up. I have slowed down the rate at which I learn new languages. I want to pick up some dialects of the smaller Pacific islands, but for now it’s a lot of work just to keep from getting rusty in the 59 languages I already speak. .... I just hope the FBI won't swarm me now. Edited by Midnight on 25 April 2012 at 10:47am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 66 of 104 25 April 2012 at 11:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for posting this. It is published in 2008, and I belive that in the meantime he has realized that he has become rusty in some of them.
When I have spoken with him, he has shown fluency in German, English, Italian, French and Spanish, and I take it for granted that he is absolutely fluent in Portuguese and his native Arabic. He did however admit that his Norwegian was too rusty to speak in it, even though he wrote me some sentences in it by e-mail. I would imagine the same goes for many of the other languages he uses very seldom. Again it boils down to a definition of fluency - are you fluent if you can at any time "sing a lullaby and discuss foreign politics in your target language while hung over" or are you fluent if you have learned and to a certain extent forgotten, but can quikly regain fluency after going over the language for a couple of weeks. The general consesus on the forum - and I include myself in there - is closer to the first than to the second. But perhaps we are too demanding? I see myself that even with the very limited amount of languages I speak, I do get rusty, and languages I have spoken for years suddenly disappear if I do not get to practise them - Italian being the most noticable example. I can still speak it well enough to say I can speak it, but not anywhere near the level I was at 25 years ago. But I would like to remind you all again - that he is not pushing his opinion on us here on the forum, nor writes angry posts to those who disagree with him. For those who find inspiration in his web site, that is a good thing. For those who don't - well hey - you have the most awesome forum ever - the HTLAL at your disposal :-) Do you have any idea how lucky you are? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Midnight Diglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4638 days ago 54 posts - 111 votes Speaks: Czech*, English | Message 67 of 104 25 April 2012 at 11:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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You're welcome and I think you're right about him not ganging up on us with his wild wild claims like some others are. But one thing is getting rusty in a language you speak fluently or at intermediate level and whole another kettle of fish to claim you speak language you don't. I don't doubt he's studied all of them, but I'm sure he didn't spread his focus equally. I think it would be probably impossible for him to make videos in Khmer, Cypriot Greek or even Singlish now. I'm not asking for it either, but when one makes such high-end claims, he's to expect the consequences including demanding some kind of evidence. I think that even after another 20 years of not speaking Italian you could answer a question like: "Che giorno è oggi?"
Mario: Che giorno è oggi? Grandson/daughter: What did he say? Solfrid: Where did I learn Italian and how come I absorbed it with such ease. Edited by Midnight on 25 April 2012 at 12:02pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5333 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 68 of 104 25 April 2012 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for a good laugh! I gave you a vote for that one! I actually just talked with an Italian friend on Saturday, who claimed he was so impressed that my Italian was as good as ever. Of course he had just heard med for three sentences,and could not appreciate just how much I have lost, but I still don't think I would have done that one :-) However, if I was on TV with millions of spectators, didn't hear properly what was said, and was speaking not one of my 5 but one of my 50 languages - who knows what might have happened. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4487 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 69 of 104 04 October 2012 at 6:58am | IP Logged | |||||
I'd just like to comment that there is nothing wrong from learning from Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia is one of the symbols of cooperation in human society as whole, and is great reference in general. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6867 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 70 of 104 04 October 2012 at 7:09am | IP Logged | |||||
I also don't see that this is so funny. As a language-learning tool it's brilliant. You can read about something in a language you understand so you can get the gist of it. Then the you can probably re-read the article in your target language. In this case Wikipedia's facts need not be called into question: it's simply being used as a tool. It's free, and it is highly multilingual. Pranksters and trolls notwithstanding, I also suspect its contributors are passionate about the availability of information and thus make an effort to write something that is as accurate as possible. Nothing is perfect, but I would never discourage someone from using it to practice a language. It bears mentioning that newspapers and novels aren't always the most factual sources out there. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 71 of 104 04 October 2012 at 7:09am | IP Logged | |||||
On the other hand, I'e never found learning from reference materials all that effective. Being available as a reference after having initially learned something? Absolutely. But for initial learning, encyclopedic reference material has never done it for me, personally. EDIT: After reading Journeyer's reply, I think I misunderstood your use of reference. If you're reading an article written in the target language, I *do* find that useful. But I understood "reference" as "grammar/language reference". Sorry. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 04 October 2012 at 7:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4461 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 72 of 104 10 December 2012 at 6:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Old thread but I really dislike arrogance, especially when the evidence says that it is unfounded arrogance. Also, I'm sorry if this post is mean-spirited but it is definitely not the intent.
Mr. Fazah started learning English as a child, apparently. Also, it is unarguably the most influential language in the entire world. Thus, it is likely that he would have studied/practiced English more than many of the other 58 languages. A poor accent is certainly forgivable; not everybody is capable of imitating native-speech. However, the text that I've seen him write as well as simple videos conducted in English make me doubt even his English ability. It is very hard to understand and I strain to get the meaning of some sentences. I would have nothing against him but when he says that he "continues being the greatest living polyglot", I expect much more. Shouldn't we be more skeptical and more realistic? He said that he learned 58/59 languages in 3 years, that is a rate of one language every ~2.6 weeks. Recently, I met a rather confident north European native (He is from a country that typically speaks their native language and also English, not Switzerland, however) that lives in the US. Though overweight, he told me that he ran a 4 minute mile in High School. Interesting enough, that would have made him one of about ~15 american high schoolers in the HISTORY of the US to accomplish such a feat. He said that he ran the 5K in 17 minutes, which confirms his lie--any 4 minute miler would run a 5K in about 14-14:30. Without me asking, he proceeds to tell me that he speaks 5 languages fluently; he learned Cantonese not by traveling to China or studying it, but because he has a friend from Hong Kong. If it quacks like a duck... Putting polygots or even humble diglots to the test is, in my opinion, not warranted unless they make very strong claims and are profiting from those claims. I wouldn't care about Mr. Fazah if he didn't have books on language learning or made such strong statements about his language prowess.
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