9 ms·

I appreciate your perspective, but I was curious what B1 proficiency actually entails and this is what I found [1]: - understand the main points of clear stand

by dgs_sgd 3mo ago

I appreciate your perspective, but I was curious what B1 proficiency actually entails and this is what I found [1]: - understand the main points of clear standard speech on familiar topics such as work, school, or leisure - manage most situations that occur while traveling in German-speaking areas - produce simple, connected text on familiar subjects - describe experiences, events, dreams, hopes, and ambitions, and briefly explain your opinions or plans That seems like a reasonable standard of native language proficiency to ask of people who want to make the county with said language their permanent home. [1] https://www.sprachenatelier-berlin.de/en/topic/3736.german-proficiency-levels.html https://www.sprachenatelier-berlin.de/en/topic/3736.german-p...

TheOtherHobbes 3mo ago
B1 is a completely fair minimum standard. It's normal for many countries to expect residents to have basic conversational adequacy. It's also the kind of requirement that's made explicit on government information about residency. So it shouldn't have been a surprise.
- dgs_sgd 3mo ago
  Like, I imagine if I moved to a country and couldn’t do the B1 things in their language, I would have daily obstacles doing basic life things.
  - parineum 3mo ago
    A country like the USA?
    - ryandrake 3mo ago
      Not really. There are many immigrant-majority communities in the USA where you can live most of your day-to-day without needing to speak much English.
      - justacrow 3mo ago
        Any $200k+ SW engineering jobs?
        marseysneed 3mo ago
        In the bay area you can get away with very little english proficiency
        nkrisc 3mo ago
        I’ve known some devs who were recent immigrants and did not speak much English. It wasn’t FAANG and not West coast so I don’t think they were making $200k but they got by and often paired with other devs who spoke their language and much better English. Overall they were nice people and their English improved over time for the duration I knew them. It was a bit of a struggle to communicate sometimes but I didn’t mind it. Any time I felt frustrated about it I just thought about how they must be feeling, and it didn’t seem so bad anymore. English is a pretty forgiving language.
        ang_cire 3mo ago
        Honestly, this question is really revealing, because it's the lower-paid SWE jobs that are probably not Bay Area or NYC, which are precisely the places where lower* English fluency is most likely to be tolerated or even the majority. I was the only person on my 5-person team with 'Business English' at my first BA startup, so I got the job of writing all external-routing communications. When I worked remote for a Midwest company years later, it was very clear that anything but perfect English was disqualifying in the eyes of a lot of (Midwest white male) management there.
        ryandrake 3mo ago
        OP was just talking about "doing basic life things."
    - cpursley 3mo ago
      For all its problems, the US is one of the best at accommodating non English.
    - thesmtsolver2 3mo ago
      For the US, you don’t have to know English for permanent residency. You can even have your interview in your own language with an interpreter https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/exceptions-and-accommodations https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/exceptions-and-accommodati...
  - michaelt 3mo ago
    A lot of societies are set up to accommodate that society's dumbest members, and tourists, for most everyday tasks. Outside of the workplace and my hobbies, I can't remember the last time someone asked me to read more than a few words, write anything at all, or do any maths more complicated than "the 12:20 train is 10 minutes late" Personally I would say it's not respectful to a society to move there and not make a decent effort to learn the language - but I have no doubt a person could survive with only basic skills, if their workplace worked in their native language and they had an ethnic enclave as a support network.
    - mr_toad 3mo ago
      > for most everyday tasks That’s true, if you’re in Paris you can get by with very little French. But don’t be too surprised if Gendarmerie aren’t particularly lenient just because tu ne comprends pas le français.
      - Xmd5a 3mo ago
        There is no gendarmerie in Paris.
        mr_toad 3mo ago
        https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VBRG_in_Paris_Domenjod_15122018.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VBRG_in_Paris_Domenj...
    - ben_w 3mo ago
      I have B1 German, finally managing an official certification at the start of this year despite living here since the end of summer of 2018. As societies require accommodations for idiots, I found it so easy to get by with the German I did know that I kept incorrectly assuming I was at B1 level for years and years. B1 requires being able to read headlines and a few paragraphs of a typical newspapers, to briefly plan events, that kind of thing; not just the ingredients and cooking instructions on the back of food packaging and know how much money to hand over to the cashier. Given what I still can't do, I can totally understand why so many job openings I see at the moment require B2 or C1: My grammar is still terrible, and my grasp of accents is still heavily biased towards a handful of podcasts and youtube channels, and being surprised by the conversation topic can still easily confuse me, as I found out on Sunday when someone's classic motorbike broke down outside my house and they asked to borrow a 19mm spanner.
  - aranelsurion 3mo ago
    > I would have daily obstacles doing basic life things. That heavily depends on the city and country. I don't know where OP is, but for example in Berlin it's kinda rare to meet people not speaking any English, basically mostly old people/retirees don't. There are gyms where people speak English, cinemas with English subtitles, all kinds of doctors speak English, even a lot of bureaucracy like driving exams etc. can be taken in English. Speak to a random person in English, odds are very high they respond back in English. I'm not saying this to mean it's 100% easy of course. Default language is ofc German, and not knowing it locks you out sometimes. Just saying that it's possible to live in a city like Berlin and not speak the language, and most days you barely think about it. I'd say it's an obstacle once-twice a month rather than daily.
    - aleph_minus_one 3mo ago
