Ziad Fazah speaks 58 languages ?

Ziad Fazah speaks 58 languages, or does he? Here he is interviewed on a Spanish television program and seems not to understand the questions he gets in Finnish, Farsi, Russian, Chinese and Greek. I have not done a multilanguage podcast in a while so here goes.

I speak the following languages here,

French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Russian, Korean...and whoops I forgot Japanese. I will do the next podcasts entirely in Japanese. And if you are interested you can hear me at my JapaneseLingQ podcasts.

Comments

[Edwin]

Steve,
Since you are interested in Brazil lately, you should try to contact Ziad. He lives in Brazil too. I talked to him a few months ago from Skype. He is a very nice guy. 58 languages ... not sure. But surely he can speak 5-6 very well today. If I remember correctly, I have given you his Skypename in my skype chat to you back in last October.

As for YouTube, check out the clips of Wendy Vo, an 8-year old ployglot. Very interesting!

[Edwin]

Sorry, let me clarify. I used Skype to call Ziad's home phone. He does not use Skype. He checks email though. So I must have given you his email or home phone number back in October.

[Ryan]

Over the past few months I’ve become a big fan of yours. I am thoroughly impressed by your abilities and I refer your site to many language lovers and defend your methods in spite of the fact that you are not an academic. I read all of your posts thoroughly and think that you make some wonderfully sound points that the academic community should listen to. If you can learn ten languages then your method must have something to it.

I found this latest post to be disappointing. Ziad is a friend of mine. I visited him in July of 2007 while my wife and I were in Rio de Janeiro. Like Edwin, I can’t verify Ziad’s fluency in all 59 languages but his English and Spanish are great (he was nervous on that TV program because when we speak Spanish he is much better), especially for someone who has never lived in countries where those languages are spoken. If they’re not listening carefully then not even Brazilians can tell that Ziad isn’t one of them; that’s how good his Portuguese is.

I have read news reviews about how he went on television in several countries, speaking a wide variety of languages, and did famously well. This video clip, which is taken from a Chilean and not Spanish program, is malicious since it does not show how he understood a good number of other languages with no problem at all. He’s obviously forgotten a lot of what he studied but I really wonder if the two of you wouldn’t get along quite nicely if given the chance. I have Ziad’s home phone number and email and would be happy to give them to you so you can judge for yourself how good he is.

[Chris]

I've heard a chat between a How-to member and Ziad not too long ago, and he does indeed seem like a nice guy. The main complaints raised regarding this particular video, were his attempts to fake his way through the show knowing full-well he couldn't understand what was being asked of him. That said, this issue is quite old.

[Steve Kaufmann]

I do not know Ziad Fazah. I just discovered this youtube. In it Ziad pretends to know these languages, pretends to explain what is being said. Of the languages involved, I only know Chinese and some Russian. The questions asked were not difficult. Ziad did not say, "sorry I did not hear" or " this is not one of the languages that I speak". He pretended to understand when he obviously did not.

There is nothing malicious about the clip. The clip does not talk about all the other languages that Ziad claims to speak and may very well speak. The program only deals with the languages we hear. Ziad pretends to know them and does not. It is that simple. No malice.

Ryan, I keep this blog to talk about things relating to language. I enjoy doing it, and I do it in order to make people aware of LingQ.

If there is one thing I have learned in life and in business, it is the importance of credibility. It is difficult to achieve credibility and easy to lose it. That is why we are careful about we claim at LingQ.

I feel sorry for Ziad, since there is absolutely no benefit to him in appearing on this program and pretending to speak languages that he does not speak. It automatically makes people wonder if he really speaks the other languages he claims to speak.

There is not doubt that he speaks Spanish. I assume he speaks Portuguese even better since he is Brazilian. I do not doubt that he speaks many more languages very well, and I accept your statement that he is a nice person.

Unfortunately this clip, for most people, destroys his credibility as a person who speaks 58 languages.

[Marcelo]

Hi Steve,

It seems that you're making a lot of progress in your Portuguese studies. Many people who speak Spanish or Italian and try to learn Portuguese make the same mistake : They all speak with the wrong rythm and intonation ( the ones of those languages) and ocasionally mix up some Spanish and Italian words with Portuguese ones. Fortunately, you seem to be in the right track, altough I had the impression that you were kind of struggling to find words to express yourself. But that's perfectly normal to each and every language learner in the beginning. I look forward to hearing your next Portuguese podcasts. Good luck with your studies.
And by the way, I'm Brazilian.

[LFJ]

well this is bizarre. i'm interested but the video has been removed from youtube and from another site i found it on....

also, steve, your multilanguage podcast cannot be opened. perhaps thats an error on my side though?

[LFJ]

your podcast opens for me today. thanks for posting, steve. i enjoy the multilanguage podcasts. even though i only understand english, mandarin, and bits of cantonese.

[Maite]

I like the multilingual podcasts as well. I like to hear natives speak at normal conversational speed.

[Sunny Chan]

I'm Chinese and I can certainly tell your Mandarin sounds marvelous (with very few grammatical errors and close to being accent-free) and you speak pretty fluent Cantonese (with a heavy accent but almost all other non-native Cantonese speakers have the same problem so I don't blame you). You certainly did a great job mastering languages. Don't know about Ziad Fazah though.

P.S. A little tip for you: I don't really speak the other European languages you speak but I can tell that you speak them with a somewhat hint of American accent. You might wanna get rid of that. But again I don't blame you!

[Steve]

Sunny, Perfection is not my goal, just communication. I certainly speak French and Japanese better than Mandarin but I appreciate your kind words about my Mandarin. But really, we do better in language learning if we do not aspire to perfection so I will not worry about my "hint" of a North American accent in any of my languages.

As for my Cantonese, I admit I have a lot of work to do there, but I am focused on Russian right now. I would probably be more motivated to improve my Cantonese if Cantonese speakers had the pride to have their language recognized as a language, not just a dialect, and developed a written literature in the language, complete with audio books.

[Doug]

How do you find time to learn more languages? I work 50-60 hours a week, take a class or two each semester, and have a family to tend to. Ever since I have had children I never seem to have enough time to learn more languages. Currently I live in Germany and know enough to get by. I have studied Japanese when I lived there four years, but only understand a good amount; not enough to claim I can speak it. I did live in Korea for four years and consider myself fluent after countless hours of self study. I have studied bits and pieces of other languages and want to learn more. I have a goal of becoming fluent in German, Spanish, Mandarin, Thai, Aribic, and further improving my Korean. My main interest is speaking the languages although reading and writing would be a plus. Learning languages has become a hobby of mine, but mostly I learn from listening such as with audio CDs.

[Steve Kaufmann]

Doug,

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