CZECHS ORDERED TO LEARN RUSSIAN

Grey River Argus, 11 October 1949, Page 5

CZECHS ORDERED TO LEARN RUSSIAN

PRAGUE, October 9

Hundreds of thousands of Czech adults and children started to-day on a Communist-directed language marathon, says the Associated Press. The object is to learn Russian, and there are prizes for those showing the greatest progress. Observers see this as probably the biggest effort in modern history to teach a nation a foreign language. “Russian is the language of the future”, said the newspaper, Lidove Noviny. “No doctor, engineer, artist or soldier will be able to get along without Russian. Our workers and farmers must know the language of our 2'00,000,000 allies”. Language students in the secondaryschools must learn to read Russian by the end of December at rates ranging from 60 to 80 words a minute. Prizes will be Soviet magazines.