      Berlin is a completely different world than the rest of Germany. Never make the mistake of generalizing anything that you observed in Berlin to Germany outside of Berlin.
      - throwaway2037 3mo ago
        Great point! I would say the same about the "alpha" economic city in any rich country. Think about Paris, Milan, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, Lisbon, etc.: The same rule would apply.
        keiferski 3mo ago
        Berlin isn’t the alpha economic city in Germany though. There isn’t really one, but it’s more like Frankfurt. Berlin has a lot of English speakers because it’s been a cool place for young people to move to from across Europe for the last few decades.
        throwaway2037 3mo ago
        > Berlin isn’t the alpha economic city in Germany though. There isn’t really one, but it’s more like Frankfurt. You are right. I will add one thing: Berlin is the alpha economic city in Germany for the new economy. Frankfurt is for finance, and Munich is for manufacturing, but those are the old economy -- barely changing.
  - 14u2c 3mo ago
    Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English. It actually can be a problem because most people switch to English as soon as they realize your are not a native speaker, which can make learning harder.
    - aleph_minus_one 3mo ago
      > Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English. For sure not in France and Spain (outside of tourist areas).
      - throwaway2037 3mo ago
        You beat me to it! This is the classic HN reply. Even in Paris or Milan, as soon as you leave the central areas, most people will speak little English and are happy to allow you to practice your poor French/Italian with them!
        bloppe 3mo ago
        I'm constantly amazed at how far I can get in Portugal or Italy speaking only Spanish. They're different languages but you can make it work well enough in pretty much every situation I've been in.
        vidarh 3mo ago
        To butcher a old quote about English: Spanish is just badly pronounced Italian, after all ;)
        throwaway2037 3mo ago
        I recall reading an autobiography by US Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. She used to represent Fendi, the Italian fashion brand, when there were suing for copyright infringement (counterfeit goods). She would speak Spanish and the Fendi senior execs would speak Italian and they understood each other well enough. That was a real a-ha moment for me!
  - blks 3mo ago
    That is not true for many countries, especially in EU, and especially when you move as a skilled worker.
  - throwaway2037 3mo ago
    People who work low skills jobs do this all the time. In rich countries, many construction sites and factories have people working for little more than minimum wage in low skill jobs that barely speak the local language. They make it. If they have a family, they live in a native language bubble at home, but their kids are immersed in the local language at school.
  - retired 3mo ago
    I have no issues with A1 Spanish in Spain for daily life.
  - itake 3mo ago
    The US has a huge population of Spanish only speakers and they find success. I live in Vietnam for over three years, and while I continue to practice the language, I literally cannot pronounce the tones for about a third of the letters, but I still have a very happy and comfortable life here
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    - account42 3mo ago
      They find success by forming their own enclaves instead of integrating. Great for them perhaps but not something that the host country has to accept.
- vachina 3mo ago
  Exactly. Your life will be easier if you have B1. Your correspondence with everything is in German.
- moomoo11 3mo ago
  nah. i speak english and have zero interest in learning another language. english is the best language for business and everything else.
  - dbetteridge 3mo ago
    Then don't move to a country that has another language as a requirement?
- DiskoHexyl 3mo ago
  It is completely fair to expect at least B1 from potential citizens and permanent residents. What the article is covering are the skilled workers, and for them B1 isn't nearly enough to function in any profesional capacity. I'd put B2 as a bare minimum for that. So if it's impossible for someone to find employment in the language they already know (for skilled workers it's usually English), they are understandably not eager to stay. For those who are quick to judge, try mastering a foreign language (and German is noticeably more difficult than English, French or Spanish) in another country where you don't have any support system yet, and with likely some suboptimal job (as you need this foreign language to find a decent one). Getting to B2 takes about 750 class hours (not including homework) for an average English speaker. That's an enormous investment (of both time and money). One will have to sacrifice entertainment, socializing, hobbies, sleep, and work-related educational opportunities for several years in a row, depending on abilities (and the language). And just a reminder- most people tend to overestimate how well they know a foreign language. Telling you know [insert your flavor of Chinese] and actually passing an exam are two different things. Again, I am not saying it is unfair for country officials to expect whatever language level they want. It is their country and their rules. As far as I understand nobody's talking about giving away passports. It's just when it's relatively more difficult for skilled immigrants to find employment and interact with said officials without high level (at least B2) German, some of these immigrants will chose in favor of the countries- with easier/more widely used languages and/or more jobs in English or just lower taxes and higher pay. If a country's government wants to attract these kinds of immigrants, some of these variables will have to change
rurp 3mo ago
It seems weird to me that someone would even want to settle in a foreign country without a good understanding of the language and cultural basics. I've done some traveling in non-English speaking countries and it was a huge hurdle not being completely fluent in the local language. It just seems like common sense to me to dive in all the way if you are moving somewhere long term. I don't really see what a good salary has to do with it either. When it's hard for me to communicate with a neighbor or coworker I don't care whether they have a high or low salary.
- nkrisc 3mo ago
  Well it’s definitely the best way to learn the language, if you’re motivated to do so. If you want to learn a language, the absolute best thing you can do is to be completely immersed in it.
