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Ziad Fazah - does he exist?

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post Reply
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patuco
Diglot
Moderator
Gibraltar
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3795 posts - 4268 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*
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 Message 225 of 377
19 September 2006 at 12:43pm | IP Logged 
translator2 wrote:
Is knowing 3,000 words in 58 languages, better than knowing 30,000 in 5 languages?
[...]
Is breadth of knowledge better than depth? It really depends on the circumstances...

...and on your own personal preferences.
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Dave M
Groupie
United States
bfmfightwear.com
Joined 6932 days ago
56 posts - 63 votes 

 
 Message 226 of 377
19 September 2006 at 1:09pm | IP Logged 
Well, if you are saying that with canned responses you are fooling people than that is a relatively stupid way of trying to tear someone down and I maintain my position that you are either extremely jealous or snobbish because you're standards are nowhere near realistic. Take these 3000 words which we will assume dont count plurals, conjugations,contractions and the like. Add those factors in. I would say 85% of daily conversation would be understood. The rest can vbe seperated into intellectual terminology, terms related to specific activities ( how many of you know what a keylock is, its a word used often in English Martial Arts events)and international terms.

So in this case you'd be fluent with a few limitations in a few subjects. Does that mean you're not fluent. ABSOLUTELY NOT. You remind me of the people in my family who don't consider my Hebrew fluent because after I converse for a good hour I can't quite describe the word for ebullient while a native Israeli can. Maybe you should draw a distinction between native fluent and educated foreigner fluent. They both are fluent but maybe them more than 5% of the world would be able to be considered to know how to speak their own language
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translator2
Senior Member
United States
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848 posts - 1862 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 227 of 377
19 September 2006 at 1:17pm | IP Logged 
If you were a black-belt in karate and someone with a yellow belt said that they were a "karate expert" would you not take umbrage at this statement?

My standards for the average language learner are realistic. But we are not talking about the average person, we are talking about someone who others are claiming to be the "World's Greatest Polyglot".
Why get angry and upset when people question this or ask for a minimum amount of evidence? Should we just believe everything we read without questioning? Take a look at this: LINK. If what the person on this site claims is true and people questioned it, would this person get angry and upset and start ranting or raving, or merely provide the medical documents to prove his claim. And there is far more information about this person on the net than there is for Mr. Fazah.

Me thinks ye doth protest too much!![

Edited by translator2 on 19 September 2006 at 3:56pm
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Spasty
Groupie
United States
Joined 6875 days ago
92 posts - 113 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French

 
 Message 228 of 377
19 September 2006 at 7:02pm | IP Logged 
Again, I must ask. Is there a list of these 3,000 words? How does he know which words to learn?
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lengua
Senior Member
United States
polyglottery.wordpre
Joined 6690 days ago
549 posts - 595 votes 
Studies: French, Italian, Spanish, German

 
 Message 229 of 377
19 September 2006 at 7:10pm | IP Logged 
patuco wrote:
translator2 wrote:
Is knowing 3,000 words in 58 languages, better than knowing 30,000 in 5 languages?
[...]
Is breadth of knowledge better than depth? It really depends on the circumstances...

...and on your own personal preferences.


Well said. If given the choice between the two, I'd go with 3k for 58, without a doubt.
2 persons have voted this message useful



fanatic
Octoglot
Senior Member
Australia
speedmathematics.com
Joined 7152 days ago
1152 posts - 1818 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch
Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto

 
 Message 230 of 377
19 September 2006 at 10:40pm | IP Logged 
lengua wrote:
patuco wrote:
translator2 wrote:
Is knowing 3,000 words in 58 languages, better than knowing 30,000 in 5 languages?
[...]
Is breadth of knowledge better than depth? It really depends on the circumstances...

...and on your own personal preferences.


Well said. If given the choice between the two, I'd go with 3k for 58, without a doubt.


So would I.

Many of the languages I have learnt I only use for reading on the net. Others I use for travel and I only need a basic knowledge. I want to be able to speak with people and read signs, menus and the local newspaper.

Other languages I want to know as well as possible, to be fluent in speech, reading and writing.

