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Ziad Fazah - does he exist? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| souley Senior Member Joined 7244 days ago 178 posts - 177 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: Arabic (Written), French | Message 17 of 377 15 April 2005 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If this is a scam, it's not very hard to find a picture on the net of someone middle-aged looking rather dark and middle-eastern. If not Ziad, the man on the picture could very well be Greek, or any other country.
However, I must say that if this is a hoax, the people behind it found a perfect picture, especially with the map in the background. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Barreira_RJ Newbie Brazil Joined 7182 days ago 8 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English | Message 18 of 377 15 April 2005 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Let me give my brief help.
1- I live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, therefore the place where Ziad Fazah is known for living in. 2- I have the 1994 brazilian version of the Guiness Book. There one can find a little note regarding the record awarded to Ziad as being the greatest polyglot on Earth. This version of the book was released with a peculiarity. For every record awarded to a Brazilian person or to Brazilian-related fact, the explanation note would be preceded by the mark "BR:", i.e., a fact that had to do with Brazil. I have this feel that all the notes, or at least the "less important" ones, preceded by "BR:" would be present on the brazilan book but not on the, say, english one, as Guiness is a british trademark, if I´m not wrong. The note that mentions Ziad is preceded by that mark, so I believe that his record might have been present only on the brazilian version of the book - as long as for the '94 edition, as that is the only version I have ever put my hands on, though there have been released later editions. 3- Some years ago, about 10 I guess, maybe more, Ziad Fazah was shown on a TV show in Brazil. This show is called "Fantástico" (Fantastic). It has been broadcasted on sunday nights for the last 20 years (at least). It has a major audience and from the occasion Ziad was shown, the only thing I can recall is that on the opening of the news regarding him he would be shown sitted down and saying the translation of the word fantástico for every single language a journalist - not shown at this moment; we could hear only his voice - would call the name upon him. 4- Though Globo Tv - the one that makes Fantástico - and Veja magazine - the one that published the edition with the title "O homem que sabia javanês" (the man who knew Javanese) - are the very top in terms of audience and selling rates, and the lowest bottom in terms of credibility, I am positively confident that they just have not made up this guy. 5- I have also failed to reach him by phone, although I haven´t yet tried by email. And no, I have never ran into him on the street. 6- The news that covers his self-teaching of computers programming languages is real. I remember reading that report in the "O Dia" newspaper. And there it was alsopublished his picture, the very same one you may find in one of the brazilian pages that talk about him and which shows the very same person shown on this forum topic. Ths photo shows him sitting in front of table filled with language reference books. 7- Adaschir, "O homem que sabia Javanês" is also the title of a famous brazilian tale. It was written by the late Lima Barreto. This narrative is among the most known literary works of Portuguese language. As you know portuguese, you may read it on the web, as it is already under public domain. Just look for it on Google and you will easily find it. I am just saying this to let you know the reason for why has Veja magazine picked up such a title for its report, even if the man spoke Javanese or not. Even if he does not, don´t blame it on him. As i said, "LOOK" magazine is not trustworthy at all. I may be wrong on this,but I believe that the report on him was published on the occasion of his spanish-teaching book release, what makes me think that this may have happened with the "help" of its publishing house. For instance, a few weeks ago the cover theme from that magazine was the brand new book of Paulo Coelho. Thoug the publishing house may "help", I don´t think it was the case on Coelho´s book. His name is so strong and so appealing on the audience that the three major magazines of Brazil put him on their covers on the same week. 8- In one of the few websites that talk about Ziad, one may read that he gets his income out of private language lessons. It is even said that among his students there was Tom Cavalcante, a famous brazilian comedian. This makes me think that Ziad is simply a modest guy that is not willing to show off. 9- Though I cannot say much regarding his methods; though I also find flabbergasting, not to say suspecious, that he self-taught him in so many languages in such a little time and with so few media resources avaiable even for today´s time, it´s a point for him to take into account the account that he would search for resources on his Lebanon city libraries as well as go for the docks to look for foreigners to whom he could talk. Isn´t that just the same thing that guy of "How to learn any language easily..." said he would do to learn chinese when he was young among chinese seamen ? 10- At last, let me just say that I cannot obviously prove his existence. But this seem a little bit of a paranoia. Ok that this might just have been a sarcastic topic name,but come on: even if he may seem unreachable or a phony, this guy from the picture indeed exist and is the so-called Ziad Fazah. Nossa, que texto longo ! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7259 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 19 of 377 15 April 2005 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Good move, adminstrator, in trying to contact the journalists, though as Barreira's extensive and informative post (don't apologize for its length - I only wish we all always had such substance) shows, they do not work for reputable sources.
