Today, I had the honour to talk with Ziad Fazah. Yes, the person who claimed to have learnt 59 languages in his youth.

Thanks, Keith, for the inspiration. At last, I decided to talk to the legendary linguist. I sent an email to Ziad yesterday, and was surprised to receive his reply on the same day. He asked me to call him today.

I felt so mad at myself when I found out that I messed up the time zone. I was an hour late. It seemed to be an inconvenient time for him, so we only talked for a few minutes.

We spoke English most of the time, but then we had a short exchange in Mandarin. He admitted that his Mandarin was rusted since he has not spoken it for 20 years. But he claimed that he could pick up any language again if he wanted. It would probably take him 2 days to 2 weeks depending on his available time.

As soon as I heard him speaking Mandarin, I thought the coming conversation was going to be valuable. So I started my Skype recording!

“Your call is now being recorded…”

The program was new to me, and I later found out the above message could be heard from both ends! I did not ask his permission to record the call, so I felt very embarrassed afterwards. But he seemed to be alright with that.

He indicated to me, as to other people in the past, that there was simply no significant financial benefit for knowing to speak so many languages. I kind of agree with him.

I have arranged another time to speak with him next week. I am hoping to get more inspiration from him on language learning.

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