- overfeed 3mo ago
  > It seems weird to me that someone would even want to settle in a foreign country without a good understanding of the language and cultural basics These people typically call themselves "expatriates"
  - annzabelle 3mo ago
    There's also supposed to be a distinction about intent to leave in a relatively short predetermined time period. I consider myself an expat in New Zealand, because I'm on a ~2 year visa that cannot be extended, and I have no particular intent to try to transfer to a different visa. If I'd been here the same amount of time, in the same job, but on a straight to residency visa I intended to convert to PR/Citizenship, I would be an immigrant.
    - marcus_holmes 3mo ago
      I agree with you, but some don't; I lived in Cambodia for a while, and there were/are "ex-pats" living there with Khmer wives and children, who speak perfect Khmer, work in Cambodian companies, have been there for 20+ years, and still refer to themselves as "ex-pats". But I think this is might be cultural about the host country. Cambodia is blatantly racist, "Cambodia is for the Khmer people" is a thing there. Any non-Khmer immigrant will never be considered Cambodian, always a "barang"(foreigner) no matter how long they live there. This isn't true of NZ, who would happily consider you a Kiwi if you got the citizenship and lived there for a while, no matter your race or origin country.
thenoblesunfish 3mo ago
Agreed, and (especially if you are a nerd who is good at tests) the description of the levels always seemed to me to imply more ability than what you really need to pass the test. OP, just study for the test and pass it. You can, and you will be proud of yourself and happier in your new home country.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
Lyft and Uber, currently in my state, are onboarding drivers who are not required to speak any English at all. Their textual communications can occur through app translation, and the driver is not expected to understand anything a rider should say, because the driver should be following their app, not the rider's instructions. The joke is on them, though, because I happen to speak impeccable Spanish with 40 years' experience, and I've successfully intervened when the app inevitably misdirects the driver. I also happily greet drivers in Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, or at least try to understand what country/dictatorship/failed state that they've emigrated/fled from, to be driving in the United States.
djaro 3mo ago
Yeah, B1 is not even nearly fluent, on my B1 exam Spanish I had to roleplay with the examinator going to a store to return something after buying the wrong item. This is like, bare minimum of functioning. I cannot imagine living in a country for over a year and not taking the effort to lesrn the language.
- jeroenhd 3mo ago
  If you speak English and live in an area where most others speak English, then it's not hard to get by without learning the local language. People who do that often find it difficult to make friends outside of expat circles who do the same, but it's perfectly possible to live like that.
  - sdevonoes 3mo ago
    Not just that, but for example, working as a software engineer in Germany for an English speaking company means your salary is gonna be p90 among the population. Compare that to someone who doesn’t work in IT and needs to master the language to get a decent job. All in all, it’s better to speak English in Germany
mananaysiempre 3mo ago
It is, in a sense. I maybe feel that, if one is unfamilliar with the CEFR levels, the description you gave might make things sound a bit more basic than they are: survival as a resident is more like A2, not B1. The B1 designation is like reading tabloid headlines and writing essays on middle-school-level subjects. But that’s really a bit nitpicky, and the actual point I wanted to make is as follows: B1 is something like five uninterrupted years[1] of consistent lessons. Somewhat less for closer language pairs like maybe French to Spanish, potentially a lot more if the language is foreign enough that you need to build your vocabulary from zero; and keep in mind that the typical foreign-language class in middle or high school tends to go a lot slower so isn’t a good reference. Uninterrupted is never going to happen for an immigrant who needs to find their footing for basic survival and, for the first year or two, also juggle the multitude of individually small demands of an unfamilliar environment (do I want a broker to help me rent an apartment? how do I deal with the healthcare system? where can I find a decent plumber? what’s the public transport situation? nobody writes this shit down). As an immigrant, you’re on the hard setting by default regardless of salary, and then you add an extra 2–3 hours per week of language classes and perhaps double that in homework. None of this is to say it’s unfair to demand B1 if you want people to integrate. It is to say that the, realistically, seven to ten years of effort are in no way a small deal, and if you want people to integrate then you need to make the incidental stuff, i.e. everything else, as straightforward[2] as you can. At the moment, the incidental stuff is about as convoluted as possible more or less everywhere[3] and feels like it’s designed to make you lose at every step, partly because it is. That’s the natural state of affairs (like prison inmates, immigrants don’t have anyone to advocate for them so the system just drifts where it would), but not the one you need if integration is your actual goal. (Israel is probably the only place to get a pass on planning because they took the extraordinary step of writing fucking manuals, in six foreign languages, for a lot of the implicit knowledge—at least to the extent that a government-endorsed document can be honest about things.) [1] The estimate of 350–400 class hours that I see in some places feels wildly optimistic to me. That of 1000 hours for C2 feels like downright mockery. [2] Straightforward to understand, not necessarily to pass. [3] No specific experience with Germany, for the record.
- throwaway2037 3mo ago
  I like this hot take. I'm onboard with most of it. It is interesting that you mentioned Israel's special handling of immigrants and their languages. I lived in New York City for a short while, and I was very surprised by the accomodation of foreign languages by civil servants. Almost any city office I went to had a section with a few people that could speak a bunch of languages to support residents. Plus, many written notices were available in a wide range of languages.
totetsu 3mo ago
[flagged]