On my end, it occured to me that information about him that made the Arabic presses would probably not be found in Google type searches. So, yesterday I asked some journalist colleagues for help tracking down anything about him that may have ever been published in Beirut papers. Who knows, since I happen to live here, I might be able to visit his family to ask them questions and to get accurate contact information. As for the why of a hoax and who profits from it, this is simply the stuff of sensationalistic journalism. Furthermore, lengends are an integral part of all cultures - always have been, always will be. Now that I know the poor quality of the sources of information about him, I am more and more sceptical about the method they impute to him. Even assuming for the sake of the argument that the libraries and docks of Beirut could provide adequate source materials (which they can't), all of my linguistic experience tells me that the suggested method - memorizing a grammar book + memorizing a dictionary = knowing a language - is patently false. In the popular imagination, this is equivalent to knowing a language, but I think the more you know about languages, the more you realize how far from the truth this is. The results of doing these things would be akin to the kind of gibberish you get from submitting most paragraphs to automatic computer translating services. Words and grammar are only the components of a language, but they do not constitute its living essence. Words get their meaning from the context of their use, not from dictionaries or their traffic rules. And then what about foreign scripts, and the whole phonetic range of pronunciation and intonation? Again, I actively hope that I am wrong about all of this. I hope that a modest and self-effacing man who truly knows three score languages does exist and that I can speak with him some day soon in the portion of those that I myself know. However, if we do not soon receive confirmation of this from substantive and reliable sources, I think we should regard Ziad Fazah, the polyglot who has demonstrated converstational fluency in 58 languages from the most various and sundry languages, as a legend (though men with that name certainly do exist), and delete serious references to the lengend from this forum, as I will certainly delete the section I have about it from my book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7155 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 20 of 377 27 April 2005 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This has got to be an hoax. As you said, learning 58 languages is quite a success, but what proves completely that it is a phony is that(let's be serious)it is beyond human reach to learn a language in three weeks studying just 20 minutes per night. You might say that I'm just being incredulous, but would you believe me if I assured you that I am capable of running at 100 miles an hour after running for 15 minutes per night? Nope.
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| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7155 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 21 of 377 08 June 2005 at 3:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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By the way, does somebody know Ziad Fazah's reasons/motivations for learning languages?
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| lola Groupie Joined 7155 days ago 63 posts - 65 votes | Message 22 of 377 08 June 2005 at 5:51am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't believe or disbelieve anything by default. At the moment, not having tangible evidence, it comes down to 'possibility' or likelyhood.
What I mean is that the flaws in the story appear to be based on the following: 1- lack of access to language material 2- not real mastery - rote memory 3- why did he stop? 1.- It seems unlikely that the guy had access to the necessary resources at the time mentioned. Since it is not explained how he got that material, what if he just happened to be the neighbour of a professor who had all those resources? (this may be unlikely again... just think what if). I also wonder if the man may have said that he also 'wanted to learn' such and such, and some reporter just included those in the list of spoken languages (or invented it himself). 2.- I'm not sure you are all familiar with the concept of 'savant'. Within the autistic population, some people (about 10% if I remember well) may be gifted in some aspect. Many times, this may be extremely good rote memory abilities. For such individual, the 'phonebook' approach to learning languages is an easy task. So learning the amount of languages in the time given may be possible. However, people with autism, even the high functioning ones tend to have difficulties with understanding the subtleties of language (metaphors, sarcasm, etc...), and social communication. Therefore, the individual may believe he has mastered the language (and journalists will be concerned no more, they just want a headline), and be very frustrated not understanding why failed to become an interpreter. As an additional note, people with autism have difficulty understanding social interaction, and find ery challengin dealing with people. As a consequence, they prefer to live a very structured and private live. Now, I'm not saying Ziad Fazah is autistic, but that if he had a similar profile (just having a gifted memory, and being a little shy), then the story is plausible. 3.- AS simple as he may have lost interest (the task was not challenging enough for him). It doesn't seem he had any interest in communicating with people or learning other cultures, but he just accumulated languages... So, if someone contacts him, I would like to know how many languages he actually learned, by what means, why did he stop, and what kind of person he is. These questions or similar, I believe, are the ones Ardaschir is trying to elicit from him. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 7155 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 23 of 377 08 June 2005 at 6:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Ardaschir himself has said that he spent a good part of his income in building up a language laboratory, and that even today (in the age of Internet), he has not found material for many of them. So how could this professor have them 30 years ago?
Lola, I use this "rote memory" method as one of my principal aids in language learning; though I'm not extremely gifted, i have managed things such as memorising all the Latin and Ancient Greek case declinations in little more than 10 minutes. And I can tell you from my own experience that this "phonebook" approach is simply not possible. I thought so when I began Italian and I learnt the grammar and about 3,000 words of vocabulary in just two weeks; I thought "Look how clever I am, Italian in just 14 days", but then, when I talked to native Italians, they wouldn't understand, so I had to practice a lot with them in order to achieve fluency: memorising grammar book+memorising a dictionary is not equal to knowing a language. Just as Ardaschir said, you would come out with something very like the rubbish you would get from a computer translator. (That experience with Italian teached me a very important lesson: don't even think you've mastered a language until you've achieved fluency, or it'll come back against you ;))
It's not just the sarcasm and metaphors, it's also a matter of practicing the language; raw knowledge is not enough. You wouldn't drive to work blind-folded, even if you knew the way already, would you? Edited by Raistlin Majere on 08 June 2005 at 6:21am 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 24 of 377 08 June 2005 at 7:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If any reader has access to paper copies of the actual newspaper articles published about Ziad Fazah, or to tapes of the TV shows where he appeared I would be very pleased to hear from you.
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