Dear All.,
As we struggle with getting kids to learn one language, I thought this
contribution from CompuServe's Foreign Language
Forum FLEFO, would make us gawp. It is a message about a 'linguist'
whose foreign language skills qualify for an entry in the Brazilian
edition of the
Guinness Book of Records.


World's Greatest Living Polyglot:
Brazilian makes his point in a mere 56 languages

Rio de Janeiro
When police in Rio picked up an illegal alien babbling in an apparently
unintelligible tongue they turned to Ziad Fazah, reckoned to be the
world's
greatest linguist. "I soon realized he was from Afghanistan and spoke a
dialect called Hazaras," the 40 year-old Lebanese immigrant said.
Through
Fazah's help, the man was able to explain how he had been tortured by
the
Russians and was able to get asylum here. Fazah, who has been living in
Brazil for 21 years, is fluent in 56 languages, winning him a mention in

the Brazilian edition of the "Guinness World Book of Records" as the
world's greatest living polyglot.

Fazah said his work is much in demand with Rio police. Recently he was
called to interpret for another illegal alien who came from Eritrea, in
northern Ethiopia. The man, who spoke a dialect known as Tucurum, was
eventually deported. "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"

Fazah was born in Liberia but while still an infant moved with his
Lebanese
parents to Beirut. "By the time I was 17, I spoke 54 languages," Fazah
said
during an interview at his small, dark apartment in the middle-class
neighborhood of Flamengo. Aside from his mother tongue of Arabic, and
French and English which he learned at school, Fazah taught himself all
the
languages. He began with German and moved on to such Far Eastern tongues
as
Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese and Japanese.

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. Determined, he bought a grammar book and a dictionary. "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."

Despite his language skills Fazah has traveled very little outside of
Lebanon and Brazil. At the age of 18, after graduating from the American

University in Beirut with a degree in philology, Fazah moved with his
parents to Brazil. His father had been living in Colombia and his
mother,
fearing civil war would break out, advised her husband not to come home.

Instead, she joined her husband in Brazil. Fazah, who is married to a
Brazilian and has one son, began working as a tutor in Rio de Janeiro,
giving private lessons in Swedish, Danish, German and French.

Two years ago Fazah came to international attention when he had his
abilities tested on a televised program in Spain. "They brought in
people
from Mongolia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand," said Fazah, whose
business
cards proclaim the fact that he "reads, writes and speaks 54 languages
fluently." (Since printing the cards he has picked up two more
languages.)
He also participated in a program in Greece, where he was tested in
Hungarian, Czech, Korean, Chinese and Japanese.

While in Spain, Fazah said he was contacted by an Israeli official.
"They
asked me if I was interested in working for the Israeli government but I

feared what the Palestinians would do to me," said Fazah, who is Greek
Orthodox. In the early 1970s Fazah also had a run-in with officials from

the U.S. consulate, who were suspicious of his abilities to speak
Chinese
and Russian. "They feared I was a terrorist and asked Brazilian police
to
bring me in for questioning but after two hours I was let go."

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. Fazah claimed that in seven years he can
learn the rest of the world's estimated 3,000 dialects. But his dream is
to
create a universal language that would be written as it is spoken. 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.

received from:
David Wilson <[log in to unmask]>
Harton School, South Shields.

        Greetings
and have a great meeting
Patsi Reeve-De Becker