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Ziad Youssef Fazah (born June 10, 1954 in Monrovia, Liberia) is a Lebanese polyglot who has at least some notions of almost 60 languages. He has proved this in several television shows, where he successfully has communicated with native speakers of a large number of foreign languages.1 He was considered the world's greatest polyglot (greatest living linguist) by the 1993 UK edition of the Guinness Book of Records.
Fazah does not use all of his languages on a regular basis. As can be expected, his fluency is higher in certain languages that he has more contact with (Portuguese, Arabic, German, French, English, Spanish, etc.) and limited in languages that he has hardly spoken in years (Cambodian, Dzongkha, Finnish, etc.). Before being submitted to a televised language test he asks to be told which languages he will be required to speak and the general topics that will be discussed. After about a week of preparation Fazah feels confident speaking on television in any of his languages.1
Raised in Lebanon, he has lived in Brazil since the 1970s, where he works as a private teacher of languages in Rio de Janeiro.
List of Fazah's languages from the cover of one of his books:
- Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azeri, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Cambodian, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Cypriot, Dzongkha, English, Fijian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kyrgyz, Lao, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Mandarin, Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian, Papiamento, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Singapore Colloquial English, Sinhalese, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tajik, Thai, Tibetan, Turkish, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese and Wu.2 3
Ziad Fazah quotes himself as speaking 59 languages. 4 Although, some may say Cypriot is just a dialect of Turkish, not separate as a language, making his language count 58.
References
- ^ a b Scapin, Rafael. "Ziad Youssef Fazah: o Maior Poliglota do Mundo". Retrieved on 12 November 2007. (Portuguese) - An article adapted from Fazah's Ensinando a Aprender Espanhol.
- ^ See the cover of this book: Cover 1; 2
- ^ [1]
- ^ <http://thelinguistblogger.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/the-many-languages-of-ziad-fazah/
External links
- "World's Greatest Living Polyglot". Spidra's Vortex. Retrieved on 2007-08-17.
- "Samples from some of Fazah's books". Retrieved on 2007-10-08.
- "First Person: Ziad Fazah". Financial Times. Retrieved on 2008-06-21.
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- This page was last modified on 30 September 2008, at 23:15.
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