by dgs_sgd 3mo ago

TheOtherHobbes 3mo ago

B1 is a completely fair minimum standard. It's normal for many countries to expect residents to have basic conversational adequacy. It's also the kind of requirement that's made explicit on government information about residency. So it shouldn't have been a surprise.

dgs_sgd 3mo ago
Like, I imagine if I moved to a country and couldn’t do the B1 things in their language, I would have daily obstacles doing basic life things.
- parineum 3mo ago
  A country like the USA?
  - ryandrake 3mo ago
    Not really. There are many immigrant-majority communities in the USA where you can live most of your day-to-day without needing to speak much English.
    - justacrow 3mo ago
      Any $200k+ SW engineering jobs?
      - marseysneed 3mo ago
        In the bay area you can get away with very little english proficiency
      - nkrisc 3mo ago
        I’ve known some devs who were recent immigrants and did not speak much English. It wasn’t FAANG and not West coast so I don’t think they were making $200k but they got by and often paired with other devs who spoke their language and much better English. Overall they were nice people and their English improved over time for the duration I knew them. It was a bit of a struggle to communicate sometimes but I didn’t mind it. Any time I felt frustrated about it I just thought about how they must be feeling, and it didn’t seem so bad anymore. English is a pretty forgiving language.
      - ang_cire 3mo ago
        Honestly, this question is really revealing, because it's the lower-paid SWE jobs that are probably not Bay Area or NYC, which are precisely the places where lower* English fluency is most likely to be tolerated or even the majority. I was the only person on my 5-person team with 'Business English' at my first BA startup, so I got the job of writing all external-routing communications. When I worked remote for a Midwest company years later, it was very clear that anything but perfect English was disqualifying in the eyes of a lot of (Midwest white male) management there.
      - ryandrake 3mo ago
        OP was just talking about "doing basic life things."
  - cpursley 3mo ago
    For all its problems, the US is one of the best at accommodating non English.
  - thesmtsolver2 3mo ago
    For the US, you don’t have to know English for permanent residency. You can even have your interview in your own language with an interpreter https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/exceptions-and-accommodations https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/exceptions-and-accommodati...
- michaelt 3mo ago
  A lot of societies are set up to accommodate that society's dumbest members, and tourists, for most everyday tasks. Outside of the workplace and my hobbies, I can't remember the last time someone asked me to read more than a few words, write anything at all, or do any maths more complicated than "the 12:20 train is 10 minutes late" Personally I would say it's not respectful to a society to move there and not make a decent effort to learn the language - but I have no doubt a person could survive with only basic skills, if their workplace worked in their native language and they had an ethnic enclave as a support network.
  - mr_toad 3mo ago
    > for most everyday tasks That’s true, if you’re in Paris you can get by with very little French. But don’t be too surprised if Gendarmerie aren’t particularly lenient just because tu ne comprends pas le français.
    - Xmd5a 3mo ago
      There is no gendarmerie in Paris.
      - mr_toad 3mo ago
        https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VBRG_in_Paris_Domenjod_15122018.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VBRG_in_Paris_Domenj...
  - ben_w 3mo ago
    I have B1 German, finally managing an official certification at the start of this year despite living here since the end of summer of 2018. As societies require accommodations for idiots, I found it so easy to get by with the German I did know that I kept incorrectly assuming I was at B1 level for years and years. B1 requires being able to read headlines and a few paragraphs of a typical newspapers, to briefly plan events, that kind of thing; not just the ingredients and cooking instructions on the back of food packaging and know how much money to hand over to the cashier. Given what I still can't do, I can totally understand why so many job openings I see at the moment require B2 or C1: My grammar is still terrible, and my grasp of accents is still heavily biased towards a handful of podcasts and youtube channels, and being surprised by the conversation topic can still easily confuse me, as I found out on Sunday when someone's classic motorbike broke down outside my house and they asked to borrow a 19mm spanner.
- aranelsurion 3mo ago
  > I would have daily obstacles doing basic life things. That heavily depends on the city and country. I don't know where OP is, but for example in Berlin it's kinda rare to meet people not speaking any English, basically mostly old people/retirees don't. There are gyms where people speak English, cinemas with English subtitles, all kinds of doctors speak English, even a lot of bureaucracy like driving exams etc. can be taken in English. Speak to a random person in English, odds are very high they respond back in English. I'm not saying this to mean it's 100% easy of course. Default language is ofc German, and not knowing it locks you out sometimes. Just saying that it's possible to live in a city like Berlin and not speak the language, and most days you barely think about it. I'd say it's an obstacle once-twice a month rather than daily.
  - aleph_minus_one 3mo ago
    Berlin is a completely different world than the rest of Germany. Never make the mistake of generalizing anything that you observed in Berlin to Germany outside of Berlin.
