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Comment by ikut3hva | Hacker News Reader

Hi everyone

I don’t usually comment on topics like this because there are so many biases and different perspectives involved. In the end, I believe only the person who has actually gone through the experience can truly understand it; otherwise, it often becomes just another judgment.

We are an ASEAN family earning more than €200k gross annually (sorry for mentioning the TC, but there is a reason for it—please keep reading before judging). We have lived here for more than six years, and you know what? I still haven’t obtained either permanent residence or German citizenship simply because I don’t have a B1 certificate. So first things first: regardless of how much you contribute to the country, German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here.

I was honestly devastated when the officer told me that I was not eligible for permanent residence. That was also the moment when I started to feel that maybe I don’t actually need permanent residence in this country after all.

Story 2: In an international working environment, German may not matter much at the IC level. But I’ve seen countless situations where Germans exchange a glance with each other, and suddenly the final decision is not what was agreed upon in the meeting. Over time, I’ve learned that there are many unwritten rules behind the scenes, and when you speak their language, you start to understand them.

One bright thing is that maybe we’re still lucky. We bought our first home without fully understanding the laws, the government system, or the tax rules. We simply worked hard and played the game in a way that we believed would be sustainable in the long run. Whatever happens, we know there are still many other places we could go.

Our children speak German natively, but they are also willing to go the extra mile to speak our mother tongue at home.

If you ask me for one piece of advice for immigrants and emigrants in Germany, I’d say: life is short—play naked!

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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-p...

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.

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.

A country like the USA?

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.

Any $200k+ SW engineering jobs?

In the bay area you can get away with very little english proficiency

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.

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.

OP was just talking about "doing basic life things."

For all its problems, the US is one of the best at accommodating non English.

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-accommodati...

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.

> 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.

There is no gendarmerie in Paris.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VBRG_in_Paris_Domenj...

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

    > 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.

Being bombed to hell and then split in half and starved of resources until 1989 really hindered Berlin's economic development. It's not the powerhouse one might expect given its cultural output and being a nation's Capitol.

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.

> Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English.

For sure not in France and Spain (outside of tourist areas).

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!

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.

To butcher a old quote about English: Spanish is just badly pronounced Italian, after all ;)

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!

My grandmother had this experience when she was still alive. While waiting for us to shop for stuff at the mall, she struck up a conversation with an older Italian lady. She only knew Italian; my grandmother only knew Spanish. They made it work!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYYpTfx1ey8

I agree not everyone, but it has changed dramatically in at least France as well in the last 30 years. First time I went to France, most people would not switch to English even in the middle of Paris, often even if they knew English unless they saw no other way out.

More recently, with much better French, I've had people impatiently switching to English the moment I was struggled to find the right word.

There certainly is a shift, though, when you get outside the tourist areas.

E.g. in Nice, you can pinpoint it almost by street. Cross under the railway in the city centre and move into Liberation, for example, and you will immediately find some staff that are unable or unwilling to speak English, and many who at least won't switch unless you ask. But it's also not surprising given how abrupt the number of tourists fall off...

This was my experience. I lived for almost four years in Berlin, and was trying to learn German (I got to A2, which isn't much). But actually getting experience/immersion in German is difficult in Berlin - everyone under the age of 50 speaks good English and switched to that as soon as my first badly-conjugated sentence left my mouth.

I worked for two German companies while I was there, and the entire tech team in both companies did everything in English. This is normal there. In one of them, the (German) CEO gave a townhall speech to the entire company (~1000 employees) in English.

So yes, it's very understandable for the German government to say "you must be at least B1 to live here" but that doesn't recognise the fact that it is perfectly possible to actually live and work in Berlin with no German at all.

It's different in other German cities, apparently. If we'd moved to Munich or Cologne I would have had more pressure to learn German, and also more exposure to it and more immersion which would have helped learn it.

Did you ask if you can move to a different city and work remotely? Even if only 1-2 years, it might really help to boost your German. Moving to Dresden, Hanover, or Hamburg would help. (German HNers can probably recommend a bunch of small cities 1-2 hours away by train/car from Berlin that will use much more German language!) You could come to the office once a week.

Another tip: Always start the conversation in German. If the person switches to English, ask them politely to speak German, and explain that you are studying German. My parents did similar when they moved to the Netherlands 50 years ago. The local shopkeepers were eager to practice English with my parents, but my parents were also eager to practice their Dutch.

That's really good advice, but I found it hard to put into practice because my German was so bad. And German isn't a language you can just hammer out a badly-formed sentence in; word position is less important than conjugation, so if you get the conjugation wrong it makes no sense at all to the listener. I did try this a few times, but everyone lost patience with the painful butchering of their language when they realised their English was a lot better than my German.

I would have moved city, but a: COVID b: my wife also had a job there c: I really loved Berlin and really enjoyed living there

I like the effort! It is more that half of the battle when learning a new language as an adult. What really helped me: Create your own custom Anki deck. Literally, start from zero. Each time you try-and-fail (or think of something that you don't know how to say), write a note to yourself in English/broken German with the sentence/idea that failed. At home, use a translate tool (LLM/Google/whatever) to build the correct German sentence. Next, add it to your Anki deck. Personally, I only add full sentences, never just vocab, because it adds more natural context. Only add real stuff that you will use. On the first day, you have an Anki deck with one card. If you are really motivated, try to add one card per day, but just 1-2 cards per week will quickly improve the deck. Since the deck is so damn small, you can blow through it in five minutes while riding the S-Bahn/U-Bahn trains. And, every single sentence is useful to you. Bonus: Ask a native German speaker about some of your Anki deck sentences. They will probably love to talk to you about the German language because you will be showing your commitment.

Even when I vacationed in Bayern (Bavaria), a lot of people switched to English when they realized that my German wasn't that good. Which was frustrating, because I wanted to practice speaking with native speakers.

Although, there were also people who only spoke German.

If you want to learn you just pretend that you don’t speak English and keep on speaking German. They will switch back fast.

This is the right way. Speak the language you want. Even if they reply to you in English, and they know you can speak English, continue in German. They will understand. They switch to English because they want to be helpful. If you continue in German they understand you prefer it that way.

Another thing is that once you start talking with a person (who you meet on a regular basis) in one language, it is hard to switch to another language at a later date. So if you start with English, it is hard to go back to German. But if you start with German, even if it is less fluent for you, it will come natural that with that person you speak in German.

>everyone under the age of 50 speaks good English and switched to that as soon as my first badly-conjugated sentence left my mouth.

OK maybe things have changed in recent years. I was always annoyed when coming to visit family living in Berlin for a couple days or driving in to a conference, and inevitably there would come a time when I would have to ask someone for help and I would have to ask in English because I do not speak German (although due to youthful immersion I start to remember it again after a couple of weeks) and they would inevitably answer in German.

I could somewhat understand when we stopped in a park asking where the convention center was of just a couple people by the side of the road, but asking a ticket agent at a train station what route I should take to get to a particular station and getting replies in German seemed especially rude.

At any rate despite some good experiences with Germans regarding helpfulness I have had a few too many negative experiences.

Berliners are renowned even in Germany for being blunt to the point of rudeness.

What we in the Anglosphere would consider rude, they consider efficient. It can be very off-putting at first, but you do get used to it.

in most other countries renowned for being efficient it would not be considered efficient to answer in a language the questioner evidently does not speak.

To play the devils advocate: It is efficient — for them.

It is a bit of a myth that everybody in Germany talks English. Sure in an academic or business environment, or in certain social circles that can be taken for granted, but there are people who can only talk German or whose English is so bad they will avoid talking it.

There is some sort of weird phenomenon that I cant quite put to words, but the core is:

While there is a big chunk of the native german population speaking great english there is a subset of (often) service workers who... dont. Had multiple furniture movers come through my house the last few weeks, the only way to communicate with them was broken german, since they had no english skills and my (croatian? serbian?) skills were zero.

At one point I ended up in the weirdest situation of my live were i translated the german instructions from the phone rep into english to the shift lead of the moving company so he could then give them in the native language to the movers.

That's basically why you should learn the language of the country you live in.

Blaming people for not speaking English in Germany is pretty weird. How about learning German instead?

> Blaming people for not speaking English in Germany is pretty weird. How about learning German instead?

As the poster wrote:

>> At one point I ended up in the weirdest situation of my live were i translated the german instructions from the phone rep into english [..]

which implies that he does, in fact, speak German. The movers did not, though.

I speak german as a mothertongue and fluent english, and I had massive troubles communicating in my own home.

I see, that wasn't clear to me from what you wrote.

> Not in most of Western and Central Europe. Everyone speaks great English

You are completely forgetting the people trying to move there who don’t speak English OR the native language

For my german work visa in 2022, I had to either give proof of sufficient german knowledge, or a letter from my employer confirming the job would be in english.

