3 ms·

I'm a french living oversea and so write and think mostly in english... Most of my friends in France work in french and their english level is often quite weak

by gommm 18y ago

I'm a french living oversea and so write and think mostly in english... Most of my friends in France work in french and their english level is often quite weak (especially when it comes to oral communication, one of my teacher at university used to read 'done' as do-one, case as 'cahse' and so on, it was rather funny...) When working in japan, none of my japanese coworkers could speak or read english (even worth than France...) and they only read translated programming books with a 6-12 month latency to get new information.... Now if I hired programmers, I would never hire someone who doesn't read english fluently because I believe that someone, who is truly interested in programming, will try hard to learn English so he can access to the quantity of knowledge written in English.

plesn 18y ago
French was an 'imperialistic' language as well, until not so long ago; France had a strong economic and diplomatic influence. You had good conferences in several domains in French. It's tough to loose this kind of influence, and I think the case is similar for countries like Japan or Italy. Young people in e.g. Poland seem to have it easier to adapt... But your last sentence seems really harsh. Good communication skills are so much more important in real life to have work done.... I know a few good programmers in France for whom reading english is a lot of (sometimes necessary) pain. I'm sure more contacts with foreigners would give them a incredible confidence/motivation boost.