    - throwaway2037 3mo ago
      Great point! I would say the same about the "alpha" economic city in any rich country. Think about Paris, Milan, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Madrid, Lisbon, etc.: The same rule would apply.
      - keiferski 3mo ago
        Berlin isn’t the alpha economic city in Germany though. There isn’t really one, but it’s more like Frankfurt. Berlin has a lot of English speakers because it’s been a cool place for young people to move to from across Europe for the last few decades.
        throwaway2037 3mo ago
        > Berlin isn’t the alpha economic city in Germany though. There isn’t really one, but it’s more like Frankfurt. You are right. I will add one thing: Berlin is the alpha economic city in Germany for the new economy. Frankfurt is for finance, and Munich is for manufacturing, but those are the old economy -- barely changing.
- 14u2c 3mo ago
  Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English. It actually can be a problem because most people switch to English as soon as they realize your are not a native speaker, which can make learning harder.
  - aleph_minus_one 3mo ago
    > Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English. For sure not in France and Spain (outside of tourist areas).
    - throwaway2037 3mo ago
      You beat me to it! This is the classic HN reply. Even in Paris or Milan, as soon as you leave the central areas, most people will speak little English and are happy to allow you to practice your poor French/Italian with them!
      - bloppe 3mo ago
        I'm constantly amazed at how far I can get in Portugal or Italy speaking only Spanish. They're different languages but you can make it work well enough in pretty much every situation I've been in.
        vidarh 3mo ago
        To butcher a old quote about English: Spanish is just badly pronounced Italian, after all ;)
        throwaway2037 3mo ago
        I recall reading an autobiography by US Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. She used to represent Fendi, the Italian fashion brand, when there were suing for copyright infringement (counterfeit goods). She would speak Spanish and the Fendi senior execs would speak Italian and they understood each other well enough. That was a real a-ha moment for me!
- blks 3mo ago
  That is not true for many countries, especially in EU, and especially when you move as a skilled worker.
- throwaway2037 3mo ago
  People who work low skills jobs do this all the time. In rich countries, many construction sites and factories have people working for little more than minimum wage in low skill jobs that barely speak the local language. They make it. If they have a family, they live in a native language bubble at home, but their kids are immersed in the local language at school.
- retired 3mo ago
  I have no issues with A1 Spanish in Spain for daily life.
- itake 3mo ago
  The US has a huge population of Spanish only speakers and they find success. I live in Vietnam for over three years, and while I continue to practice the language, I literally cannot pronounce the tones for about a third of the letters, but I still have a very happy and comfortable life here
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - account42 3mo ago
    They find success by forming their own enclaves instead of integrating. Great for them perhaps but not something that the host country has to accept.
vachina 3mo ago
Exactly. Your life will be easier if you have B1. Your correspondence with everything is in German.
moomoo11 3mo ago
nah. i speak english and have zero interest in learning another language. english is the best language for business and everything else.
- dbetteridge 3mo ago
  Then don't move to a country that has another language as a requirement?
DiskoHexyl 3mo ago
It is completely fair to expect at least B1 from potential citizens and permanent residents. What the article is covering are the skilled workers, and for them B1 isn't nearly enough to function in any profesional capacity. I'd put B2 as a bare minimum for that. So if it's impossible for someone to find employment in the language they already know (for skilled workers it's usually English), they are understandably not eager to stay. For those who are quick to judge, try mastering a foreign language (and German is noticeably more difficult than English, French or Spanish) in another country where you don't have any support system yet, and with likely some suboptimal job (as you need this foreign language to find a decent one). Getting to B2 takes about 750 class hours (not including homework) for an average English speaker. That's an enormous investment (of both time and money). One will have to sacrifice entertainment, socializing, hobbies, sleep, and work-related educational opportunities for several years in a row, depending on abilities (and the language). And just a reminder- most people tend to overestimate how well they know a foreign language. Telling you know [insert your flavor of Chinese] and actually passing an exam are two different things. Again, I am not saying it is unfair for country officials to expect whatever language level they want. It is their country and their rules. As far as I understand nobody's talking about giving away passports. It's just when it's relatively more difficult for skilled immigrants to find employment and interact with said officials without high level (at least B2) German, some of these immigrants will chose in favor of the countries- with easier/more widely used languages and/or more jobs in English or just lower taxes and higher pay. If a country's government wants to attract these kinds of immigrants, some of these variables will have to change