"People who don't speak english or native language" does not represent the people moving for work to germany. Most family reunion routes at least require A1 german as well (which is super easy to pass, but is scary enough for some anyways).

Only if you live in metropolitan cities.

This isn't really true. I've lived in both Munich and Hamburg now, and you 100% need some amount of german to navigate life, many people do not in fact have conversational-level english. I often say that the common paths tend to be easy to navigate in english (e.g. booking a train ticket, getting a phone line), but the adjacent flows (e.g. filing a refund request for your unfulfilled seat reservation, cancelling your phone contract) often require talking to someone in german. A doctor may be marked as speaking english, but that doesn't mean that their reception speaks english.

Berlin may be a different story within Germany, and then there's the entirety of e.g. Netherlands, but I know that the situation in France isn't better than here.

---

That said, B1 is a difficult level within german. Being able to converse fluently enough in not-quite-correct german -which is enough for getting through day to day life- is not necessarily enough to pass the test, and you really need to crunch through memorizing the grammatical gender of thousands of words, alongside getting really good at applying them in various grammatical forms (e.g. declensions vary for the same word based on how it's used).

That is not true for many countries, especially in EU, and especially when you move as a skilled worker.

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.

I have no issues with A1 Spanish in Spain for daily life.

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

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.

Exactly. Your life will be easier if you have B1. Your correspondence with everything is in German.

nah. i speak english and have zero interest in learning another language.

english is the best language for business and everything else.

Then don't move to a country that has another language as a requirement?

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

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.

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.

> 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"

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.

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.

An expat is someone living outside (ex) of their homeland (patria, technically fatherland rather than homeland if we are pedantic). All immigrants and non-immigrants [1] are expats, by definition, no matter the connotation some people have decided to give the word.

[1] Non-immigrant is the administrative word used by the United States to designate people that are supposed to leave the country rather than settle in the US, usually on training/work/investor visas.

Words mean what people say they mean, in the context that they're said.

    > Cambodia is blatantly racist

In my experience, there is nothing special about Cambodia in this regard. You could substitute any poorly developed nation, and you would have similar results. If Cambodia had a GDP per capita similar to Japan/Korea/Taiwan, they would "suddenly" become less racist because they would be much more concerned with economics rather than ethnicity/religion.

Who ever said Japan is not xenophobic in this way?

Whenever I bring up Japanese culture, I am guaranteed to get a response like this. It is like a doctor's hammer to the knee: The leg always kicks. It is as low effort as someone saying that there are still blatantly racist people who live in the US "Bible Belt" and think all black people are inferior to white people. It adds so little to the conversation.

Ask anyone who has spent time in Japan, there has been a dramatic fall in blatant racism in the last 10-20 years. Yes, there are still rare instances, but the bad old days (before 2000) are gone. There is now a consistent, tiny, visible minority of non-East Asians that live and work in all major Japanese cities. And their children go to local schools. They are mostly working in low skill jobs like restaurants, construction, retail shops, farms, or factories. To be clear, many of those businesses require highly skilled people to run them, but the immigrant labour is doing low skill jobs. Also, there is a tiny fraction of those immigrant workers whom have trained very hard and are no longer low skill, like a bus driver or elderly care nurse.

Korea and Taiwan also have large numbers of immigrants doing low skill work.

My guess is that probably Taiwan is the most exposed to non-East Asian immigrants because they have a large population of foreign domestic helpers (clean/cook/child+elder care), so that is someone foreign in and around your house all day. I don't think Japan nor Korea has that system.

It's human nature to be "racist" since people generally prefer to be with others similar to themselves. That can be multi-dimensional, ranging from values, cultures, tastes, but race is the most obvious and one of the major principal components of human experience.

Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are effectively ethnostates and they've not had the cultural enrichment yet that America or Europe has faced. Notably, there is rising anti-migrant extremism in the West, because the Great Replacement Theory is becoming increasingly obviously not just a theory.

> It's human nature to be "racist" since people generally prefer to be with others similar to themselves.

This is blatantly and obviously not true. Especially when discussing ex-pats, as you'd realise if you gave it 5 seconds' thought.

Expats actually prove the rule, otherwise we would not need a word for them.

That's just ridiculous. We have words for everything. Multiple words for everything. Having a word for "people who live in a country that isn't where they grew up" doesn't then mean that everyone else is inherently racist.

> people generally prefer to be with others similar to themselves.

Similar how? Why skin colour rather than say eye colour? Why not similar language, culture, religion, politics...?

Race is not skin color. Albino Sub-Saharans are very obviously not European.

People of course prefer others that share their language, culture, religion and politics. Race is often highly correlated to those.

To ignore the dimension of genetics is to willfully blind yourself to reality.

What dimension of genetics? Race is not genetic. If you try to cluster people by genetic similarity the end result does not look like people's idea of "race" at all, and different (even closely related cultures like the UK and the US) have different classifications of race. http://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different

In the days of racial science (so up to the 1950s or so) some east Africans and South Asians were classified as "caucasian". Textbooks and encyclopedias from the time say so.

Race is not highly correlated to religion. Christianity is followed by numbers of Europeans, South Americans, Africans, and Asians. Islam by semitic, African, South Asian, South East Asian people. Buddhists are most commonly, South Asian, SE Asian or East Asian - still multiple different "races". The same with cultures. I do not see how race correlates to politics at all. There are weak correlations with culture and language, very weak within countries.

"Race" as used in this sense is almost uniquely an USA thing, exported to right-wing movements elsewhere.

A white USA citizen will have more in common culturally, religiously and politically with a black USA citizen than any white European, Australian or New Zealander.

I had to think about this.

I don't think it's wealth that's the differentiator. I think it's partly colonialism and partly culture.

> If Cambodia had a GDP per capita similar to Japan/Korea/Taiwan, they would "suddenly" become less racist

Japan is also, famously, extremely racist. Probably to the same extent that Cambodia is, but I haven't been there so I can't compare.

Colonialism has a lot to answer for in SE Asia. I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.

And culturally, there are a lot of differences between SE Asia mentality and Anglosphere/Western mentality. I suspect part of it is this, too.

    > Japan is also, famously, extremely racist.

I replied about this below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828355

    > I don't think it's wealth that's the differentiator. I think it's partly colonialism and partly culture.

I think it is political/social issue. What really drives the fall in racism is politicians/community leaders/school officials talking about it. They observe it, then speak out against it. When and why different countries choose to do is (a) somewhat random and (b) somewhat correlated to their wealth and (c) strongly correlated to the strength (and existance) of their democracy.

Why do almost all countries that get rich also get more democratic and more liberal on social issues? I don't know, but I see it nearly universally in many different countries.

    > Colonialism has a lot to answer for in SE Asia. I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.

One interesting point that many people are not aware of: Thailand is the only country in SE Asia that was never a colony (including "protectorate"). Is Thailand really so different than Cambodia in this regard? I'm not the right person to answer, but it is interesting to think about.

> Why do almost all countries that get rich also get more democratic and more liberal on social issues? I don't know, but I see it nearly universally in many different countries.

Agree.

Like I said, I've never been to Japan, can't comment on it, I'm only repeating what I've heard. I'm glad that's changing.

Thailand is a little different, yes. I wasn't there for as long, and was mainly only a tourist there, so no expert. But I never heard "Thailand is for the Thai people" while I was there. The cultural racism is similar, but they haven't had Cambodia's historical suffering as a background.

> Japan is also, famously, extremely racist.

seems to contradict

> I suspect a lot of the defensive patriotism there is a product of being so badly treated for so long.

Racism can also take different forms. India has the world's oldest and most deeply embedded racism, but westerners rarely even recognise it for what it is.

    > India has the world's oldest and most deeply embedded racism, but westerners rarely even recognise it for what it is.

Do you mean the caste system in Hindu society?

I think "supposed" is the key word there.

Lots of people live somewhere for decades and still call themselves, and are called, expats.

And they are correct according to the meaning of the word. Expats simply means someone who resides outside of their native country.

I guess colloquially it probably implies moving somewhere as an adult, but the word itself doesn't carry that meaning (it's literally ex=outside + patris=homeland). But for instance, my sister has lived permanently in New Zealand for 25 years now (and a few years prior to her permanent move) and has no intention to ever leave, but would still be considered an expat. Her children were born in the UK, but they were 4 and 2 when they moved there, and I don't think they'd ever have considered themselves expats as they've never known anywhere but NZ. In fact the oldest is visiting the UK for a week this year, it'll be the second time he's been in the UK since moving to NZ aged 4.

That is the original definition, but then all immigrants are expats, and all expats are migrants. The words become synonyms. Then its become very interesting to ask why people prefer one word over the other for particular groups of people.

