Barry Farber

Barry Morton Farber (May 5, 1930 – May 6, 2020) was an American conservative radio talk show host, author, commentator and language-learning enthusiast.

He graduated in 1948 from Greensboro Senior High School (see Grimsley 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.

It was a live remote from Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, broadcast over 660 WNBC in the mid-1950s from 10:30 PM to midnight, Monday through Friday.

William Safire hired Farber as a producer.

Farber eventually hosted his own show on 1010 WINS.

After covering the 1952 Summer Olympic Games in Helsinki, he learned Indonesian on another boat trip back to the U.S.

He said 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 since learned more in some of those languages as well as the others.

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.

Farber had knowledge of more than 25 languages, including the ones mentioned above.

He published a book titled How to Learn Any Language that detailed his method for self-study.

It employed a multi-track study of the language, the use of memory aids for vocabulary, and the utilization of "hidden moments" throughout the day.

Farber preferred to say that he was a student of a certain number of languages, rather than saying that he spoke them.

Of the languages he studied, half he "dates" and the other half he "marries".

According to Farber: "By languages I date, I mean no grammar and no script, languages like Bengali."

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

Barry could speak and read some Albanian, and was enthusiastic about expanding his vocabulary of the language.

Farber's book, How to Learn any Language never specifies all of the 25 languages that his publicity materials say he studied.

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 and was on weeknights at 11pm.

He left that job for an evening talk show on WOR in 1962, and then became an all-night host in 1967.

In November 1977, Kaiser Broadcasting debuted a weekly talk show hosted by Farber as a replacement to its program hosted by Lou Gordon, who died earlier that year, but it was short-lived.

Farber then joined 570 WMCA for an afternoon drive time talk show, which lasted until 1989 when WMCA changed its format to Christian radio.

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, a liberal, was forced to share her local 770 WABC show with Farber which led to on-air confrontations, and resulted in her departure from the station.

In 2002, industry publication Talkers magazine ranked him the 9th greatest radio talk show host of all time.

He also wrote articles appearing in The New York Times, Reader's Digest, The Washington Post, and the Saturday Review.

He was the father of journalist Celia Farber and singer-songwriter Bibi Farber.

Farber was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Sophie (Marcus) and Raymond Farber, who both worked on the family's Jay-Ray Sportswear line.

Farber was 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 mentioned in the 2005 interview that he still constantly learned 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.

His radio career began in New York City, working as the producer for the Tex and Jinx (Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg) interview program.