In 1997, Fazah's polyglot abilities were tested in the Chilean TV program Viva el lunes. The program was in Spanish 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 in his native Arabic.
[...] Besides failing to understand the question or any of the spoken Persian, Fazah also failed the reading test in Persian he was given, as he pronounced the letters as one would in Arabic, which is inaccurate since the Persian alphabet is unique with additional letters not found in Arabic. Previously Fazah had claimed he could read in all the languages he claimed to speak. Persian was the only language he was tested in reading, and considering his poor performance, it is unlikely he would have passed either the Greek, Chinese, Hindi Devanagari script, or Cyrillic alphabet reading comprehension.
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 did not have time to prepare himself to properly answer the questions.
