HOW MARX LEARNED FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Karl Marx was born in Germany, and German was his native language. When he was still a young man, he was forced to leave his homeland for political reasons. He stayed in Belgium for a few years; then he went to France. Before long he had to move on again. In 1849, he went to England and made London the base for his evolutionary work.

Marx had learned some French and English at school. When he got to England, he found that his English was too limited. He started working hard to improved it. He made such rapid progress that before long he began to write articles in English for an American newspaper. In fact, his English in one of these articles was so good that Engels wrote him a letter and praised him for it. Marx wrote back to say that the Engel’s praise had greatly encouraged him.

However, he went on to explain that he was not too sure about two things - the grammar and some of the idioms.
These letters were written in 1853. In the years that followed, Marx kept on studying English and using it. When he wrote one of his great works. The Civil War in France, he had mastered the language so well that he was able to write the book in English.
In the l870s, when Marx was already in his fifties, he found it important to study the situation in Russia, so he began to learn Russian. At the end of six months he had learned enough to read articles and reports in Russian.
In one of his books, Marx gave some advice on how to learn a foreign language. He said when people are learning a foreign language, they should not translate everything into their own language. If they do this, it shows they have not mastered When they use the foreign language, they should try to Forget all about their own. If they cannot do this, they have not really learned the spirit of the foreign language and cannot use it freely.

卡尔·马克思出生在德国，德语是他的母语。当他还是个年轻的时候，他因为政治原因被迫离开了祖国。他在比利时呆了几年；然后他去了法国。不久之后，他又不得不继续往前走了。1849年，他去了英国，把伦敦作为他的进化研究的基础。 马克思在学校里学到了一些法语和英语。当他到达英国时，他发现他的英语太有限了。他开始努力工作去改善它。他进步如此迅速，不久他就开始为一家美国报纸写英文文章。事实上，他在其中一篇文章中的英语非常好，以至于恩格斯给他写了一封信并称赞他。马克思回信说，对恩格尔人的赞扬极大地鼓励了他。 然而，他继续解释说，他对这两件事并不太确定——语法和一些习语。这些信写于1853年。在接下来的几年里，马克思继续学习英语和使用英语。当他写他的伟大作品。在法国内战期间，他已经熟练地掌握了这门语言，因此他能够用英语写出这本书。在19世纪70年代，当马克思已经50多岁的时候，他发现研究俄罗斯的情况很重要，所以他开始学习俄语。六个月后，他已经学到了足够的东西，可以用俄语阅读文章和报道。在他的一本书中，马克思给了一些如何学习外语的建议。他说，当人们在学习一门外语时，他们不应该把一切东西都翻译成自己的语言。如果他们这样做了，这表明他们还没有掌握。当他们使用外语时，他们应该试着忘记他们自己的一切。如果他们不能这样做，他们就没有真正学习到外语的精神，也不能自由地使用它。