There is a legend in the market that Mao Zedong does not advocate learning English. Our country accounts for one of the five largest populations in the world, and the whole world should learn Chinese. All these years, I've been thinking this way. Recently, I read an article by Link, Minister of International Affairs of Mao Zedong, and found that this anecdotal legend is actually just a legend. It turns out that the old man learns English very well! Lin He said: Learning English is a part of study life. 1in the autumn of 954, I went to Mao Zedong's office as his secretary for international affairs, and this work lasted for twelve years. During this time, apart from secretarial work, I spent most of my time helping him with his English. Twenty years have passed, but the vivid scene of Mao Zedong learning English is still vivid. Recently, I consulted English books and periodicals that Mao Zedong read before his death, visited some comrades who had worked beside him, and consulted my notes at that time, which made my memories and narratives more vivid. Mao Zedong has always attached importance to the study of Chinese and foreign languages, and advocated the combination of mother tongue and foreign languages, modern Chinese and ancient Chinese. After the founding of New China, Mao Zedong repeatedly advocated cadres to learn foreign languages. 1958 1, in the draft of sixty working methods, he suggested that the responsible comrades of the central government and provinces and cities should learn a foreign language on a voluntary basis and strive to reach the intermediate level within five to ten years. 1959 at the beginning of the Lushan meeting, he reiterated this suggestion. In the 1970s, he also encouraged comrades under 60 to learn English. Mao Zedong taught himself English in Yan 'an. However, due to the harsh war environment at that time, his study was greatly limited. After the national liberation, with better learning conditions and environment, learning English became his hobby. 1954 when I came to work with him, he was over 60 years old. He first learned English from me in June, 165438+ 10, near the swimming pool in Yuexiu Mountain. When he had a rest after swimming and wanted to read English, he asked me to sit on the cane chair next to him. I'm a little nervous. He asked me where I was from and how old I was. I talked about my hometown of Jiangsu, my childhood was in Baoding, and my family moved to Beijing after the July 7th Incident. He talked about a lotus pond in Baoding, which was originally built for Cao Kun, the leader of the Northern Warlord, and then talked about the ugly history of Cao Kun bribing more than 500 "pig legislators" with 5,000 silver dollars per ticket and bribing the president. Mao Zedong's serene behavior and self-confidence soon calmed my nervous mood. At that time, Mao Zedong was not familiar with many words and phrases. We started by reading English magazines People's China, Beijing Review, English press releases and English reference news of Xinhua News Agency, newsletters, current affairs reviews and political articles, and then gradually learned English versions of Contradictions, Practice and Moscow Conference Declaration. After the publication of the fourth volume in 1960, Mao Zedong wrote me a letter asking me to read the English version of this volume. His letter reads like this: "Comrade Link: Have you translated the English version of the fourth volume of Selected Works? If it has been translated, please make two copies, one for you and one for me. I hope so! " After the Moscow conference statement was published in 1960, he wrote a letter in February 17, saying, "Has the English version of the Moscow statement been published? Please find two books. I want to read with you. " In addition, Mao Zedong has read some classic works of Marxism-Leninism in English, such as Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Manifesto of * * *, Critique of Gotha Program and some articles on formal logic in English. Mao Zedong encountered many difficulties in studying the English translation of Marxist-Leninist classics. Because the English version of these classic works is more difficult than the English version of general political articles, and there are more new words. However, Mao Zedong is not afraid of difficulties. 1959 10, a foreign guest asked him about his English study, and he said, "Learn every word." If you ask me a question, I can barely answer a few words. I want to make a five-year plan, learn English for another five years, and then I can read some articles on politics, economy and philosophy. Now I'm in the middle of learning, so it's not easy to read. It's like walking and touching a stone.

He also told me that he was "determined to study to death". He also said humorously, "I will study as much as possible every day I live." What if I meet Marx? "With the help of the dictionary, I learned to translate political books into English. Mao Zedong speaks with a strong Hunan accent, and some English words are not pronounced correctly. He showed me, and he did. Sometimes, he will practice several times by himself, so that I can hear whether his pronunciation is up to standard, correct his inaccurate pronunciation and let him master the essentials of pronunciation. When I came across an unfamiliar word or phrase, after I read and explained its meaning and grammatical structure, he marked the phonetic symbols on the word with a sharp pencil, and marked the different meanings of each word and phrase with dense small characters in the margin of the page. In the English versions of Critique of Political Economy and Manifesto, he made detailed comments from the first page to the last page. Until his later years, he had to make supplementary explanations every time he reread it. However, because of my old age, my eyesight has declined. I can no longer use small characters, but I can only take notes in vigorous big characters. You can't learn English without a dictionary. Mao Zedong always takes two dictionaries, an English-Chinese dictionary and a Chinese-English dictionary, for him to consult frequently. Every time I go somewhere else, I will take my dictionary with me. Considering his heavy work, in order to save his time, I often help him look up words he has never learned in the dictionary in advance. But he often has to read the phonetic symbols and notes in the dictionary by himself. In order to meet the needs of learning English, from 196 1 to 1964, he repeatedly asked for various dictionaries and reference books, such as On Contradiction, Chinese-English Dictionary, Chinese-English Dictionary, Chinese-English Dictionary, Modern Chinese-English Dictionary and Chinese-English Dictionary. Up to now, the English-Chinese Comprehensive Dictionary and the Chinese-English Classified Vocabulary Manual are still kept in Zhongnanhai's residence. In order to learn English life terms, Mao Zedong also read Chinese-English current affairs vocabulary and the World Chinese-English Dictionary. During the period from 196 1 to 1964, he was also given an English-Chinese dictionary for four purposes, a basic English textbook, a China Construction magazine, a revised edition of junior high school English compiled by the Foreign Languages Institute, and a book for intermediate English and English learning compiled by the English Department of Peking University. Mao Zedong's English study focuses on reading political articles and classic works of Marxism-Leninism. Because of the contents of these articles and works, he is very familiar with them. When studying, he can pay attention to the changes of sentence patterns, sentence structures and English parts of speech. He has studied some articles and classics many times. He has studied the English version for three times and wrote down the reading time on the inside page of the cover: the first time1956 May10; 1959 65438+1October 3 1 Read it for the second time; 196 1 year101started reading for the third time on October 9. The purpose of his repeated study is to strengthen his memory and deepen his understanding. He has a deep understanding of the origin, grammar and rhetoric of Chinese, and often likes to compare the grammar and rhetoric of English and Chinese, or ask questions for discussion. He said: "I study English to study this language and compare it with English words in Chinese. If I have the chance, I want to learn some Japanese. "Later, because of busy work, the desire to learn Japanese was not realized.