rurp 3mo ago

It seems weird to me that someone would even want to settle in a foreign country without a good understanding of the language and cultural basics. I've done some traveling in non-English speaking countries and it was a huge hurdle not being completely fluent in the local language. It just seems like common sense to me to dive in all the way if you are moving somewhere long term. I don't really see what a good salary has to do with it either. When it's hard for me to communicate with a neighbor or coworker I don't care whether they have a high or low salary.

nkrisc 3mo ago
Well it’s definitely the best way to learn the language, if you’re motivated to do so. If you want to learn a language, the absolute best thing you can do is to be completely immersed in it.
overfeed 3mo ago
> It seems weird to me that someone would even want to settle in a foreign country without a good understanding of the language and cultural basics These people typically call themselves "expatriates"
- annzabelle 3mo ago
  There's also supposed to be a distinction about intent to leave in a relatively short predetermined time period. I consider myself an expat in New Zealand, because I'm on a ~2 year visa that cannot be extended, and I have no particular intent to try to transfer to a different visa. If I'd been here the same amount of time, in the same job, but on a straight to residency visa I intended to convert to PR/Citizenship, I would be an immigrant.
  - marcus_holmes 3mo ago
    I agree with you, but some don't; I lived in Cambodia for a while, and there were/are "ex-pats" living there with Khmer wives and children, who speak perfect Khmer, work in Cambodian companies, have been there for 20+ years, and still refer to themselves as "ex-pats". But I think this is might be cultural about the host country. Cambodia is blatantly racist, "Cambodia is for the Khmer people" is a thing there. Any non-Khmer immigrant will never be considered Cambodian, always a "barang"(foreigner) no matter how long they live there. This isn't true of NZ, who would happily consider you a Kiwi if you got the citizenship and lived there for a while, no matter your race or origin country.