To me, it's useful because it frames it in terms of social connections in the target country and because how it works with an adjective.

So, British expats in Spain and Chinese expats in Spain are likely to socialise in their specific group, but rarely if ever intersect. They are all immigrants in the target country (and especially when considered as a whole as everyone from "outside"), and they are all expats (but probably in defined cliques).

I'd say these clusters of people are living the "expat life", but equally there are many immigrants who don't particularly want to hang out with other expats, because they're not trying to recreate where they left in a new place, but are trying to assimilate to the new place. They themselves are still expats even if they don't socialise much with other expats, but wouldn't be living the expat life.

This is a perfect reply. When you are a (relatively) high-income migrant, you can safely call yourself an expatriate instead of an immigrant!

Travelling somewhere is not the same as living. It’s pretty common among people without immigration experience to have a certain idealistic idea about it, that does not work in reality.

This person lives in a very international city where they speak English at work. For some people it’s not as easy to get to B1-B2 levels while working full time, having children and using English to communicate daily without issues.

In many EU countries requirement for a permanent resident status is just 4-6 years of residency, plus sometimes certain income/language level. And there is always EU permanent residence permit that just requires you to reside for 5 years.

> 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 know lots of English speaking people who have settled in non-English speaking countries (or at least countries in which most people do not speak English as a first language) with little knowledge of the main language(s).

Exactly. As a german i can say we don‘t care about your salary, we only really care about your language and culture. If you move to a foreign country, learn their language, it‘s literally the only way to integrate into a culture. Germans frown upon rich, tax-paying immigrants that don‘t try to learn german way more than they frown upon B1 speaking ones that don‘t have a job. It‘s about culture, not money. It‘s not the US lol

Doesn’t really match my experience. If you are non white and you go and look for an apartment in any big german city (because you shouldn’t move a small town if you are non white) then you have 2 options: you have money and can afford a slightly higher rent than average or you don’t have extra money and have to compete with the locals. You have very little chance to find something decent if you compete against the locals.

>(because you shouldn’t move a small town if you are non white)

Where does this rule come from? It does not match my experience.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Follow-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.

Hebrew 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.

It is other way round. If you are unfamiliar with CERF, you assume a lot more skill from the description then is actually required.

> B1 is something like five uninterrupted years[1] of consistent lessons.

If you go to lessons twice a week and dont do much else, yes. Or, if you go duolingo 15 min a day way. Otherwise no, it does not require 5 years. And what you need the most are not so much lessons (tho you need some for grammar) as watching and reading of basic media - and german has tons of those.

> If you go to lessons twice a week and dont do much else, yes.

Right, this is with a schedule of 2–3 hr/wk of classes (and, as I’ve said, probably 1× to 2× that in homework). Remember this is for someone who likely has to work long hours already; but also, there’s a reason why everything over that is usually described as an intensive course: diminishing returns hit hard at 4–5 hr/wk (in decreasing retention as well as not having the energy to do much homework).

> Or, if you go duolingo 15 min a day way.

I’m not convinced Duolingo can get one to B1 at all but I guess it must work for somebody?..

> And what you need the most are not so much lessons (tho you need some for grammar)

As well as to have a place where somebody will correct you whenever you go wrong and also to ask about that elusive word stuff that’s too long for the normal dictionary but too flexible to count as an idiom.

> as watching and reading of basic media - and german has tons of those.

Again, no experience with German in particular, and this also depends on your tolerance for frustration and your native language, but I’d say tail end of B1 is when you can start reading unadapted books etc. Once you do, it’ll speed up your journey through the bog of intermediate, so to say, quite a bit, but through A2 and lower B1 you do still need graded readers and other kinds of specially prepared comprehensible input.

You dont hit diminishing returns in 4-5 hours a week. That is simply false.

The 2 classes a week course is for causual learners people who dont really care when they get there. That is great, but if you use it as benchmark, you are implying much harder task then it is.

But mostly importantly, the things you add to learn in more reasonable timescale are not as tiring as lesson full of grammar exercises. It is litening to news, podcasts, series (starting with simple ones), reading news etc.

And yes, you can get there with duolingo. It is not as bad as legend has it, it is simply targetted at causual learners. 15 min of it a day is basically an equivalent of that slow 2 classes a week course. I am actually huge fan of causual learning, but I dont think causual learning speed should be general benchmark for how much it takes to a person that cares a bit.

> tail end of B1 is when you can start reading unadapted books etc.

There is nothing wrong with adapted books, but imo, audio resources are waaay better initial choice. If you postpone this, it will take longer, but you can start much sooner.

People do simple language news, peppa the pig, learner podcasts and simple adult netflix shows sooner then that.

My rule is that if you want to settle in the country, you ought to learn the local language and it doesn't really matter how much money you make in my opinion. I got to B2 and passed the test, but ultimately left Germany years ago. I don't intend to go back but I also don't regret learning the language.

I've lived in foreign places for less than 6 months and still bothered to pick up enough language to at least converse on a basic A1 level. Especially in certain regions where people don't speak english well this is almost a requirement for any daily life that is not work related. I can't imagine living somewhere for six whole years without picking up the language at all. Maybe if you actually hate the place and are sure you will leave again after that stint, but the above commenter doesn't seem to fall into this category either.

To be fair, B1 and especially B2 are not trivial requirements. A1 you will "pick up" like you say, but it's easy to fall into a trap of remaining around A2 without sustained effortful studying. (If you try to do it through just interacting with natives with no structure it's common to fossilize mistakes which take much longer to fix, or even just become permanent)

Personally I've gotten to B2 (not Germany) which is enough for most purposes, but it would have been very possible to get stuck in a rut.

It's very common for couples that move here for one to have a job, and the other to spend some months unemployed looking for a job. It's generally observed that those that have the job learn the job much slower and get stuck, and the ones that spend time at home and looking have much better outcomes longer term

B1 to B2 is a big step. Bigger than A1-2 to B1. B1 is basically just understanding people who speak slowly and clearly and being able to participate in everyday life situations. So a very gradual progression. B2 is already being able to do professional work in that language. This is what will take considerable time and active study. But it is also not a requirement for naturalisation in most countries. And many natural born citizens also never reach C1-2 level of proficiency either. So if you're B2, you may as well be counted as fully integrated.

My grandmother survived in the US for almost 40 years without learning English at all. This is very, very common. It's all about where you live.

What do you say to people that literally can’t?

I still can’t pronounce about a third of the Vietnamese sounds. I’ve had three private in person tutors, no luck.

Should I just like pack up my bags and leave?

You're not entitled to live in Vietnam. If the Vietnamese people want you to speak Vietnamese and you can't, then yes you should leave.

“Rules for thee but not for me”

That is kinda the point of the article, countries create these arbitrary rules to prevent people that create value in their society from permanently participating.

Whats slightly ironic is you don't have to speak Vietnamese, even raised in a Vietnamese home, or have Vietnamese parents to have Vietnamese citizenship. Many racially Vietnamese students attending international school only know English, because English is spoken exclusively at home and their school.

Or if you're Hmong, you might not know Vietnamese, but can hold a Vietnamese passport.

Same situation in the USA where many Americans couldn't pass our citizenship test.

Washington State is grappling with this issue now: we have very wealthy people that created a lot of wealth for themselves while residing in the state, and now are taking it to Florida, due to the Washingtonians voting to increase taxes on wealthy people.

Germany makes an exemption for those people [0]:

> The requirements [to possess sufficient knowledge of the German language] shall be waived if the foreigner is unable to fulfill them due to a physical, mental, or psychological illness or disability, or due to age.

[0] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stag/__10.html

B1 is pretty basic

FWIW, for Blue Card holders, after 27 months the language requirement drops to A1 and even if you don't have a Blue Card after five years you could also get an EU permanent residence without language requirement: https://www.make-it-in-germany.com/en/visa-residence/living-...

Though I would recommend setting yourself a target of some small (≈10) number of new words to learn every day and practice them during your commute or so. B1 is achievable in under a year with consistent practice. The official word list has 2400 entries: https://www.goethe.de/pro/relaunch/prf/de/Goethe-Zertifikat_...

This. With this much income you should qualify for a Blue Card. The 27 months start when you are eligible, not when you are actually holding the Blue Card. A friend of mine (w/ Blue Card) got permanent citizenship in Germany after the 3 years and was not asked/tested for any language skills. As long as you speak a little German to follow the process it is pretty easy.

Learning 10 words a day is not a small amount. Unless you count conjugations.

