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Ziad Fazah - does he exist?

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post Reply
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Dave M
Groupie
United States
bfmfightwear.com
Joined 6929 days ago

56 posts - 63 votes 

 
 Message 249 of 377
02 March 2007 at 7:01am | IP Logged 
I am setting up 2 websites right now. One for my martial arts business and one for diabetes. I am still going to do this one but it may take longert han I thought. Ziad is teaching up a storm right now - mostly english and french but his contact info is here and he welcomes calls. He recently returned from Minas Gerais where he gave a lecture tour
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asad100101
Diglot
Senior Member
Pakistan
languagel.blogspot.c
Joined 6458 days ago

118 posts - 137 votes 
Speaks: Hindi*, English

 
 Message 250 of 377
24 March 2007 at 7:36am | IP Logged 
As a language learner, wading through 32 pages of Ziad's mystery has been no use of me when we can not get him to write a white paper in order to summarize his language methods. It will take him a handful of webpages for it to be published online on a free hosting website on the internet along with his recent photos. All I had read was speculation and conjecture about his existence which was no use for me. I am a new user to this forum. I came to know about him two years ago. I checked up on him. There was no conceret information on him. Today I again searched on google for any further developments. I was accessed to this web forum but still moderators who run this forum have been unable to set up a website.

I sent him an email, lets see if he can reply me back.

Kind Wishes,

Asad Khan
From Karachi, Pakistan
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asad100101
Diglot
Senior Member
Pakistan
languagel.blogspot.c
Joined 6458 days ago

118 posts - 137 votes 
Speaks: Hindi*, English

 
 Message 251 of 377
24 March 2007 at 7:45am | IP Logged 
Dave_M,

If I want to call him on his cell phone no , what country code should I dial? How did you call him from usa?
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translator2
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6922 days ago

848 posts - 1862 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 252 of 377
25 March 2007 at 12:02pm | IP Logged 
This post from another thread. Can anyone verify the dialect info in this article about Fazah:

I did a search on Google for Tucurum and all I found was that it was a city in Brazil. (link below). Funny how an obscure dialect in Ethiopia would have the same name as a city in the country where he lives.

According to wikipedia, Hazaras refers to the group of people who speak the Hazaragi dialect. You would think he would at least know the name of the language he reportedly speaks well enough to understand this man's story.


Hazaragi dialect

Tucurum, Brazil



jstele wrote:
"When police in Rio picked up an illegal alien babbling in an apparently unintelligible tongue they turned to Ziad Fazah, reckoned to be the world's greatest linguist. "I soon realized he was from Afghanistan and spoke a dialect called Hazaras," the 40 year-old Lebanese immigrant said. Through Fazah's help, the man was able to explain how he had been tortured by the Russians and was able to get asylum here. Fazah, who has been living in Brazil for 21 years, is fluent in 56 languages, winning him a mention in the Brazilian edition of the "Guinness World Book of Records" as the world's greatest living polyglot.

Fazah said his work is much in demand with Rio police. Recently he was called to interpret for another illegal alien who came from Eritrea, in northern Ethiopia. The man, who spoke a dialect known as Tucurum, was eventually deported. "Unfortunately the police couldn't pay me," Fazah said in flawless English. "But they said that if I ever have any problems I could call on them any time"   http://www.spidra.com/fazah.html "




Edited by translator2 on 26 March 2007 at 12:26am

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Talairan
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Spain
Joined 6595 days ago

194 posts - 258 votes 
Speaks: Afrikaans, English*, Gypsy/Romani, Dutch
Studies: Spanish, Flemish, Galician, Aramaic

 
 Message 253 of 377
27 March 2007 at 12:09pm | IP Logged 
A quick search of Ethnologue here and here reveals no such language or dialect. I have found the Ethnologue to be a very good source for obscure languages, but perhaps they have missed this one, although I wouldn't bet on it.
As an aside, I wonder how "recently" the sentence "Recently he was called to interpret for another illegal alien who came from Eritrea, in northern Ethiopia." refers to, as Eritrea has been a separate country since 1993 having ended its war with Ethiopia in 1991.

Ever the sceptic,

Tal

Edited by Talairan on 27 March 2007 at 12:28pm

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Vlad
Trilingual Super Polyglot
Senior Member
Czechoslovakia
foreverastudent.com
Joined 6587 days ago

443 posts - 576 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French
Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese

 
 Message 254 of 377
27 March 2007 at 2:32pm | IP Logged 
Talairan,

I noticed that too, but if you look at the top of the page, it says : 'This Reuters wire article appeared in the SF Chronicle sometime in the early '90s'.
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Jacareh
Pentaglot
Newbie
Brazil
Joined 6452 days ago

9 posts - 9 votes
3 sounds
Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French, Italian
Studies: German, Russian, Armenian

 
 Message 255 of 377
30 March 2007 at 8:19pm | IP Logged 
The Hazaras are an Afghan minority who claim descent from Genghis Khan and the Mongol invaders of past centuries. In any case, they do generally have East Asian physical features, unlike most other Afghans, and they are mostly Shi'a Muslims, which also separates them from the majority of their compatriots, who are Sunnis. But the most relevant fact from the perspective of this forum is that they speak a dialect of Dari, itself essentially the same language as Farsi. Therefore, for a fluent speaker of Farsi, which Mr. Fazah allegedly is, communicating with a Hazara would pose only minor difficulties.

Also, it has been stated here that Farsi and Persian are Semitic languages. In reality Farsi and Persian are two names for one Indo-European language of the Indo-Iranian branch, the official language of Iran. Dari (sometimes called Dari Persian) is the very similar Afghan version of the same. Pashto is the other official language of Afghanistan, and also an Iranian language, but is not intelligible with Farsi. Tadjik, spoken in Tadjikistan, is essentially Dari written in the Cyrillic alphabet, rather than the modified version of the Arabic alphabet used for Iranian languages elsewhere.

Edited by Jacareh on 30 March 2007 at 8:40pm

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Dave M
Groupie
United States
bfmfightwear.com
Joined 6929 days ago

56 posts - 63 votes 

 
 Message 256 of 377
30 March 2007 at 8:31pm | IP Logged 
That is what Ziad told me.


He spoke to him in Persian which is one of his strongest languages and the man in question was from the Ethiopian region and they conversed in Farsi where he requested political asylum in Rio.

In a funny twist the man went on to commit a ton of crimes in Rio and was picked up by the police a second time - he was essentially a lunatic. Mystery solved. I also put Ziads contact info on the thread - call him. Im working on a web project but it will take time as its 3rd in line from the current 2 Im working on.

I am working with him in Hindi right now and in a few weeks were moving to French Arabic. ANY ANY ANY Hindi/Urdu speakers please for gods sake e mail me at dmaswary@hotmail.com

Mera pura nam Dave Maswary hain aur mai ab vidyarthi hindustani hai aur mai tora tora bolta hain lekin mai log bolna cahta hai bahut shukriya


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