Ali Pirhani

Ali Pirhani was born in the historical city of Hamadan in 1985. His mother was a teacher and his father was a clerk. Reviewing of his diary, Dr. Pirhani presents himself as a curious little boy. Hence, his father was forced to take him to his workplace every day, where was located near the tomb of Bu Ali Sina. The thing which kept his mind busy more than anything else was many tourists who had to deal with while discussing various issues with each other. His childhood curiosity made this question in his mind that about what issues tourists are talking with each other. What he knew for sure was that they are not Persian and speak a language other than Persian. Then he approached the tourists, listened carefully to their conversations thinking if they talk about the food or any other tourist places to go. The tourists got surprised by a little boy so interested in their talking. Books and brochures they gave him as the gift, was compounded by his curiosity to find out what their theme is. He has learned Persian orthography in that early age with the help of his mother. At that time when his family saw the interests of their child to foreign languages, they rented a French-into-Persian dictionary for him. Now, the key of all questions that he didn’t have any answer to them up to that time was in his hands. After finding out the meanings of words in the dictionary, he imagined them as memorable symbols and meaningful forms. His learning model can be summarized in a child who memorizes all his way back home with the signs. He also learned French grammar indirectly. For example, he realized that in French language after "je" “suis” comes certainly not “sont”. What made listening and pronunciation skills of this language easy for him were listening to the French radio networks. During his play time, in order to practice the new French words that have been learnt he talked French to himself. Finally, after seven and a half months, he was able to use the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing in French fluently and even he could easily read the French newspapers as well. It is remarkable that at that time no one in his family was familiar with a language other than Farsi. Then he started to learn German language in the same way by buying a German-into-Persian dictionary. However, to learn German language, even he has used the medical advices which were written on the back of some creams and medications. Finally, he mastered the German language in 14 months. Watching football was his favorite pastime. At the time of 1990 World Cup Football Tournament, he liked to be able to read the names of players from different countries on the back of their shirts. So English, Spanish and Italian were the languages that attracted him respectively. In short, his trend towards language learning in different languages was quite creative in a way that, now in the age of 30 he is fluent in 21 languages including Persian, English, Latin, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Swahili, Esperanto, Romanian, Malay, Kurdish, Pahlavi, Ordoo and Avesta. Now he holds BA in English Literature and Law and a Master degree and PhD in International Law. Now, he is the managing director of Polyglotage center in Iran.