When I lived in Germany my mother-in-law came to visit and asked me to go shopping with her. She asked me to ask where to find the dressing gowns in a department store and I didn't know the correct word in German, although I was teaching in a German school and doing some public speaking. She thought my German wasn't as good as I was pretending. How come I didn't know a simple word like dressing gown?

This gets back to my earlier question, How fluent do you have to be to be fluent? Do you have to speak perfectly? In that case, some of the people here aren't even fluent in their own language because they make some basic mistakes. If you can converse in the language, read and write (even with mistakes) then I would say you can claim to be fluent in the language.

If a person claims to know 50 languages and only has a working vocabulary of 3,000 words in each, but he/she can speak about common subjects, then I would say the claim is justified.

There are some languages I know as well as I want to. I am not fluent but I can read what I want in the language and I look up words I don't know if I can't work out the meaning from the context and derivation. I have no ambition to lecture in the language, or negotiate, or argue religion. (If you want to argue religion there is another vocabulary to learn.)

I believe members are being too critical in judging many of the polyglots. The premier of my state (Victoria, Australia) Steve Bracks, makes some terrible grammar mistakes when he speaks on interviews or even in his prepared speeches. No one would say he is not fluent.

I don't care if Daniel Tammet made mistakes in Icelandic after learning the language for a week. I don't care if he seemed uncomfortable speaking the language. As far as I am concerned, he made his point. And the interviewer said his grammar was good. I doubt if he had a large vocabulary, but I would say he is justified in saying he can speak Icelandic.

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Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
Joined 6874 days ago
946 posts - 1110 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German
Studies: Sign Language

 
 Message 231 of 377
19 September 2006 at 11:53pm | IP Logged 
fanatic wrote:
lengua wrote:
patuco wrote:
translator2 wrote:
Is knowing 3,000 words in 58 languages, better than knowing 30,000 in 5 languages?
[...]
Is breadth of knowledge better than depth? It really depends on the circumstances...

...and on your own personal preferences.


Well said. If given the choice between the two, I'd go with 3k for 58, without a doubt.


So would I.


I would too, definitely. And translator2, to your post from which that quote comes, very well said, sir.

But I think if a person can speak with a 3,000-5,000 range of vocabulary, they could still be fluent, and more than just passively. My Spanish is probably in the ballpark figure, and I think (sometimes, at least :D) that I'm fluent, although I'll be the first to admit it is NOWHERE near where I want it to be. But it's getting closer. Regarding what you said about getting to the next 10,000 words and realizing how little I knew, I can certainly agree with that! :-)

And to Spasty, I can't answer your question, but when speaking with Ziad Fazah, he said try to learn things thematically, like take the White House and then learn the words for "President", "Oval Office", "Ambassador", "Election", etc. If you are asking out of curiosity, that's about the best I can offer. If you are asking for the sake of learning these words, I know there are some books for Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and German (at least) that have thematic word lists in the thousands. I have the German, Spanish, and French ones, and I've seen one of the Japanese books I'm thinking of. They don't provide everything I want/need, but they definitely will be a great help and save me some time instead of having to track down all the words individually in a dictionary.

Edited by Journeyer on 19 September 2006 at 11:55pm
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Sabato
Pentaglot
Newbie
Brazil
Joined 6646 days ago
7 posts - 7 votes
Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English, Spanish, Italian
Studies: German, Russian

 
 Message 232 of 377
20 September 2006 at 3:17am | IP Logged 
Very good thread. Just read it in its entirety - it's good to know I have such a notable superpolyglot living nearby. Now I kinda regret turning to Alliance Française to learn French, maybe I could one day give Ziad Fazah's teaching methods a go. (I'm definitely seeking his assistence when the time to introduce myself to German comes)

Well Dave, it is cool that you live in Rio, maybe we'll bump into each other one of these days. You mentioned the Flamengo neighborhood - do you live there? I study Economics at a federal University (UFRJ) in Botafogo.

I think it's a shame that this man (or at least it does look like) does not enjoy exceedingly favorable financial terms - a homepage of his own would go a way into fixing that. He needs to be more known. An Orkut community - you know how Orkut is popular in Brazil, Dave, I'd wager - would also be useful.


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