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Ziad Fazah - does he exist? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7259 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes  | Message 9 of 377 12 April 2005 at 2:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I have not been having much luck contacting Ziad Fazah (the correct Arabic pronuncation of his last name, by the way, is quite difficult, as the last "h" is breathy and strong and carries the accent).
Most of the leads kindly provided above have proven to be dead ends. There are said to be something like 14 million Lebanese in the "diaspora" (compared to only 4 million in the homeland), and a high percantage of these are in Brazil. Neither Ziad nor Fazah are rare names, and in a population of what must be several million, there are bound to be many of them, so not every Ziad Fazah on those Christian computer sites is necessarily our man. Doing further searches, I have turned up two more articles about him in Portuguese, replete with pictures of a balding man seated over language books, and an email address from 2003. However, it, too, had fatal errors. I will condense and summarize the new and interesting information in these articles as soon as I can find a bit more time, which probably won't be for a few more days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 377 12 April 2005 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ardaschir, did you try the phone numbers on this page?
http://www.spidra.com/fazah.html 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7259 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 11 of 377 14 April 2005 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have found three more articles about Ziad Fazah since the last time I searched. This link http://www.scapin.org/bookmarks_en.htm contains direct links to the grand total of all five sites about him. Most of them repeat the same old limited information, and two of them state only that he has gone over to studying computer languages. However, the one entitled “O homem que sabe javanês” does contain some interesting information, which I will summarize here.
Rather than just stating that he has appeared on television shows, speaking to scores of people in their own language to prove his abilities, the article provides specific names and contact information of people who comment on his superior abilities in Polish, Greek, Japanese, and Finnish. The article then states that he displayed a prodigious memory from his childhood and made a habit of learning books by heart. As a youth, he wished to be an interpreter for the UN and to travel the world, speaking to everybody in their own languages. In the 14-17 year-old period in which he claims to have learned all his languages, he studied only one hour per night, three languages at a time, and in three months, on the average, he mastered them. First he memorized the grammar—only 20 minutes a day were sufficient. Then he learned the vocabulary by heart. He also practiced in the mornings, getting up at 5 AM to wander around the house by himself, inventing dialogues: “This is the secret to memorizing a language,” he teaches, “speaking aloud, you get used to the sound of the words.” The article then offers a theory about the structure of his brain by a neurophysiologist, then points out that his life has not been terribly successful—he never got to be a UN interpreter, and he has never been able to afford to travel. He works as a private language tutor, but isn’t able to charge anything more than the market price, and most of his students only want to learn English. However, he was planning a series of books in which he would explain his method, and the first was said (in 1996) to be due out soon, the reference to it being: "Ensinando a Aprender Espanhol", Casa Imagem Editorial, ISBN: 85-85487-19-4. I did a web search, but couldn’t find any indication that it had ever come out. As I search more and think more about him and digest what I have read and translated for you all, I find myself feeling two different ways. In the first place, if this is all true, then it is actually such a sad story that it depresses me to think that so much talent has no value to the world. However, more strongly than I feel this, I find myself growing increasingly incredulous. Not about the putative abilities—I’ve written before that I do not have a hard time believing that someone could actually know 58 languages well. Why? Well, because I myself have learned a good fraction of that number, and I have no reason whatsoever to believe that I am the acme of talent—in fact, I know that I am not, and I do not have a photographic memory. If I can do what I know that I have done, then why shouldn’t I believe that someone with more talent, who does have a photographic memory, who got started younger, and who kept at it longer, could achieve far more? No, it is the story itself that doesn’t really hold water. Have any of you read the short story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges? It is a fantastic story about an invented world created in a special edition of an encyclopedia. This reminds me more and more of that—some sort of a hoax, as it were. Why am I starting to feel this way? Well, there is just too little information out there, and it is too hard to follow up on. Only five available articles about such a celebrated person online in the age of the internet?! Contact information provided but both