thenoblesunfish 3mo ago

Agreed, and (especially if you are a nerd who is good at tests) the description of the levels always seemed to me to imply more ability than what you really need to pass the test. OP, just study for the test and pass it. You can, and you will be proud of yourself and happier in your new home country.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

ButlerianJihad 3mo ago

Lyft and Uber, currently in my state, are onboarding drivers who are not required to speak any English at all. Their textual communications can occur through app translation, and the driver is not expected to understand anything a rider should say, because the driver should be following their app, not the rider's instructions. The joke is on them, though, because I happen to speak impeccable Spanish with 40 years' experience, and I've successfully intervened when the app inevitably misdirects the driver. I also happily greet drivers in Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, or at least try to understand what country/dictatorship/failed state that they've emigrated/fled from, to be driving in the United States.

djaro 3mo ago

Yeah, B1 is not even nearly fluent, on my B1 exam Spanish I had to roleplay with the examinator going to a store to return something after buying the wrong item. This is like, bare minimum of functioning. I cannot imagine living in a country for over a year and not taking the effort to lesrn the language.

jeroenhd 3mo ago
If you speak English and live in an area where most others speak English, then it's not hard to get by without learning the local language. People who do that often find it difficult to make friends outside of expat circles who do the same, but it's perfectly possible to live like that.
- sdevonoes 3mo ago
  Not just that, but for example, working as a software engineer in Germany for an English speaking company means your salary is gonna be p90 among the population. Compare that to someone who doesn’t work in IT and needs to master the language to get a decent job. All in all, it’s better to speak English in Germany

mananaysiempre 3mo ago

It is, in a sense. I maybe feel that, if one is unfamilliar with the CEFR levels, the description you gave might make things sound a bit more basic than they are: survival as a resident is more like A2, not B1. The B1 designation is like reading tabloid headlines and writing essays on middle-school-level subjects. But that’s really a bit nitpicky, and the actual point I wanted to make is as follows: B1 is something like five uninterrupted years[1] of consistent lessons. Somewhat less for closer language pairs like maybe French to Spanish, potentially a lot more if the language is foreign enough that you need to build your vocabulary from zero; and keep in mind that the typical foreign-language class in middle or high school tends to go a lot slower so isn’t a good reference. Uninterrupted is never going to happen for an immigrant who needs to find their footing for basic survival and, for the first year or two, also juggle the multitude of individually small demands of an unfamilliar environment (do I want a broker to help me rent an apartment? how do I deal with the healthcare system? where can I find a decent plumber? what’s the public transport situation? nobody writes this shit down). As an immigrant, you’re on the hard setting by default regardless of salary, and then you add an extra 2–3 hours per week of language classes and perhaps double that in homework. None of this is to say it’s unfair to demand B1 if you want people to integrate. It is to say that the, realistically, seven to ten years of effort are in no way a small deal, and if you want people to integrate then you need to make the incidental stuff, i.e. everything else, as straightforward[2] as you can. At the moment, the incidental stuff is about as convoluted as possible more or less everywhere[3] and feels like it’s designed to make you lose at every step, partly because it is. That’s the natural state of affairs (like prison inmates, immigrants don’t have anyone to advocate for them so the system just drifts where it would), but not the one you need if integration is your actual goal. (Israel is probably the only place to get a pass on planning because they took the extraordinary step of writing fucking manuals, in six foreign languages, for a lot of the implicit knowledge—at least to the extent that a government-endorsed document can be honest about things.) [1] The estimate of 350–400 class hours that I see in some places feels wildly optimistic to me. That of 1000 hours for C2 feels like downright mockery. [2] Straightforward to understand, not necessarily to pass. [3] No specific experience with Germany, for the record.

throwaway2037 3mo ago
I like this hot take. I'm onboard with most of it. It is interesting that you mentioned Israel's special handling of immigrants and their languages. I lived in New York City for a short while, and I was very surprised by the accomodation of foreign languages by civil servants. Almost any city office I went to had a section with a few people that could speak a bunch of languages to support residents. Plus, many written notices were available in a wide range of languages.

totetsu 3mo ago

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