As a german living in spain, i feel your pain. While I do speak spanish around B1/B2 level, it took a lot of time and effort - probably the biggest effort in learning something after uni. People are often "you should speak the language if you life there" - yes, agreed. BUT: Hell, if you are a professional entrepreneur, you are already not working 40h week but way more. If in your day job you speak english anyway because it is international, you hardly practice it. Especially in the EU we are taught that we can move freely between nation states - but reality of learning a language takes years. I learned english at age 10, so am practicing for over 30 years now and still learning and anybody could spot that I am not a native speaker. Countries that rely on foreign labour and advertise agressively on skilled immigration (such as Germany does) should not have those strict language requirements. Especially since german itself is a very difficult language.

None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German. You can get to A2 level pretty easy (in most indoeuropean languages at least), but jumping to B1 can seriously be a year or more of studying. You have to be able to handle basic daily situations in the given language and understand what is said in a TV or Radio show. With practice you can get there especially if you live in the country and force yourself to speak the language, but easy it is not.

> None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German.

I am very certain this is not true. The "just learn the language" people are typically rather people who are very talented in learning new languages (and often indeed to this as adults as a personal hobby - often even with languages from very different families), and thus are often not easy to convince that not everybody is as talented in language learning as they are.

Believe me, I know this kind of people:

I just want to quote some polyglot person who very casually said: "Being fluent in five languages is not something to be proud of - this is rather minimum standard." (she had the opinion that rather keeping fluent in 10 [!] languages is something that takes steady learning efforts to retain the obtained level in all of the 10 languages).

I've always heard it said that "polyglot" starts with the fourth language. The opinion is that to have a at-home (family) language, an outdoor (regional) language and a market (capital) language is too common to be considered truly exceptional. Once you pick up the fourth, you're getting into hobby territory.

Kató Lomb (maybe the first official "simultaneous translator" wrote about gaining, losing, and maintaining languages entertainingly and in detail.

edit:

"Polyglot: How I Learn Languages" https://www.tesl-ej.org/books/lomb-2nd-Ed.pdf

"With Languages in Mind: Musings of a Polyglot" https://www.tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej78/WLIM.pdf

This reminds me of Xiaomanyc.

When I first found the channel I was like "wow that dude speaks so many languages so well!".

He does not. I can't really judge for most languages of course, but for the ones I can, he really isn't good at all :shrug:

Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

> Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

The kind of people that I know and have in mind are not this way. They often rather compete for the most complicated and different language families. :-)

I do typos and grammar mistakes in four languages (only two of them fluently) and it’s pretty easy to learn basic vocabulary, read a bit of a comic book and order coffee with a thick accent. A lot of “polyglots” who can do basic phrases in 11 languages and make videos about it on YouTube. There’s people who genuinely speak plenty of languages fluently, but they are quite humble about it. Reaching B1 after completing A2 is 200-300h of study, preferably in a class. That’s a lot for a working adult with a family.

However, there is plenty of people who think that they speak a language because they can order a coffee in some language close to theirs and have never lived in a foreign country for any extended period of time, ie. don’t know what they are talking about, and arguing from the position of complete ignorance say “just learn the language”.

The idea that there’s one country with one language is very recent actually, part of the nationalistic idealism of 19th Century. Most of the history, as it is still today, any nation is a mishmash of cultures, languages, dialects of various kinds and origins, there of course always being some official one (used to be Latin, then French, now it’s TikTok-memes). The fact that pur systems cannot facilitate that multitude is a shame and I believe those systems that can will succeed.

It's not easy. I learned Japanese at 28 and am now proficient. But I didn't want to spend my whole life asking other people to translate things for me, being permanently ostracised from conversations, or causing problems for others by forcing them to speak English. It's basic decency imo.

It's less of a basic decency if you're in a country where almost everyone is fluent in English, you get by your life just fine in English, speaking the local language doesn't open new doors, as you're not going to be "native level" speaker no matter how much you study (and many would prefer to speak English with you if you have less than native level of German), learning the local language would take many years of continuous time and effort that could be spent elsewhere, and in the end you're not even sure how many more years you want to stay before leaving.

Then leave.

Considering so many people here are feeling extremely strongly about their right to not learn a language and the absurd amount of apathy I honestly see zero goodwill here.

Like, no one is arguing based on personal failure, saying they failed to learn the language. They're saying they are busy raising a family as an adult in a foreign country and learning the locals language is a waste of time.

I'm in such severe disbelief. Like, how can any rational and sane person even think that?

How can you decide to go to a foreign country and then decide that actually all of that country is bad including the language and say you're above the locals and their stupid language and then expect to be considered a welcome guest?

Obviously the host wants the unwanted guests to leave.

I think it's a mistake to assume that speaking the local language wouldn't be a good investment of time. It absolutely does change the way people see and treat you, even if you're not aware.

If natives choose to converse with you mostly in English, it's because it's (in many situations) obviously less friction for both - but to be recognised as having put in some effort changes your status (caveats notwithstanding).

Have you ever been on vacation where you could speak the native language (assuming you do speak any second language besides English)? It's a night and day difference, my friend.

If you restrict yourself to those areas of life where this effect isn't noticeable (e.g. an english speaking workplace and communities), that's okay, but you are effectively limiting your participation in the host society in a broader sense. I understand that can be a reasonable decision for any individual, but one should be under no illusions.

I would disagree about it not being "easy". Learning a language certainly takes time and effort, but the fact that even the dumbest people in society can speak fluently, that literal toddlers learn languages, shows that it's far from difficult.

It just requires turning your rational mind off, immersing yourself in the language and trusting things will work out, something which more rational/analytic people tend to struggle with. It's telling that children from non-English countries naturally become completely fluent in English by just playing video games and watching YouTube videos, while adults will struggle for years to reach conversational fluency in their second language.

…young children have immense neural plasticity while adults, especially 40+, have little.

Imo this is so overrated, the biggest difference is that children have 100% exposure and almost all language they come across is tailored exactly to the right level, just for them.

Just as importantly, they have little to no alternative. And then they are given every opportunity to learn—at school, by parents, and so on.

this is massively overrated. Given the same amount of exposure, adults win every single time. Just look at the other people in this thread decrying the idea that it could possibly take 5 years to learn a language. How fluent would you say a 5 year old is? Consider their mastery of legal terms, cooking, vocabulary, geography, political terms, things from all aspects of life? Their grasp of grammar and spelling?

You might suggest "oh but surely a child knows far more about animals and plants and countries and the like, child things" but I find almost all adults pick these up extremely easily, at least the same ones a child might be expected to know. (lion, tiger, blue whale, dinosaur: Yes. Osprey, Bullfinch, Plaice, Tapir perhaps not.)

However, adults must put a lot of very draining, effortful study consistently to have a chance. I'd put learning a language to fluency on the same level of difficulty as getting a degree. Something one really must do if living in another country, but not something to be trivialised, or sneered at someone for not having found time to complete yet.

I think the biggest difference is that children don't have mental barriers about those things. They just explore and learn, without any thoughts wasted about the usefulness, pressure or excuses not to learn.

Why can’t you grow 10cm of height each year? Toddlers do it very easily, and they don’t even go to the gym. Maybe you just don’t work out enough? Average 40 year-old man should be about 4 metres tall, otherwise he just gave up.

It just requires turning your rational mind off, immersing yourself in the play/sport and trusting things will work out, something which more rational/analytic people tend to struggle with.

I think it can be more useful to think in terms of hours of lessons rather than time spent learning. My partner is learning french right now at a private school and they have occasional classes (1h30 once a week), middle ground (2h twice a week) or intensive classes (4h five times a week). The program is always 70h, but you can either do it in a month, a semester or a year.

Having learned czech, I only had 1h30 a week and it took me 5 years to get to B1. I agree that the steps to A2 are much simpler because it focuses more on simple phrases and vocabulary, so you also learn it outside of the classes by reading descriptions, signs, menus. For B1 and up, you definitely need to practice by having deeper discussions with people or reading articles.

You are completely right, and hours spent (in class) is how say US Foreign Service measures how quickly you get somewhat competent in a given language. There’s a lot of hoopla about just immersing yourself to the language and so on, but for most people achieving B1 means going to classes several hours every week for quite awhile.

Why does that matter?

It's honestly absurd to make the case that you don't have time to learn the language of a country you're spending 100% of your day in.

What are you doing all day? The people who are struggling to learn a language tend to be the people who have zero pressure to learn a language.

The most time consuming part of language learning is immersion, meaning that you just listen to or speak the language, without going out of your way to do any language lessons at all.

How many languages have ypu learned with your immersion technique? Maybe you should search a bit of research on how successfull your immersion is for adults learning a new langauge. Perhaps then take a look what research says people who actually learn new languages (not youtube polyglots, people who have to do it for work etc.) do.

So your complaint is you wanted permanent residence in Germany but did not want to learn to speak German?

Most countries will grant PR without requiring a language proficiency. Assuming your immigration status is regular and you are a contributing member of society.

Citizenship? Absolutely, you must speak the language. Residency? Not nearly as common.

