Lenin spoke, besides Russian, French, German, learned basic English on his own and also knew a bit of Italian from his wife Krupskaya. He was able to read Italian newspapers. He also possibly knew Polish, Swedish and Czech at a very basic level. In his biographies, some count up to 11 languages Lenin was acquainted with, and three languages spoken fluently besides Russian.

“I have just written a letter to Mark in which I described in exceptional detail how best to establish a “regime”; as regards mental work, I particularly recommended translations, especially both ways—first do a written translation from the foreign language into Russian, then translate it back from Russian into the foreign language. My own experience has taught me that this is the most rational way of learning a language.”

(Letter to his sister Maria Ulyanova, from Munich to Moscow dated 19 May, 1901, Collected Works, vol. 37)

  • SovereignState
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    1 year ago

    I got a fiction book written in Korean (The Vegetarian) and my plan for learning at first was to translate it sentence by sentence and then back, but I’ve seen conflicting opinions regarding the efficacy of doing this. I think it could likely lead to a better understanding of the syntax and grammar, but I’m unsure if anything beats out repeated drills with regards to functional vocab.

    • Soviet Snake
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      51 year ago

      I mean, Duolingo does exactly this but in a controlled environment where it provides you just the necessary amount of unknown knowledge in an orderly manner. Or well, any platform that uses a similar method.

      • SovereignState
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        61 year ago

        I 🏴‍☠️’d rosetta stone a while back and I found it much better for vocab retention and pronunciation than Duolingo, I’ve just never had much luck with it. I know some people on thousand day+ streaks who’ve barely learned anything. I’m sure it’s helpful for some people, at least hopefully.

        • Soviet Snake
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          51 year ago

          Well, it has worked for me with German, I am not that fluent but I’ve practiced intermitently over 3-4 years so it’s understandable I am not that fluid yet. I haven’t tried Rosseta Stone, though, so it might be better than Duolingo.

        • Seanchaí (she/her)
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          31 year ago

          If you don’t mind, may I ask where you find Rosetta Stone? I’m admittedly not knowledgeable about finding stuff like that and am struggling

          • @frippa
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            1 year ago

            I’m way late to the party but you may try 1337x . to Just do your investigations about the uploader, look for any weird comments under their uploads and for sus stuff, I recommend qbittorrent as a torrent client and to use a vpn if you live in a 5 eyes country or generally in a country where this type of stuff is punished frequently

            Edit: you need tor or a vpn to actually access the site

  • Organism
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    41 year ago

    linguistically this is not a very good method of language acquisition.