phone numbers and e-mail are duds? Assertions made that also don’t pan out: search Guinness records for “polyglot” or “most languages known”—these categories don’t exist! I myself do seem to recall seeing them in a version of the book about 20 years ago, and seeing him listed with Harold Williams at a tie for 56 languages, but every time I have come across a copy of the book since then I have looked in vain for the category… “Has appeared repeatedly on television programs, demonstrating his abilities by speaking dozens or scores of languages at a time to native speakers.” That would be great viewing, but I’ve never actually seen such a broadcast. Have any of you? Do any of you know anyone who has? Can anyone find his books? The biggest hole in story is that aspect of it that has always nagged at me: the learning of all the languages as an adolescent, but none since then. This appears even more improbable now that I know more about his method—learning grammar and memorizing vocabulary. Here’s the list of his 58 languages again: Albanês, Alemão, Amárico, Árabe, Armênio, Azerbaijanês, Bengali, Birmanês, Búlgaro, Butanês, Cambojano, Chinês Cantonês, Chinês Mandarim, Chinês Xangai, Cingalês, Cingaporenho, Coreano, Dinamarquês, Dzonka, Espanhol, Finlandês, Francês, Fuchin, Grego, Hebraico, Hindi, Holandês, Húngaro, Indonésio, Inglês, Islandês, Italiano, Japonês, Kiswahili, Laosiano, Malaio, Malgaxe, Mongol, Nepalês, Norueguês, Papiamento, Persa, Polonês, Português, Pushtu, Quirguiz, Romeno, Russo, Sérvio-Croata, Sueco, Tadjique, Tailandês, Tcheco, Tibetano, Turco, Urdu, Uzbequistanês, Vietnamita As I have written elsewhere, some years back I spent a good portion of my relatively high salary building a language laboratory by ordering materials for as many languages as I could find. I do not have materials for lots of the languages on this list because they simply do not exist. If a wealthy professor of linguistics cannot collect such materials in the age of the internet, how could a poor teenager do so locally 35 years ago? It just so happens that I live in Beirut right now and I know for a fact that the scholarly depositories of this city do not hold the requisite reference materials for learning most of these languages. I repeat, grammars and dictionaries for some of these languages are rare, expensive, and of limited access (i.e., only in the libraries of major research libraries in the Western world); those that do exist for such rare languages are generally not of such a quality that one could possibly gain a complete knowledge of the language from them, and moreover for many more of these languages, they are simply nonexistent. Thus, there is no way that he could have learned them in the manner claimed. I just noticed something else: Javanês is not even on the list! He knows 58, 58 are listed, and yet an article is written about him with a different language in the title?!?! I’m sorry, but this has got to be a hoax. I hope I am wrong - I would love to meet the man! But does he actually exist? http://www.scapin.org/bookmarks_en.htm Edited by Ardaschir on 14 April 2005 at 7:44pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| heartburn Senior Member United States Joined 7210 days ago 355 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 12 of 377 14 April 2005 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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If it were a hoax, it would explain everything. Everything except for who perpetrated it and why. :/
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 377 14 April 2005 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ardaschir, what you say makes sense. I think it would be possible to check at least is the newspaper articles listed on the website you mention, such as this were really published. If they were, we could probably talk to the journalist and get the details of M. Fazah.
The journalist that wrote the Veja article, João Gabriel de Lima, seems to exist and to still work for this magazine. I think he could tell us whether this is for real and where to contact the mysterious M. Fazah. I also contacted the gentleman with the webpage about Ziad Fazah to get it straight from the horse's mouth. Edited by administrator on 15 April 2005 at 12:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| souley Senior Member Joined 7244 days ago 178 posts - 177 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 14 of 377 15 April 2005 at 7:27am | IP Logged | ||
A pic of the man
Now that I think about it, I have never read about Ziad Fazah in any official sites, only personal anonymous webpages that quote something else. Edited by souley on 15 April 2005 at 8:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7379 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 377 15 April 2005 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, this is not conclusive as my email came back with a server error on his end. If this is a scam, I wonder who posed on the pictures as 'Ziad Fazah'? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Seth Diglot Changed to RedKing’sDream Senior Member United States Joined 7227 days ago 240 posts - 252 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Persian | Message 16 of 377 15 April 2005 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Moreover, why such a scam?
What are "they" getting out of it? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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