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Ziad Fazah - does he exist? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Dave M Groupie United States bfmfightwear.com Joined 6712 days ago 56 posts - 63 votes  | Message 73 of 377 15 December 2005 at 6:13pm | IP Logged |
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Thats a load of skeptical responses.
First of all I didn't say I became fluent in Mandarin, I said after 5 weeks I have become good enough to carry on a conversation. I THINK that within 2 months I will be relatively SPEAKING fluent. Their is always more to learn and even in Portuguese, a language I speak every day and conduct business in, I am still looking up new words and ways of phrasing things. Hell I am a native english speaker and I still look up words in English so I don't think you ever get so fluent to not need to study anymore. I mentioned the 5 weeks because I am proud of myself to have come so long a ways in 5 weeks and have a several hundred word vocabulary in a short amount of time. I believe with a vocabulary of 3000 words you can understand 85-90$ of what is going on and if you are agile you can express most anything you need to one way or another with fluency so 3 months is on target for me. Reading and writing will probably take a lot longer but I am more enthused about speaking so it doesn't matter to me if I take another 3-6 months to dominate that portion and frankly you can study Chinese your whole life and thier is always more written Chinese. I merely said in 5 weeks I can converse and in 3 months I think I will achieve relative fluency. I study with Ziad 2-3X a week. My wife studies Hebrew with him ( a language I have already learned) and I study Mandarin 2x a week. Believe me he is more than 100 useful phrases fluent. His Hebrew is excellent. And all the common languages I have spoken to him in his level is excellent. I don't know how I can get this across to you skeptics but I have spoken to him and heard him in many languages and believe me their is no reason to doubt the guy. I will give out his contact info tomorrow. Any of you who doubt him can ask him for yourselves. My method for Patuca is different for every language depending on the grammar structure and the alphabet. Hebrew was a lot of going through verbs and practicing tenses. Italian,Spanish and Portuguese was a lot of trial and error. Hindi (still studying it a bit) and Chinese are mostly studious endeavors with lots of index cards which I take everywhere and then chasing after any native I find in the street and testing what I know, carrying on a conversation, hitting a wall and then going back to the cards when I realize where my vocabulary is lacking and rinse and repeat. Some people are excellent at grammar. Some are excelent at other things. My accent is usually excellent and my ability to converse is excellent as well. My grammar is usually a little bit harder in comparison to those two attributes and takes more time. So for me to become conversational and convincing in any language quickly is usually easy, and then I have to crunch down harder when I get into the nitty gritty of grammatical details. I have known people who could memorize entire grammar sets of foreign languages and couldn't pronounce a word to save their lives. I have a Mexican acquaintance who has been in Brazil for 15 years, has better grammar than the natives and is a Spanish teacher to boot and still has an accent that would make Speedy Gonzales stop, turn around and say," coood you repeat that ese,por favor!" I am happier with my skill set and also I care more about speaking than alphabets which oftentimes take longer. In other words the art parts I excel at and the science parts take me longer. Just like my English! I will put Ziads e mail and phone # here and if anyone wants to ask him whatever personally go ahead and do it. If you want to test him in your language of choice go ahead, make sure its not a font he won't be able to respond in and please don't say it was babel Fish after he answers back in perfect Indonesian Javanese, Russian,Greek whatever it is you believe he is lying about. I can't belive people still won't believe this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Dave M Groupie United States bfmfightwear.com Joined 6712 days ago 56 posts - 63 votes | Message 74 of 377 15 December 2005 at 6:14pm | IP Logged |
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Also that was 85-90% not $.
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| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6728 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 75 of 377 15 December 2005 at 8:39pm | IP Logged |
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To put it frankly, I don't think anyone at this forum (apart from you) has any proof of his linguistic ability. Post some photos, upload him speaking some languages to the sound section, give out his contact details, etc. Nothing short of that will remove all skepticism.
Personally, I do indeed believe that you are telling the truth. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Vespasian Bilingual Triglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 6705 days ago 55 posts - 55 votes Speaks: German*, Swiss-German*, English Studies: Italian | Message 76 of 377 15 December 2005 at 9:21pm | IP Logged |
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I just want to tell you that this is one of the most interesting threads I have ever come across in any internet forum.