> Most countries will grant PR without requiring a language proficiency

Hmm, is that really the case? Or perhaps you're confusing work visas with permanent residency? Most attractive destinations for immigrants usually require a language test for PR. Ignoring the United States and its dysfunctional immigration system, a language test is required or practically required almost anywhere there is a points-based system to obtain PR. The UK requires a language exam to be granted leave to remain. Canadian federal programs for PR require a language test result to even be considered for the Express Entry program. In Europe, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Italy also require it, and I'm sure there are more I'm not aware of.

Also, B1 is honestly a very basic level of proficiency with the language. It is really hard to be a productive member of society and interact with locals if you cannot speak at a B1 level.

One counter-example: in Spain no language test is required for permanent residency, only for citizenship.

Spain is historically trying to attract old foreign retirees with money who will spend their retirement savings/pensions there, but probably doesn't want that same group voting unless they really have assimilated. So that set of rules makes sense for their immigration model but is also probably not a place to look to for setting policy if your immigrants are working-age adults (that are coming there to work, not retire early).

Yes. The US doesn’t require language fluency for green cards. You can even bring your own interpret to the interview.

United States issues the highest absolute number of permanent residency permits in the world. It grants approximately 1 to 1.4 million lawful permanent resident (LPR) cards (Green Cards) annually

The US is an exception, doesn't require language proficiency for almost anything, and doesn't have an official language. This is very controversial in the US, and always has been.

Historically, this can originally be blamed on the desire of the US to import as many European immigrants as quickly as it could after the slaves were freed (post-"1877 Compromise"), because ex-slave votes were changing the composition of government. In 1910, only 60% of white Americans were native born (as opposed to about 98.5% of black Americans.) This period is also referred to as the "nadir of American race relations."

I'm not saying you're wrong but weren't the big immigration waves northern, and involving a bunch of Catholics who were also hated by the KKK types?

Which countries are those? In Europe there seems to be only Portugal and only for select categories of permanent residents.

Correct. Seems like various people are confusing the two. The issue of granting PR, is often about an additional tax and labor source for the government of that country.

For example: 1) Low birth rates and high ageing population percentage, this can be offset with immigration. Then PR status can be granted, as a kind of carrot and better tax revenue generation "filter". 2) Labor market manipulation and facilitating international business, where immigration is used to fill holes in various industries.

Why a country would want to grant PR, usually has different purposes from citizenship. There is overlap, but they aren't the same.

> Most countries will grant PR without requiring a language

This statement is clearly false, off the top of my head only USA and Spain come to mind. There are some countries like Japan where there it isn't a hard requirement, but you'd need a very good reason to justify why

Germany treats permanent residency much more like a "citizenship lite", e.g., if you are a permanent resident[1] any newborn children will automatically be German citizens (even though Germany has no jus soli).

________________________

Footnotes:

[1]: As long as at least one parent is a permanent resident and has in Germany for at least 5 years (the same duration that's usually required to become a permanent resident anyway)

Permanent residency is a business deal between two entities: an individual and a state. It has nothing to do with linguistics. There are many Germans permanently living in Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, who never bothered to even learn how to say Hello, not to mention any certificate or exam...

I mean, even if you insist on viewing it as a business deal, what exactly prevents one side to put language requirements in the business deal?

That’s how deals work, both sides state their position and either they find a middle ground or they don’t.

Business deal means the requirements should be rational, pragmatic.

Well, why is „learn the language“ not a rational and pragmatic requirement?

Seems rational to me. Want to live in country X permanently? Learn language X.

I mean, when you have already proven that you are net positive for the state, and continue doing so, requiring you to pass some exams is not rational. PR != citizenship. Will I have a bit difficulty buying some groceries in a local market? Maybe, but that shouldn't bother the state.

Also, you can live permanently without PR. PR unlocks some additional perks, which again, have nothing to do with linguistics.

Are you a net positive?

Just because somebody pays taxes, it doesn’t necessarily make them a net positive.

For example, do you contribute culturally? That can be quite hard to do without speaking the language.

What about defense. Would you fight for the country? Hard to do if you don’t understand the orders.

What about spiritually? Emotionally?

I believe you are mixing permanent presidentship with citizenship. That's why I've clarified that PR != citizenship.

Not at all.

Citizenship allows you the final participation: political. The right to be chosen and the right to choose.

Everything else applies to anyone who lives permanently in a given place. A permanent resident.

FWIW: I personally politically support PRs being given the political right to be voted into office as well.

> FWIW: I personally politically support PRs being given the political right to be voted into office as well.

Why? I'd go the other way and only allow political office for natural citizens. After all why would you welcome someone into your country when their goal is to change it - then maybe they would fit better into another country that already works like they want.

Because if the will of the people is for person A to serve in office X, then the will of the people should be absolute. I'd even allow election of minors and other currently non-eligible persons.

The only requirement should be that you are politically member of the given area, which typically means you actually physically live in the city/state/country.

Note, in Switzerland, you can already be voted into office _against your will_. And then you MUST serve. And this has actually happened in recent past, in remote villages to be fair.

Are (native) citizens a net positive? Do you ask each one of them how they contribute culturally? What does "spiritually" and "emotionally" even mean in this context?

People should be afforded basic rights because they are people. People who live long term in a place, do the same (or different for that matter but analogous) work etc should have the same basic rights. In this context I interpret "net positive" as basically fulfilling jobs/roles in the society. This alone should (in the long term) afford basic rights, not cultural and other tests.

edit: Regardless that, cultural contribution does not really require a specific language. You can paint, you can play music from your own culture/home country etc. You can even write things in english anyway that many will understand.

First of all, _basic_ rights should be afforded to _all_ humans. That's not what the discussion here is. The discussion here are non-basic rights, like the right to enter a geographic area without restriction or the right to state welfare.

You saying "job/role" is where the argument falls apart, because job and role are not the same. Yes, I absolutely agree that people who fulfill roles in society should be afforded protection of that society.

There are roles in society that have nothing to do with your job: neighbor, volunteer, person you ask for direction on the street, parent, parent of your child's friend... Those are also the roles that typically have some form of emotional, spiritual and cultural work associated with them.

Refusing to fill those roles and filling only the role of "high-income immigrant" isn't necessarily a net positive to the society and should not on that fact alone be provided permanent residence.

I will say however, I think parents of children that attend public school in a country should have almost automatic PR. Not fully automatic, but 99.99% of such cases are net positive, much more than high-income immigrants.

> the right to enter a geographic area without restriction

No, the discussion was about the conditions of staying, not entering.

> the right to state welfare

If one pays the same taxes for several years why shouldn't they have access to the same state welfare?

> Refusing to fill those roles

Even assuming it is meaningful to set rules about stuff like that that are basic life stuff and most people do to some degree, how do you know or check for these? For once, language is def not a good proxy, esp in a place with a very big international community and where most speak english anyway. How do you imagine this? I have never seen a check like this that makes any sense. It is worse than even the economic checks where people move money from an account to another and screenshot them to show they are not too poor so that their applications are not rejected. If anything, immigrant communities ime are much higher in solidarity because they need to. And in any case, it is not either fair to punish a person for just being introvert or not having many friends or sth.

> high-income immigrant

No I did not mention high income, and imo it has nothing to do with this discussion. Maybe it was a misunderstanding with OP who mentioned "net positive". I interpreted "net positive" as working consistently rather than high income necessarily. I do not think people with high income should have more rights to PR than people with low income, though this is sadly the case in many ways.

1) Because taxes and money are not everything. You do not buy welfare, it’s not an insurance. It’s a social safety net provided by the society irrespective of how much money you contributed to it. So the criteria for getting welfare must be something else, for example are you a permanent member of the society in question.

2) The actual non-exhaustive list of ways to prove you are integrated in Switzerland, Kt. ZH is: do your children go to the public school? Are you a member of a local sports, arts or similar club? Do you have regular social contact with Swiss citizens? Can you speak the local language? Do you volunteer in the local fire department? Did you volunteer for the Civil Defense Service?

To be fair, for permanent residence the bar on any of these questions is quite low. But that is how you sensibly check that.

3) The GP thinks their 200k salary is relevant.

1a)

> criteria for getting welfare must be something else, for example are you a permanent member of the society in question

But the discussion is about exactly who should be legally recognised as "permanent member of the society". I am saying that a long term resident in a country, who participates in the economic and social life should have the same access to welfare. A person who lives somewhere long term (several years, whatever threshold we want to set there) is de facto "a permanent member of the society". The discussion is about when one can be considered such a "permanent member of the society" so that they can be included to the welfare etc intended for "permanent members of the society".

And in any case, nothing is really really permanent, and native-born people may leave a country to live abroad any time (eg many central and north europeans move to the south when they retire), upon which, typically, they lose access to the aspects of the welfare system in their native country as they stop being residents there.

