Name Ziad Fazah | ||
 | ||
Known for his claim of being able to speak, read and understand 59 languages | ||
Ziad Youssef Fazah (Arabic: زياد فصاح; born June 10, 1954) is a Liberian-born Lebanese polyglot. Fazah himself claims to speak 59 languages and maintains that he has proved this in several public appearances in which he "successfully" communicated with native speakers of a large number of foreign languages. According to Fazah, a Greek Orthodox, his abilities to learn languages are a gift bestowed to him by God. He currently lives in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Contents
- Ziad Fazah Worlds Greatest Living Polyglot Officially Incredible Record Owner
- Polyglot claims
- Viva el Lunes test
- References
The Guinness Book of World Records, up to the 1998 edition, listed Fazah as being able to speak and read 58 languages, citing a live interview in Athens, Greece in July 1991.
Ziad Fazah | World's Greatest Living Polyglot | Officially Incredible | Record Owner
Polyglot claims
Fazah claims he can speak, read and understand the following languages:
However, he stated in 2015 that at the time he could only fluently speak fifteen of those languages without preparing himself, which were Arabic, French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Norwegian, Danish, Hebrew, Chinese, Swedish and Croatian.
Viva el Lunes test
In 1997, Fazah's polyglot abilities were tested in the Chilean TV program Viva el lunes. He talked in Spanish in the occasion, and ambassadors and other guests from all over the world asked him questions in Egyptian Arabic, Finnish, Russian, Chinese, Persian, Hindi and Greek. He failed in fully understanding and properly answering all of them but the first. These included:
In a 2015 interview, Fazah defended himself regarding this event, which he called a "trap". He claimed that the show's organizers did not inform him he would be tested and even that it would be conducted in languages other than Spanish, so he didn't have time to prepare himself to properly answer the questions.