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Comment by gonvaled | Hacker News Reader

Why is English so important? You are going to speak it in the workplace, for sure, but why do you need that the people in the street are fluent in English? The couple of sentences that you'll exchange in the restaurant will come through even if people are not fluent.

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It's not in some places. You can easily get by in Stockholm, and to some extent Berlin, with just English. Then learn the local language gradually if you stay there. In fact it can be difficult to speak the native language as people will talk to you in English as soon as they realize you're not native.

I've actually had a harder time conversing with people in some parts of Scotland by phone, due to our different accents, than in some parts of Europe. Even though we both speak English as a first language. The UK can have bigger internal differences than the rest of the English speaking world.

Some of this is down to the international (US) English used in non-native English speaking places. I had to write my book on ASP.NET Core in American English, which took some getting used to. :)

Surely when writing a technical book, rather than a novel about some specifically English people or in a English context, it would be hard to make it specifically British rather than international English. I am trying to think of scenarios where englishms could even occur in an ASP.NET book.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be in international English, it definitely should. It just takes a bit of getting used to if that's not how you write already.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0863046/quotes?item=qt0449604

One reason is that more people will be willing to move somewhere they understand the language. Sure you can get by in many places without knowing the language, but if you're going to live there for any significant length of time you're going to have to choose between learning it (a time commitment) or not fitting into society. Some people are happy with one or the other of those options, some people wouldn't be.

You also make moving somewhere more complicated. When I moved from UK to Paris, I was fine with work, with socialising, but my French was (and still isn't) nearly good enough to deal with government paperwork, appartment searching, reading up on tax law... etc. Sure, this problem can be solved either by the country making it easier for forigners, or by people moving paying for somebody to help them in these areas, but again its another barrier and/or additional cost.

There's also the matter of local work-related communications. Anything from taxis to tax offices, courier/mail services, etc...

Firstly, if you think people who move to a country and don't learn the language well are assholes, and you don't want to be an asshole.

Second, you may need a decent command of the local language to access services and deal with the local authorities. For example, getting your car back if it's towed. Figuring out whether you can get a visa for that foreign consultant. Expressing your views to your political representatives. Getting emergency care at a hospital. Understanding laws written in the local language. Passing a driving test. Talking to your children's teachers. Working out how much you'll be taxed on that thing you're considering having imported.

I think scoring high on the list in the article requires that you can do all of the above with ease, without learning the language. That would be the case in e.g. Stockholm, Amsterdam, but perhaps more difficult in Paris or Barcelona.

Then learn the language? We have learnt english just fine ...

Primarily because not _every_ worker will be moved when a company moves. A lot of the workforce will be local, hence the language requirements.

In most places it wouldn't be hard to just declare that the workplace is English-speaking.

The problem is that if you want to attract non-local talent, it's harder to attract them somewhere where they'll have trouble with day-to-day life. English-speaking countries have a big advantage here: no matter what nationality a professional has they probably speak English well enough to be comfortable living there.

As another poster mentioned there are cities where the overall English proficiency is so high that it matters less (Stockholm, Berlin, Amsterdam, ...)

You'll find qualified people with good english level just about everywhere.

Because those companies will hire from the population living in those cities. English is the international language of business, so all things being equal, you'd choose a population that is fluent in English as a second language.

All things are not equal, that's the point of the article. My grudge is that it gives english too much weight.

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