1b)

> You do not buy welfare, it’s not an insurance

It is still an exchange/contract, though indeed more like a social contract than a "business relationship" as others here state. In most places I know some form of economic sustainance/stability (as like working full time for a certain period of time) is the primary requirement for permanent residence. I do not think the value of a human should depend on job and money either, as there are many ways to contribute to a society, and some are def more meaningful than certain jobs, but working and paying taxes is in general part of that social contract.

2) I do not see anything wrong with that list, my problem is when one is expected to work continuously full time, have kids, study the language at a high level and volunteer around in order to get permanent residence, all at the same time, which is not very easy esp for people who work relatively demanding jobs.

3) I am not sure why they mention it, they apologise for mentioning it but do not seem to explain where it is relevant. However I do not think that their (or any such) argument actually needs a high salary to stand.

You don’t need to meet all of them. You need to meet any of them.

Which makes it almost trivial for parents for example because you just need to send your kids to a normal school instead of an expat only private school.

> net positive for the state

Being a good citizen is not the same as (or even all that much related to) receiving an above average salary.

You can be a net positive one day, next day you lose your job and are not. On the other hand, permanent is supposed to be without end. An unemployed worker with no language skills in the local language quickly becomes a burden

Residency while employed is rational. If you want to stay longer, learn the language

One would say, unemployed with a good local language skills will be able to easier navigate bureaucracy and claim more benefits - more loss for the state :)

There are implications by linguistics. If you learn a language you also passively obtain insight into cultural norms and expectations. Moreover, Learning a language is much easier if you're friends with natives and converse with them on a semi-regular basis. Being able to speak the language also means that there doesn't need to be a separate support structure for you, as you will be able to use the ones provided to everyone else.

I'd wager the sum of these things is something one may expect from a permanent resident (i.e.: cultural knowledge, some amount of integration, ability to function without specialized support structures). And it turns out, that language proficiency is a pretty good proxy for measuring that. Just because you don't accept the rationale behind the requirement it does not mean that there is none.

The requirements are not there to verify that you can live somewhere permanently, but if you _may_ live there permanently. Money is not the only dimension your so called "net positive" may be measured in.

Asking you to learn German in in Germany is both rational and pragmatic, as it is a good way to be a functioning member of the society.

Exactly! Though it often seems that people conveniently forget the reverse scenario. Them in other countries is fine and relax about requirements, others in their country, not so much.

One country is not in any way obligated or expected to have the same entry requirements as another. It is based on priorities of the state and those differ greatly between states.

I can't imagine any Germans I know describing permanent residency as a business relationship.

Permanent residency is a deal (not necessarily business related) between two entities: an individual and a state. It has everything to do with whatever requirements that the two parties have, and if there is no agreement on them there is no deal. In this case the state cares about language proficiency and requires it for a deal, so if you are not proficient in German there is no deal.

> Permanent residency is a business deal between two entities: an individual and a state.

I doubt that Germans see it that way.

No, permanent residency is more than a business deal. It is a deal about all aspects of life, business or not.

A country is not a contract, it's a culture.

It's quite audacious to want to be part of a country, but also to be so quarantined from them as to not even want to learn their language.

Genuinely happy to hear you're successful here! But, why would you expect there to be no drawback to not knowing the local language when moving to a foreign country?

Definitely, I had a good awareness of the language barrier from the day I arrived.

To be fair, I have continued learning German—not because I want to pass the B1 examination and obtain permanent residence, but because I feel my children need to be protected and guided, and I want to teach them the same things they learn at school. Every moment I spend learning the language is a moment I invest out of love, so that I can be a better and more supportive parent.

Then why are you complaining about the language requirement for permanent residency? You knew the tradeoffs and chose them willingly, enjoy your income, invest in your home country and move back once you retire.

Simply making higher-than-median income should not make you eligible for permanent residency. Cultural immersion and assimilation is important to maintain social stability and language is just the first step. From what I found (and as another commenter pointed out) the bar is not even that high.

Edit: For context I am not a right winger and am an immigrant myself. But I am seeing the social fabric of my host country (Canada) degrade because of immigrants' refusal to assimilate.

Why do you want people with foreign backgrounds to “assimilate”? If you were to move to France, are you going to abandon your own language, culture, and play-pretend to be a Frenchman?

If you live somewhere long enough, know the country, work and handle daily life without issues, have social connections with other people in this society, understand at least some language - in my opinion you are as integrated in that country as needed.

You're making it sound like the desire to be a Frenchman is an unreasonable requirement for becoming a Frenchman.

> abandon your own language, culture

Thank god nobody is asking this. They're being asked to learn enough French to participate in France. B1 is hard, but it ain't B2, and you'll still barely understand what's going on around you.

> requirement for becoming a Frenchman

The discussion is about permanent residence, not citizenship.

Permanent residence allows eg an employee be able to continue staying in a country without being dependent on a particular employer and having to reapply everytime they change jobs. It is gives a person who works in a country for a certain amount of time already, paying taxes etc, having the same rights as an employee.

If someone wants to be a permanent resident of a country and build their life there, they should have to plan to eventually become a citizen of that country.

To allow otherwise leads to its destruction, just people with no long term skin in the game extracting before moving on.

It is a huge conflict of interest among the population. Its like having a corporation where half the owners want a quick return and exist and half want to run it like a lifestyle company.

The main difference is citizen rights like voting for government, flexibility over regaining residence when leaving the country for some time, and how potential kids get the citizenship (depends on country). But otherwise I do not see how there is conflict of interest, in most other respects in the places I know permanent residents have the same rights and imposed to the same rules as citizens (social benefits, health, pension etc). In the corporation case, it is like some having shares with voting rights and shares without. In some ways, (permanent) residence and citizenship are orthogonal, because you can have citizenship in a country, but not be a resident there because they live abroad, and then they do not have certain resident rights like public healthcare.

Getting citizenship is a different thing, and in some places much harder, easier to get denied if you have the wrong ethnicity etc. I think that when settling long term in a place, having equality wrt work, health, social rights as native citizens is important, and thus getting permanent residence in a country should not depend on irrelevant factors. The important thing is to not have people who live long term but their residence rights are tied to their current employer. In these situations, the system produces a workforce that is pressured to be much more compliant and accept stuff that citizens and permanent residents typically don't. This is the kind of difference that creates people with different interests within a country. Stuff like cultural assimilation and similar mentioned here in comments should be irrelevant imo for solving issues like this, and frankly, it presupposes already a certain dynamic and as if the local culture is on homogeneous thing, which is often not. A country don't accept economic migrants (at scale) as some kind of philanthropy, but to fulfill needs/jobs within the country. If they need people to work, they should expect those who stay long term to be given rights equivalent to citizens wrt work etc.

Extraction is a weird way to put it. Usually, immigrants, especially skilled workers, are overwhelmingly net contributors. That's part of why modern economies want them so badly.

It's actually the perfect opposite, a skilled worker who plans to leave is a burden on their home country as they presumably will use services there they never paid for. Hopefully, in developed nations this balances out more or less. In undeveloped nations there's not much of a system to take advantage of.

I live in a country I was not born in, I pay taxes as much as anyone else and pay into social security programs I'll likely never get to use. The state did not have to spend a penny to educate me. If I return to my home country without having worked there another day in my life, I'm probably quite the net loss to them.

The extraction phase of your life is overwhelmingly being a child or elderly.

All of the net benefits you're talking about require some form of assimilation and we're in a discussion about rejecting/refusing assimilation.

There is plenty of evidence that immigrant enclaves depress wages because these immigrants are trapped in their local community instead of being part of the broader national economy.

Everything you're talking about just proves the point of the person you're responding to.

Now you’re being some “immigrant enclaves” into the mix to support your point. I think you show vast arrogance about how modern (high-skilled) immigration looks like and how it integrates into western society.

You have to choose one way or another.

Either you argue that the job requires you to stay in another country and the stay is always temporary and there you would not focus on any given language since you're going to leave before you reach any level of proficiency

or you want to stay in the country because you like it and therefore learn the language.

You cannot cherry pick the option where you have your cake and eat it too.

It is illogical to demand permanent residency for a temporary stay that is short enough to not bother learning the language.

This argument makes sense if learning the language is the default and you require an excuse to get out of it. But I don't think that's true. If you don't want to learn, that's not a big deal. There's no cherry picking involved. Learning the language isn't inherently tied to working somewhere. It's tied to citizenship but this isn't citizenship.

In other words, yes it's illogical to argue that a stay is short and long at the same time but who declared that learning the language is an inherent part of long stays?

Parent comment called for “assimilation”. Assimilation implies replacing your own culture with another, like by Webster definition.

> Why do you want people with foreign backgrounds to “assimilate”?