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| Dave M Groupie United States bfmfightwear.com Joined 6712 days ago 56 posts - 63 votes | Message 77 of 377 15 December 2005 at 10:27pm | IP Logged |
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Ziad Fazah
ziadyfazah@yahoo.com.br I will verify with him tomorrow if this is correct. I will also ask his permission to put up his phone #. I may be able to get a hold of his appearance on O Fantastico (Brazilian tv show). He will welcome all e mails. I will be very happy to get his e mail out. After Mandarin I will probably learn French, as I already speak Italian,Spanish and Portuguese I expect it won't take long. After that its probably Arabic which is his best language and then I would like to develop some courses on Middle Eastern languages with him. I will look forward to showing everyone this contact info and god willing he has a copy of the tv shows around somewhere. The problem is that all of you skeptics have psyched youreslves out. Walshy I appreciate the vote of confidence. Many of you are deifying the idea of learning languages as if it was some sacred ritual with which you dare not speak the blasphemy that you actually have an ability that is quite exceptional. Here is how he managed to accomplish it: He has a God given photographic memory. Not everyone has this but it is a trait that can be developed like a muscle in a gym. It also isn't the most important trait He has a savant like math ability and he figures out complex grammatical structures effortlessly He ignores the common street language and learns the academic language and structure of every language, this streamlined a lot of time as in a foreign language you can learn the structure and grammar without much outside help or contact even if it is an "exotic" language. Hence you may not know a lot of Israelis but a common street expression of Sam Yad Pataxat - which roughly translated means Go F**ck Yourself can easily be understood as Put a hand in your ass and understood easily. Same serves for Thai,Indonesian, Pashto or Portuguese. Of the 58 he speaks he mentioned that 25 are accesible at any moment meeting a foreigner on the street. The other 33 or so he would need a day or two to review. However as he is interested in television challenges he has done this many times. According to him he has learned every language with the same level of competence so after 2-3 days of review he is right back to being as fluent in any of them as the best day he spoke the language. You wouldn't expect Muhamad Ali to get in the ring without stretching first would you?????? The last and final thing he stressed, and that I do, is fearlessness. Just like I do, and many of you do as well, he lived with access to Ports where he located foreigners and spoke in the languages he was practicing. Thats not so out their is it? I do it all the time. Hell I used to call tech support on my computer Vonage because I knew they outsourced the calls to India so Id get a Hindi speaker most of the time. Id start out with Kya ap bhartiyeh hai mai vidyarthi hindustani hai(Are you Indian, I am a Hindi student) and I let it rip. A lot of times Id get stuned silence, a lot of times " Im sorry I speak english and a regional dialect (common in India) or a good conversation. Point being you cant learn to swim without jumping in the lake. He isn't learning much more because he has learned most of what he wanted too and he is content. His new goals are to teach and to share with the world and make a good living. 90% of his students want to learn Englsih and he has 2 brave students who want to learn Arabic and Persian to be reporters for the O Globo network God bless their souls. One of the reasons I am being so adamant on a message board on the internet is because one day I will go to America with my wife and have kids and a nice life ( if alll goes accroding to plan)I am planning on learning 20-25 languages all told, dont know if you count dead ones like Latin or Aramaic or not, which may make it 25 or so who knows? And Ziad will still be here with all of his 58 languages and people will still continue to debate his existence and life will just go on and frankly it kind of breaks my heart to see. How many artists and poets have been lost to obscurity in the long unforgiving tides of history. So tomorrow Im posting all the info pending his approval (dont think this will be a problem) Those of you who believe me, I appreciate it and commend your open-mindedness. Those who don't - have a little more faith in what human beings are capable of. See ya tomorrow. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6705 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 78 of 377 16 December 2005 at 1:01am | IP Logged |
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Are these the writings of someone fluent in English? If he is not fluent in English, how much credibility does that give to his other claims?
