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Ziad Fazah - The Complete Video

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
56 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 35 6 7  Next >>
Derlei
Newbie
Brazil
Joined 5558 days ago

1 posts - 1 votes

 
 Message 25 of 56
08 September 2009 at 7:21am | IP Logged 
I think it happend because Ziad Fazah, like most of the people, had been studied too much languages, instead of spoken it. I explain! I have been studying a lot of languages, but after I reach an intermediate level, I start to watch videos in those languages and do not study anymore! I just watch, so that I can understand the languages as the native speakers do!

Edited by Derlei on 08 September 2009 at 7:22am

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lyzazel
Tetraglot
Newbie
United Kingdom
interlinearbooks.com
Joined 5703 days ago

32 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: Lithuanian*, Esperanto, English, Swedish
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 26 of 56
08 September 2009 at 4:14pm | IP Logged 
The video is slanderous!
At least that's what one guy whose blog I have found says there. He has met Ziad so apparently he has proof.

I have written more about this on my blog (link).

Whatever the truth, I wouldn't be so quick to judge.
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translator2
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6921 days ago

848 posts - 1862 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 27 of 56
08 September 2009 at 5:22pm | IP Logged 
Great blog post.

However, some of the gaps you mentioned in your blog are shown in the first version of the video:
Shorter Video


lyzazel wrote:
The video is slanderous!
At least that's what one guy whose blog I have found says there. He has met Ziad so apparently he has proof.

I have written more about this on my blog (link).

Whatever the truth, I wouldn't be so quick to judge.

1 person has voted this message useful



lyzazel
Tetraglot
Newbie
United Kingdom
interlinearbooks.com
Joined 5703 days ago

32 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: Lithuanian*, Esperanto, English, Swedish
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 28 of 56
08 September 2009 at 10:32pm | IP Logged 
Quote:
Great blog post.

However, some of the gaps you mentioned in your blog are shown in the first version of the video:
Shorter Video


That just proves the point that the video that is called "complete" has been edited which makes me doubt the overall credibility of it.
1 person has voted this message useful



mlewan
Newbie
France
lewan.chez-alice.fr/
Joined 6262 days ago

9 posts - 12 votes

 
 Message 29 of 56
09 September 2009 at 1:24am | IP Logged 
lyzazel wrote:

That just proves the point that the video that is called "complete" has been edited which makes me doubt the overall credibility of it.


Tell me, if I get this wrong, but before you read that blog post, you watched the "complete" video and thought it was "unedited"?

It is hardly a surprise that a television company edits their programs. Everything that is broadcast is edited to some extent. Just the fact that they use more than one camera means that they will have to "edit", i.e. choose one camera or another. In almost everything except live broadcasts there are cuts as well, cuts of things that do not make "good television", like people coughing, change of setup, unwanted pauses and simply boring and uninteresting bits.

"Complete" may here mean "all the bits that were shown on television", but I would not bet on even that.

It is very likely that this video to some extent biases the selection of what is broadcast. He may have spoken German or French fluently with some other guests, but that may not have been considered interesting, and then it would likely be cut out.

The whole program, just like many other programs, is of course made to be entertaining, not as a scientific study of what one person is able to achieve intellectually.

The only thing we can reliably read from it is what people actually say, like "I'm sorry that is not what I said" or Ziad Fazah's own "what, what..." when he tried to understand the Russian question.

And that is quite a lot of evidence against his being able to speak these languages.

In addition, it is interesting with his Finnish. He managed to say a lot of things in Finnish that had nothing to do with the question. Now, if he by pure chance had been spot on, it would surely be stunning to a Finnish speaker. It is possible, but I am guessing here, that he uses that technique a lot in this kind of situations. He would then have learnt some generic statements that fit reasonably well to a large number of questions. A fair number of interlocutors who have the opportunity to exchange just a few trivial lines with him would then be impressed, even though he may be unable to stray much from the subject.
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lyzazel
Tetraglot
Newbie
United Kingdom
interlinearbooks.com
Joined 5703 days ago

32 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: Lithuanian*, Esperanto, English, Swedish
Studies: Portuguese

 
 Message 30 of 56
09 September 2009 at 11:10pm | IP Logged 
Well, I don't know much about TV. In fact, I don't like TV. I just imagine that it wouldn't have been edited if it were life (as you have said yourself). I figure it would be a lot more fair if the test was actually done on live TV.

The fact that the "other" video has some extra content compared to the "complete" video shows that "complete" is not "complete" at all and that reason alone is enough to stop trusting it.

You are probably right about Russian. That is, if Ziad had really claimed to speak Russian and he didn't understand the phrase. That would mean, if not more, that he had forgotten at least some of his languages.
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Walshy
Triglot
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6944 days ago

335 posts - 365 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German

 
 Message 31 of 56
10 September 2009 at 7:34am | IP Logged 
He clearly didn't understand a word of some of the languages he claimed fluency in. That's the bottom line for me. He even mistook Russian for Croatian, yet claims fluency in both.

I believed in Fazah originally, but after the events of the past couple of years, I need more than "the video is not continuous" (almost none are) to convince me otherwise.

Edited by Walshy on 10 September 2009 at 7:36am

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J-Learner
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6032 days ago

556 posts - 636 votes 
Studies: Yiddish, English*
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 32 of 56
12 September 2009 at 8:23pm | IP Logged 
I've studied about 20 languages. Can I say I speak 20 languages?

Has he simply studied 58/59 languages and says that he speaks them all?

Silly mistake, I think.

Good on him for getting good in the ones he is good in though.


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