It’s a healthy, human process that forces weighing what works and what doesn’t across cultures and, hopefully, walking away with something better than either individually. The idea that immigrants shouldn’t have to assimilate is arrogance redressed.

As someone who is an immigrant to France, I do think you have an obligation to assimilate as much as possible.

So how the “assimilation” looks like to you? If you ever have kids, are you going to be speaking French only with them? Do you try to catch up with vast cultural background that people experience since childhood in France? Do you plan to change your name to sometime more French-sounding?

It depends on your goal. If you want to just work, pay taxes and save money and move back after retirement then maintain your home culture all you want. But don’t complain about PR then. Especially on the basis of how much money you make.

But if you want “permanent” residency then yes you have to be a bit of a “pretend-Frenchman” or however you want to put it. I just pointed out that tradeoff in the GP comment.

The biggest hypocrisy is that you will never be considered a real Chinese/Japanese/Indian/Vietnamese even if you learn their languages and adopt all their cultural traits. Western countries are very generous about this but you do have to meet them half way. B1 level proficiency is not even that high of a bar - compare that to living in China.

You can get B1 with a bit of spare time. With kids, I understand it's a different situation; however, it took me about 2 years to get there, learning in my spare spare time (which after a certain point was just listening to audio books before bed). The compounding effect works.

BUUUUT, even with B2, it's just not enough for avoiding "the look", as you put it. I think you need flawless C1 or something, idk. Don't care anymore lol.

Most b2 holders can’t even speak German. B1 is not that much better nowadays. You get tons of applications for a job where people struggle with the basics with these and as a small company with only DACH customers it’s most often not worth it

> You get tons of applications for a job where people struggle with the basics with these

Any specific examples?

I'm a bit surprised because I thought that the German certifications were quite standardized. So I would expect B1 certified people to be able to speak in everyday situations.

Not the person you replied to but they mentioned DACH + customers.

As someone from Bavaria... I have several stories of coworkers who speak and understand decent German but put them on a phone or a in a room with people who speak in a thick German dialect and they will understand 10%. Functionally useless.

> Any specific examples?

well how should I do that? Basically all application data is basically protected data and needs to be deleted pretty fast.

I'm not sure if the certificates are even real in some cases. Some applications also look extremly similar, besides that they have a distance between the two applicatiants of over 200 km.

I wonder if it’s people gaming the system to get the certs or just that you have high expectations.

B2 should mean one is confident in most conversational situations. I’m at this level and have no issues conversing at all but make a lot of small mistakes.

With that being said, being in a meeting with a group of natives from the same region is brutal.

And learning that dialect is just something you can only do through exposure which you won’t get because nobody is going to hire someone who takes a few months to a year to be able to understand and speak like you (which is completely understandable).

There is a massive difference between complaining about someone being bad at a language and treating the act of telling someone to learn the language as some great offense.

One of those is an honest attempt, the other one is pure hostility.

For me it doesn't really matter how well you speak the language.

If you cannot be bothered with learning our language, and think that being rich somehow makes our country owe you its citizenship — then yeah, maybe Germany isn’t for you.

Permanent Residency -- not citizenship.

Residency is purely about taxes, health insurance and right to work. You e.g. don't get voting rights in national elections.

EU citizens automatically get permanent residency in any EU country regardless of language.

E.g. I'm a permanent resident in Germany as a Dutchie.

(However I did end up picking up German and speak it now. But never had to do a language test)

> EU citizens automatically get permanent residency in any EU country regardless of language.

Yea free movement and choice of residency is one of the main points of the EU

I am European, working in China for 12 years making multiples of the average salary, speak Chinese above B1 level and am not eligible for permanent residency yet.

First of all, if you want to become a resident somewhere you must learn the language. Not should.

Second, no country owes any foreign citizen residency there.

I don't have any skin in the game here for Germany specifically, but I would point out that B1 is an incredibly low bar to clear. With concentrated effort, you can reach that level in under a year, I know because I've done it. Given you have kids and are otherwise preoccupied, maybe a few years. At six years in, it's purely a matter of whether you yourself actually want it or not.

You're always going to be an outsider if you can't speak the language, no matter where you go in the world. B1 is a reasonable level, as it's the bare minimum for doing day-to-day tasks in the local language.

I honestly can't image planning to live in any country for the long term without learning the local language to at least this level.

Hey. I'm with you there. My German also kind of sucks, but I've had a very successful 15 years in Berlin. The best part is how easy it is to pick jobs from the neighboring countries, like France. You pay taxes here, you commute maybe once a month to Paris and enjoy the prices and quietness of Berlin. We are lucky with my partner, and bought finally our own apartment.

My partner, an American, is fluent with the language so it helps. My plan is to make a good amount of savings, take a year or so of sabbatical and finally learn the language. Until that, we go with bar Deutsch.

Thank you! I skimmed through your text, and for a moment I thought we were working at the same company with its HQ in Paris, haha.

Honestly, you brought up a valuable point that I didn’t cover in my original comment. Living in Germany has been one of the best ways to strengthen our relationship, especially when one of us couldn’t speak German and the other stepped in to help. Some people may see this as a fragile vulnerabilitye, but I see it as part of our growth.

For me it's only about getting into the local scene more now, to learn the language. I kind of started to finally understand the German inefficiency, the distributed nature of the country and their culture. Now when we bought our apartment, the need to be part of the culture is bigger than ever. And at the same time I'm so busy for the past 10 years already, there's more work than ever in my life.

Just need to say stop one day, take a year off and go to language school.

P.S. I don't think it's the same company: the other devs are either in Paris or in Scandinavia.

I know life as an immigrant, especially while having kids and professional careers can be tough.

That said, personally I'm thankful for Quebec having been the forcing function to learn French.

With no prior formation to reach "intermédiaire avancé" took me about 20 months of studying on the side with one lesson per week for most of that time; usually before or during work hours (partially was a group setting there).

I'm a German native speaker so I'm probably biased / ignorant about some major language hurdles but to me German must be the easier language to pick up for most as it's way more regular.

I think the trick is to make a deliberate choice / opening up to love language and people, speaking with as many native speakers as possible etc. It also really helped me to almost exclusively switch to consuming French news and most of other media.

I'm not a fan of dubbing in general but for learning, Hollywood movies in French have been mostly great same as with German translations. Maybe watch older movies, they used to put in an unreasonable amount of work into those especially.

Computer games I'm personally still playing mostly in French to this day and I know that German translations are usually done with a lot of heart as well.

Edit: do check out https://www.arte.tv/de/ if you haven't - one of our favourites for both French and German of course; probably one of, if not the best TV worldwide. Always especially palpable after having been on youtube for a while too long; just the opposite of engagement bait, wholesome and good journalism and more.

First, €200k gross annually is huge in Germany. You are high income! Do not read that as a (negative) judgement, but a lot of people on HN don't understand how much lower salaries are in central Europe compared to the US.

Your situation makes me think of Japan. Starting about 10 years ago, they introduced a special "fast path" to permanent residence for high income people. I am surprised that it has not triggered more debate in Japanese society. I think the numbers are so small that most people (and politicians) don't really care. The goal was to attract high income people to work and live in Japan... and pay taxes! Germany could consider a similar programme. However, for normies, I am still strongly in favour of language requirements in any nation when applying for permanent residence.

Last:

    > If you ask me for one piece of advice for immigrants and emigrants in Germany, I’d say: life is short—play naked!

I don't understand. What does "play naked" mean?

It means have fun, be adventurous, bend the rules a little bit.

"regardless of how much you contribute to the country, German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here."

What's the issue here? Is it me or is it absurd for someone to permanently move to a country and expect to integrate without knowing how how to speak the language?

How do you live 6 years in a country without reaching B1?

You'd be surprised at the lengths some will go to avoid learning a new language.

I've met people who have lived over 20y in a country while working, having and raising kids there and still can't have a half decent basic conversation in the local language.

There is always an excuse: too much work, too little time, too tired or you name it, but the end result is that they are inconveniencing themselves.

Not saying it is OP's case, just some anecdotal obserevations.

The thing that makes this illogical to me is that once you reach basic fluency, you stop needing to study since you will now be automatically improving your language skills every time you hold a conversation, read a newspaper, watch a television program, etc. It's genuinely just the relatively small initial hurdle towards ~B1 that is a slog, but after that, you never have to actively study again if you don't want to.

It doesn't feel like that for me. I reached professionally assessed B1 in French about 6 years ago and I don't feel I've reached B2 yet.

I think some people just get an irrational block about learning particular things. Like maybe you struggle with a music class in school and just identify as being incapable of learning an instrument, for example, even if they're a skilled learner otherwise. Can't speak for OP, obviously.

You don't magically get language skills by living in the country. You still have to put in the time and effort.