Would someone "fluent" in English write things like "very important replying me", "in anyway, I shall be", "on having ended up the installation", "my attempts foiled to get at the graphical environment", etc. etc. "very important replying me, please Dec 10 2003, 2:51 pm show options From: camuflag <camuf...@globo.com> Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 19:51:17 GMT Local: Wed, Dec 10 2003 2:51 pm Subject: It's very important replying me, please Honourable Sir, My name is Ziad Fazah. Indeed, on starting the installation of openbsd version 3.4, I was surprised on checking out that the installation hadn't begun. It means that the CD couldn't start. Therefore, Iam asking you amiably to help me solving this problem. But at first, Iam going to provide you with important information, concerning the properties of my pc. CPU Pentium IV 1.7 GHZ Motherboard Asus P4S533-MX IDE onboard HD 40GB (7200 RPM) Video card Nvidia GeForce4-MX440-VGA-64MB Keyboard Brazilian ABNT2 Any further information, don't hesitate in geting in touch with me. In anyway, I shall be awaiting your response as soon as possible, and thanks a lot for your understanding. Yours Faithfully, Ziad Fazah Note: this person is undoubtedly from Brazil since he is requesting information about a Brazilian keyboard and the e-mail address is also Brazilian. Link (copy and paste into browser):http://groups.google.com/group/fa.openbsd.www/brows e_thread / thread/66b721bb1162b00f/daf05e05a0040632?lnk=st&q=%22ziad+fa zah&rnum=6&hl=en#daf05e05a0040632 "It's very relevant replying my email, please From: camuf...@globo.com (camuflag) Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 10:37:46 +0000 (UTC) Local: Sun, Dec 7 2003 5:37 am Subject: It's very relevant replying my email, please Dear Mr Park My name is Ziad Fazah. Indeed, after having installed Freebsd version 5.1 on my pc, I found out that its kernel had detected all my hardware cards. Meanwhile, on having ended up the installation on my pc, I noticed that by clicking on exit sysinstall and removing my CD in order to reboot the system, the installation itself didn't led me into a graphical environment. Unfortunately, it left me in a shell, wherein it was written Grub. Thus, I do ask you urgently what to do, in the sense of being led into a graphical environment. Moreover, only twice, I managed to get at the login and the password successfully, but afterwards, I couldn't go further. On the other hand, my attempts foiled to get at the graphical environment. Don't you think that it might be a certain mistake of this version? Please, help me. Sincerely, Ziad Fazah _______________________________________________ Link: http://groups.google.com/group/mailing.freebsd.doc/browse_th read/thread/59c3449a080d82bd/71e8ff5994b4531b?lnk=st&q=%22zi ad+fazah&rnum=10&hl=en#71e8ff5994b4531b Furthermore, there is this: From: http://donh.best.vwh.net/Opinion/opinion1.html "On Ziad Fazah's Ideal Language This piece was a letter to the editor mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle on January 25, 1994, in reply to an article. The article was one that seems to be recycled -- though with a different-named person from a different place each time -- every four or five years. I guess that great minds just think alike. Fascinating to read about Ziad Fazah of Brazil (Sunday Punch, Jan. 23), who can speak 56 languages when the average student in this country leaves school able to speak only one -- and that one, often, not very well. Still, I find myself just a trifle dubious of his claims. Fazah's dream is said to be "to create a universal language that would be written as it is spoken." Most people who know anything about languages are at least aware of the existence of Esperanto, which has been around for more than a hundred years now, is spoken by some two million people -- and is written exactly as it is spoken." Later in 1996: this article suddenly appears in which "Ziad" supposedly mentions Esperanto: "Fazah said with his experience he could now learn any language within three weeks, but he is looking further afield and hopes to create his own language one of these days. "I am thinking about creating a world language like Esperanto,'' he said. ``I could create a new language in three weeks, a simple language with little grammar and phonetic spelling.'' Link to full thread: http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/browse_thread/thread /b9a3ed13a3af369f/a87025a806956f59?lnk=st&q=%22ziad+fazah%22 +esperanto&rnum=1&hl=en#a87025a806956f59 In short, don't believe everything you read. For example, this site has been on the internet for some time documenting the first male pregnancy: http://www.malepregnancy.com/ More from: http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/browse_thread/thread /f87b60c867dd0a45/79337a601f76f439?lnk=st&q=%22ziad+fazah%22 &rnum=14#79337a601f76f439 ----------------- "If it takes you three months to learn 3000 words (not nearly a language's entire vocabulary), learning 54 languages would take you much longer than 17 years as he claims." "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" What is "flawless" English? American English? British English? Australian English? Indian English? Singaporean English? *> At the age of 17 the Lebanese government called > on him to interpret for a visiting delegation > from Turkey. "When I began learning Chinese I > went to the consulate of Formosa but they told me .................................