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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 ar
by 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 agoI 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.
- throwaway2037 3mo agoFollow-up reply: I asked ChatGPT about those six languages in Israel. > The six primary languages supported by Israel's government for immigrants (Olim) are Hebrew, English, Russian, Spanish, French, and Amharic. The Ministry of Aliyah and Integration uses these languages for government services, informational portals, and the official Olim App to help newcomers manage their entitlements. Very cool! I felt stupid that I never heard of Amharic as a language, and I needed to look it up on Wiki.
- mananaysiempre 3mo agoHebrew doesn’t count in my mind, but there’s also Portuguese (more for the sake of Latin America than Portugal itself). Arabic is missing from the list likely because almost every prospective immigrant with such a background has already moved (or died); Yiddish and Ladino because the government likes to pretend they don’t exist anymore. I wasn’t talking about that though—plenty of countries are friendly to speakers of foreign languages to varying degrees (especially if that color is black^W^W^W language is English). I was more talking about written guides on the education system, the heathcare system, the tax system[1], walkthroughs on what documents you need to get and in which order[2] and so on. If you’ve ever spent a few months in a foreign country without already-settled friends or family, you know what I’m talking about, otherwise you probably won’t get it from my explanation. Israel is I believe unique in writing this stuff down pretty thoroughly; elsewhere things like guides for international students may help (even if you aren’t one), but be ready for gaps and holes. [1] Believe me, as an A2 to B1 speaker you are not reading laws yourself, much as this might seem natural to our RTFM instincts; and as a relatively cash-strapped immigrant, you’re not hiring a lawyer either, assuming you can even figure out how to find one. [2] Let’s say you need a mobile phone number to get a bank account, and a bank account to get a phone number. Not a problem in Israel but in the EU that’s a pretty common catch-22 to have to work around.