Barry Farber

Barry Farber is a conservative U.S. radio talk show host, author and language-learning enthusiast. In 2002, industry publication Talkers magazine ranked him the 9th greatest radio talk show host of all time. He has also written articles appearing in the New York Times, Reader's Digest, the Washington Post, and the Saturday Review.

Early life and language learning

Born in 1930 in Baltimore, Farber is Jewish and grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina.

After nearly failing Latin in the ninth grade, that summer Farber started reading a Mandarin Chinese language-learning book. A trip to Miami Beach, Florida to see his grandparents coincidentally put him in the midst of a large number of Chinese navy sailors in training there. His Chinese rapidly improved. Back in Greensboro, he took up Italian, Spanish, and French on his own before summer vacation was over. He started taking French and Spanish classes in his sophomore year and also learned Norwegian on his own while in high school.

He then attended the University of North Carolina, where he learned Russian. As a delegate from the National Student Association to what he later called a "Tito propaganda fiesta called the Zagreb Peace Conference", he found other Slavic languages were closely related to Russian. A 16-day boat trip back to the United States with Yugoslavs allowed him to practice his Serbo-Croatian. After covering Olympic games in Helsinki one year in the 1950s, he learned Indonesian on another boat trip back to the U.S.

As a newspaper reporter in 1956, Farber was invited by the United States Air Force to cover the airlift of Hungarian refugees from the uprising in Hungary that year. In an Austrian border village, Farber later wrote, he so impressed a Norwegian man, Thorvald Stoltenberg, with knowledge of the man's native tongue that he was allowed to go on one of the covert missions smuggling Hungarians into Austria. He had a quick whispered conversation with one of the smugglers:

"My name is Barry Farber, and I'm from America," he said.

"My name is Karen Heilberg, and I'm from Norway," she replied.

Then Farber stunned her by telling her, truthfully, "I took your sister, Meta, to the Carolina Theater in Greensboro, North Carolina, five nights ago." Farber and the sister had seen newsreels about the Hungarian uprising, and Meta had mentioned that her sister was over there.

Radio career

His radio career began in New York City when William Safire, hired Farber as a producer. Farber eventually hosted his own show on WINS-AM. Begun in 1960, his first talk show was called "Barry Farber’s WINS Open Mike". It was the only talk show on what was then a rock n’ roll station. He left that job for an evening talk show on WOR-AM in 1962, and then became an all-night host in 1967. In 1970 he ran for Congress in New York City's 19th district on the Republican ticket, but was defeated by Bella Abzug. Farber left his talk-radio career for a time in 1977 to delve into politics, running for mayor of New York City but was unsuccessful as well.

Farber then joined WMCA-AM for an afternoon drive time talk show, which lasted about 10 years. In 1990 he became a national talk-show host on the ABC Radio Network, which was trying to build a group of nationwide talk shows at the time. Lynn Samuels was forced to share her show with Farber, resulting in her departure from the station. ABC's project later was abandoned, and Farber, Michael Castello, and Alan Colmes got together and quickly formed their own independent network called Daynet. He is now on the Talk Radio Network.

In 1991 he was named "Talk Show Host of The Year" by the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts.

Other activities

Farber is the author of the book Making People Talk, where he describes his strategies on opening people up and generating more meaningful conversation.

The talk show host became a regular columnist for Newsmax.com in April 2000.

He is also host of an infomercial hawking a health book - The World's Greatest Treasury of Health Secrets.

Farber is the father of noted magazine journalist Celia Farber.

Language learning

Aside from this, he can speak more than 25 languages, including Chinese, Russian, and Finnish. He has published a book titled How to Learn Any Language that details his method for self-study. It is based around a multi-track study of the language, the use of memory aids for vocabulary, and the utilization of "hidden moments" throughout the day. The method also forgoes the traditional grammar-first instructional method by having learners plunge right into the language by reading a newspaper article or something similar, allowing them to learn the grammar organically while acquiring vocabulary quickly.

Languages he speaks

Farber dislikes saying he "speaks" a certain number of languages. He prefers the preferred phrasing of the Language Club he helped found in New York City: "I’m a student of 26 languages, now" he said in a 2005 interview. About half of those are languages he will "date" and the other half, "marry," he said. "By languages I date, I mean no grammar and no script, languages like Bengali."

Aside from Bengali, the 25 foreign languages he speaks include these 19 ("marriage" or "dating" specified, when known): Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French (marriage), German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Mandarin, Norwegian (marriage), Portuguese, Russian (marriage), Serbo-Croatian, Spanish (marriage), Swedish and Yiddish. Also Bulgarian and Korean.

His book, "How to Learn any Language" never specifies all of the 25 languages that his publicity materials say he speaks. He says in the book that when he was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1952, he was "tested and qualified for work in fourteen different languages" and has since learned more in some of those languages as well as the others. . He mentioned in the 2005 interview that he still constantly learns bits and pieces of new language -- some Albanian phrases or a new phrase each time he went into a grocery store where a Tibetan woman works.

Stu Tarlowe, a longtime Farber fan, remembers hearing several examples of Barry's language skills: Once, when Barry's guests were author and comedian (and originator of The Tonight Show) Steve Allen and his wife, Jayne Meadows, Meadows mentioned that her parents had been missionaries in China and that she was born in China. Barry immediately launched into a conversation with her in Mandarin.

Another time, Barry's guest was Jan Yoors, who had written a book about his life among the Gypsies. Barry asked Yoors if he spoke Romany, and then the two of them launched into an exchange in that esoteric language.

Yet another time, Barry's guests were a couple of "journalists" from Pravda. During the Cold War any Russian "journalists" were assumed to be spies or at least propagandists. When Barry asked a tough question (Barry was never a "softball" interviewer, although sometimes his questions were so intricate and convoluted that, when he finished asking them, he had to say, "We'll get your answer when we return from this pause for station identification"), the Russians pretended to not be sufficiently fluent in English to understand, whereupon Barry said, "Well, if you don't understand the question in English, I'll ask it in Russian", and proceeded to do so, having an animated exchange in Russian that only the Russian-speakers in the audience could understand!

Books by Farber

• Making People Talk: You Can Turn Every Conversation into a Magic Moment (William Morrow & Co: 1987) ISBN 0688015913
• How to Learn Any Language: Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and on Your Own 172 pages, (Carol Publishing Corporation: 1991) ISBN 0806512717 (paperback)
• How to Conceal Stupidity
• How to Not Make the Same Mistake Once (Barricade Books: 1999) ISBN 1569801320

External links

• Barry Farber's articles on NewsMax.com
• An interview with Barry Farber about learning languages
• Talk Radio Network