^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > I couldn't learn it by myself," said > Fazah. Isn't the name "Formosa" now obsolete, and replaced by "Taiwan"? (Is Taiwan still called "Formosa" in Spanish?) > Determined, he bought a grammar book and a > dictionary. What kind of dictionary is that? How can he figure out how to pronounce the ideographs? If the dictionary used Romanization (phonemic transcription) instead, how can he figure out how to utter the 4 different tones in Mandarin? > "Two months later I went back to the > consulate and they were so amazed they offered me > a trip to Taipei. But I was in school at the time > and could not go." Speaking Mandarin fluently in 2 months? Can anyone believe it? BTW, even if he could speak Mandarin fluently, it still doesn't make any sense that the consulate of Taiwan would offer a trip to him. (There are so many Mandarin speakers in the world.) Again, too much exaggeration makes the article non-credible. > Fazah is still learning new languages. The latest > one he picked up was Papiamento, a Dutch, > Portuguese and Spanish mixture spoken in the > Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao. Fazah, > who can learn 3,000 words in two to three months, > said Mandarin was the hardest language to learn > because of the vast number of idiograms. Hasn't Japanese got as many ideograms as Chinese? Why would he find Mandarin difficult, but not mention the difficulty of Japanese at all? I've met a couple of Westerners who claim that they have learnt both Mandarin and Japanese and can speak fluently. I'm not sure if they could read or write. All of them say that Mandarin is MUCH MUCH easier (than they supposed) than Japanese: One of the most difficult things in Japanese is the honorific forms, which they still have problems with despite years of residence in Japan. BTW, if this Fazah finds Mandarin difficult, how come he could speak it fluently in 2 months and thus impress the consulate of "Formosa"? > Fazah > claimed that in seven years he can learn the rest > of the world's estimated 3,000 dialects. The rest? Some of these languages are in extinction, and are not well recorded (on paper or on tape). How would he be able to learn them? Again, the author of this article is so ignorant in linguistics that it is obvious that he is lying. It's also strange that genuine American languages like Quecha and Mayan are not mentioned in the article. > But his > dream is to create a universal language that > would be written as it is spoken. Written as spoken? I suppose he should already know many languages which are like that: Spanish, Italian, Russian, Arabic (with full diacritics), Malay-Indonesian (Romanized), Vietnamese (Romanized), Korean (fully in Hanguls), Tagalog (Romanized), ... Why invent a new wheel when there are plentiful varietis to choose from? Obviously, the article is an imaginary story targetted to the people in USA, who are mostly monoglots, heard so many myths about languages, and think that they are one of the most unlucky pepole in the world because they are struggling with a "difficult" writing system. > He would also > like to work as a U.N. translator. "I feel a > person with my skills is wasting his time in > Brazil," he said What skills? Skills of exaggerating and lying?" Link to the above thread (not written by me): http://groups.google.com/group/sci.lang/browse_thread/thread /f87b60c867dd0a45/79337a601f76f439?lnk=st&q=%22ziad+fazah%22 &rnum=14#79337a601f76f439 Edited by translator2 on 16 January 2006 at 7:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6889 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 79 of 377 16 December 2005 at 3:23am | IP Logged |
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Is it just me or did I detect a note of scepticism in the above post....?
Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7162 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 80 of 377 16 December 2005 at 3:34am | IP Logged |
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I have asked the poster not to continue on this line of personal, flaming, inflamatory attacks against Ziad Fazah. The question of the level Mr Fazah has or has not reached in each language he is said to speak is legitimate, but I won't tolerate people attacking him in such a way on this forum.
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