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I have spoken to Ziad Fazah | ||
Tags: Ziad Fazah | Conversation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| tiger Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4096 days ago 15 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 89 of 104 04 February 2013 at 10:01am | IP Logged | ||
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I have been thinking about it and suddenly it all clicks.
Anyway if he really wanted to be successful in business, then he should have learned maybe 5 languages fluently including their business add-ons and he could've be better off by now. Learning so many languages was his downfall that has taken him nearly all his life and many employers might have turned him down for "bragging" or an incompetence in all of his languages. I mean if you want to conduct business today, all you need is English , but not on a level like : "Indeed, I am the biggest multilingual". His life had to be interesting, but now when he's old he has to look back and think what if... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5115 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 90 of 104 04 February 2013 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Don't knock a man for his dream, nor for trying to make a living. We all have bills to pay.
I can confirm that part of his motivation was to to become rich, famous and successful.Isn't that what most people want? Particularly these days when everyone wants to be a star? Remember that he was just a young boy when he started out with this. We can all have an opinion of what the "right" way of studying languages. or the "right" motivation is, but in my view that is an individual question. We have no right to judge other people for their reasons for studying a language, or 10 or 58. And please don't believe that studying only languages can't get you a job. All I have ever studied have been languages, and I have been unemployed for the exact time of one month - in July - and even then I worked some of the days in that month. I have been a teacher, a guide, an interpreter (extremely briefly) and I have worked in a state company in their international office for more than 20 years, and I have used my languages, and gotten paid for using those languages every single day of my life for more than 30 years now. I have not become rich and famous, but that was never my dream either. I just had a need to learn languages, like some people have a need to become a writer. We all have different needs, and different motivations, and this is a place were we should nurture and support each other, and not criticise. Like I said in the beginning here, I have had two conversations with Ziadh Fazah, I did not ask him to teach me anything, he did not ask for anything but the conversation. We had a pleasent conversation between equals, and laughed and had a good time. I treated him with respect, and I got nothing but sweetness and respect back. If I had been called up by a bunch of people who insisted on seeing if I was a fraud, and wanted my time for free, I would probably have asked for money in the end too. We all have a limited amount of time, and we are free to decide how we want to spend that time. If you are 18 and your bills are being footed by your parents you can afford to just hang around and spend your time however you want. He has a family to provide for, and has the right to do what he needs to do. Then it is up to each and every one to see whether what he offers fit them or not. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 04 February 2013 at 11:07am 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tiger Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4096 days ago 15 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 91 of 104 04 February 2013 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well there are always going to be a lot of people (usually mono or bilingual) who are trigger happy about pointing out the simplest of mistakes when it comes to polyglots in order to feel better about themselves.
"This guy/girl speaks 10 languages, let's mock his/her accent or the wrong choice of tenses..." But I personally don't think Ziad has pi**ed people off with his claims, but with more with his overall attitude towards them. There's a certain amount of upkeep needed, but if you spend at least 3 months with a language, you should be able to answer the questions in Russian and Hindi on that Chilean TV show. Not all the questions were easy and I gotta admit that, but he could say : понедельник or at least "No me acuerdo cómo se dice esa palabra en ruso, pero hoy es lunes." He couldn't even identify it as Russian and it doesn't really matter if the video was edited and he could have answered correctly to several other speakers... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5705 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 92 of 104 05 February 2013 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||
The problem I have with much of the criticism of Ziad Fazah is that it is based in unrealistic assumptions. I think at one point he did claim to be the the greatest living multilingual, which only led to ridiculously high expectations that no one could meet, but I'm not surprised that he doesn't know all 50+ languages he has learned to the same level. I believe that at some time in his life he may have decided to focus on improving the languages he uses on a regular basis and drop most of the others Edited by mick33 on 05 February 2013 at 12:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6649 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 93 of 104 05 February 2013 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||
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It was mentioned in another thread - possibly the now closed main thread about Ziad - that Ziad said that he found one maxes out after learning a certain number of languages, in terms of money one might make. Naturally, having some language skills can't hurt you at all in the job market, but his point was by learning 4 or even 10 you'll be making as much extra as you would with 50+ simply because most of those languages won't be used at all, plus you must take into account the investment of time and money on learning them.
It was the folly (or passion?) of youth, most likely. His notions about making money with languages make sense to me, since as I mentioned, it made since to me, too, back when I was in middle and high school, back when I thought I wanted to be a translator or interpreter. (In some article Ziad said that this was a goal of his, as well, to work as a linguist at the UN.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tiger Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4096 days ago 15 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 94 of 104 05 February 2013 at 8:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Let's end this discussion, before it gets to another bashing with : "Ziad is an inspiration, but also a bad example."
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| HMS Senior Member England Joined 4888 days ago 143 posts - 256 votes Speaks: English* | Message 95 of 104 08 February 2013 at 12:51am | IP Logged | ||
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How incredibly sad! - A polyglot being reduced to analysis by what to me appears as something scoring quite high on the Aspergers spectrum.
How would Mezzofanti fair on here were he alive today? He'd be ridiculed and probably banned wihin a week. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4670 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 96 of 104 08 February 2013 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Tiger sounds like a troll. He / she comes on this forum, bashes Ziad Fazah in a couple
posts, and when the community defends Ziad we get "let's end this discussion." 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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