The utmost basics, A1, you could learn very quickly and those will get you through basic interactions (buying groceries, greeting neighbors, etc.)

At work, doctors, apartment search etc. you can use English.

For contracts you can use translate, since B1 wouldn't get you far there anyway.

But to get to B1, you would have to make language learning your hobby for at least a year... and that is not for everyone. Especially given that there aren't interesting media to immerse yourself into in German, compared to other languages like Japanese or Korean.

The only thing that I find puzzling is that OP didn't learn it, when they plan to stay in the country and obtain permanent residency. I would understand not learning the language if they planned to move out in 1 year.

> Especially given that there aren't interesting media to immerse yourself into in German, compared to other languages like Japanese or Korean.

There's nothing interesting to read im Land der Dichter & Denker? Perhaps following is to your taste? https://editionfaust.de/produkt/faust/

> You don't magically get language skills by living in the country. You still have to put in the time and effort.

Did I say otherwise? How do you live 6 years in a country without putting in the effort to learn the language? You're there, watch TV, talk to people, read books, take a class here or there. Come on, how do you put yourself, for 6 years, in a situation where you don't learn the language?

Could you also add your thoughts on whether you think a B1 level is a sensible requirement for permanent residence in any country?

Because that's what the post seems to boil down to, but you haven't opined on it (other than refusing to learn B1, which implies the answer somewhat).

B1 by the way is considered doable for a consistent parttime learner in 9 months, and 1-2 years for someone doing weekend studying. That's an average.

For a studious family with higher educational background making 200k a year (this is significantly above average in Germany), you've got both the IQ and the capital for tutoring to do better than average.

Seems like a sensible, useful, necessary and practical bar to set for permanent residence, to me.

An observation from the side, is that this person already speaks 2 languages, and very probably more. They aren't dumb, I do question their logic, but the capacity to speak more than one tongue is in this person, witness their writing in English, and stating they come from an ASEAN background. That means at least one non-english language, and for many ASEAN economies, more than one.

eg Chinese both Manderin and Cantonese, Indonesian and Chinese, some Chinese and Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese, these are combinations I have met at work here in Australia aside from "and english"

I've had lifts from Uber drivers who speak 4 tongues fluently.

> German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here.

Well yeah, learning the local language is a requirement for a lot of countries on the path to citizenship.

It's the same in the Netherlands (needing a minimum language level), I suspect it's 25+ years of right-leaning, anti-migration governments; as a compromise they said "foreigners can stay as long as they integrate into our society", and language is a big factor there. Or that is the claim anyway.

This doesn't apply to higher end jobs though, which are almost always international to begin with.

It's a good thing you can't get permanent residency, let alone citizenship! without speaking the local language. There are few countries in the world that hand out citizenship as cheaply as Germany.

B1 German is about 1 year of intensive studying from zero. With immersion and part-time commitment, I'd say ~3 years is a comfortable timeline to learn B1 German.

I am basing this off my personal experience of going from A1 -> A2 -> half-way through B1 (I dropped after I decided against studying in Germany, but my classmates continued the course). Given that German companies are known for excellent work-life balance, there should be enough spare time to learn German by the 5 year point.

All that being said, I imagine it's harder to learn a language when you have kids and family responsibilities.

My mate, learn German and be happy they don't ask for B2 or C1. If I move to China and want the nationality, it's absolutely normal that one expects me to speak Chinese.

As an Ausländer (who reached C1), I am surprised that you are not talking about the other actual and terrible problems the german society is facing: an aging population relying on immigrants to fill in the gaps, taxes everywhere without the advantages of a strong social system, a very expensive health system but with doctors almost prescribing you tea to fight cancer, crippling solitude inherent to the german culture which even spreads to immigrants -more than half of Berlin lives alone-, a housing market held by boomers and huge corporations (literally no houses below 200k€ in the whole country) which leaves you to rent your whole life to shelter your family, a pro-russia, pro-Afd east Germany vastly undevelopped and uneducated compared to the west. And also food, love, conversations. Germany often feels like the bad sides of northern Europe have been mixed with the bad sides of southern Europe.

And then the glass ceiling does not come at B1, but when you start to notice the difference in behaviour the Germans make between C1 and C2. If you want to pursue your whole career in this country, given how strong the german identity is, you will have to know every single subtlties of the language and culture if you are willing to compete for the next step in your career, for instance a management position.

Really, this country has been in a bad shape for at least five years now. Germany lived until now on its bounce after the reunification, the money poured by the Americans after the war and cheap russian gas. Now it feels like the bill other european countries always had to pay in the last decades has been finally handed to Germany.

> literally no houses below 200k€ in the whole country

There are some below 100k but it's in Marxloh. In Berlin, there are still some below 250k in the outskirt

> without the advantages of a strong social system

Wut? Germany is socialism personified.

You should check Norway, Denmark, France or even Turkey

I lived in Germany for seven years and by the end I was fluent. B1 is a very low bar to pass, I know because I've done it.

Sorry to say, but the rule is fair. If you want to be a permanent resident, put in a little bit of effort to integrate into the country that you would like to call home.

This. German really isn't that difficult for an English speaker. And if someone really wants to make a home and build a life in a foreign country, why would they expect that they don't need to learn the native language? That seems stunningly entitled to me.

In fairness, speaking the language is a reasonable bare minimum to obtain permanent residence and certainly a must citizenship in any countries.

AFAiK, in most European countries obtaining permanent residence requires at least 5 years of continued residence in the country so it is also a bad look in term of effort to integrate if a person still can't speak the language (maybe not perfectly but at least "good enough") after all that time.

> I’ve learned that there are many unwritten rules behind the scenes, and when you speak their language, you start to understand them.

That is true of every country.

Having B1 seems like a really lenient condition to get citizenship. I got B2 after 6 months of Erasmus, and I have B1 in Russian even though I never even stepped in the country.

Have you even tried to learn German, and if so what is so hard that you can't even get B1, although you stayed long enough to have kids speaking natively the language?

> suddenly the final decision is not what was agreed upon in the meeting.

Are you sure you're not reading too much into that? I've witnessed plenty of times (in the USA) that agreements of a meeting were later 'forgotten' (no doubt often indeed due to poor memory). To the point that it was best to insist on a written record of a meeting.

Well I am an Indian who lived in US and worked for top companies for 10 years and left back to my home country as I did not want to be beholden to the Green card waiting time or take some unethical pathways (I see a lot of abuse of O1 now). I find coworkers from smaller and friendlier countries sail through and become Americans.

The point is that immigration can never really become a true meritocracy and even I recognised the privileges I had to reach to US in the first place. The country's ethos, ideas are grandfathered into the law alongwith numerous loopholes or sneaky ways. There is never a social compact where I did X , I deserve Y coming true. I suspect globally we are at the tail end of this type of immigration from Global South to Global North as well

You can also take a Bildungsurlaub (educational leave, 5 days a year or 10 days every two years) and take a German course. For a two week course with private tutoring it's like 1k, which at your income level is not much. A lot of bureaucracy in Germany becomes a lot easier once you get over the B1 hump.

> We bought our first home without fully understanding the laws, the government system, or the tax rules.

That's bizarre. In Germany about half the population rents their primary dwelling; many life-long. There's really no rush to buy real estate here.

(not that anybody would fully understand the tax rules)

[too late to edit] I do realize that it might be more challenging to rent as a foreigner, particularly if you don't speak German well.

"So first things first: regardless of how much you contribute to the country, German is a must today if you want to obtain residency and stabilize your life here."

You should look the other way around. The country is contributing to YOU. You are profitting from Germany.

What other country looks appealing?

I get the whole “speak the native language” but seems like the appealing countries speak a language most of the world doesn’t care about.

The number of countries with English as the main/official language that are desirable and open to immigrants seems really small.

what’s in the list?

I was under the impression that English speaking countries are by far the most desirable for immigrants.

Most people don't care that the current US, or UK governments are a mess, because grass isn't exactly greener back at home.

And there are quite a few more English speaking countries that have their own issues, but don't get so much negative press online. (Ireland and Canada have housing crisis, but sound fine otherwise. Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand surely have their own issues that I don't know about)

Ireland seems to be hostile to immigrants. Singapore is well run but not to everyone's taste. Are the others really any better than the UK?

Honestly, that even highly educated people are complaining about a host country attaching bare minimums to handing out its citizenry (I.e. the right to vote, welfare) is all the more reason to attach them in the first place.

B1 in any language is a low standard. It being a major hurdle seems unlikely.

> (sorry for mentioning the TC, but there is a reason for it ....

sorry to nitpick on this, but the story did not expand on this despite the pronouncement that there is a reason. Maybe it was subtle, but then let it be subtle.

Are you just using LLM to process your text or are you a LLM itself?

> life is short—play naked!

Such a concise way of saying what I've been thinking for a long time.

There is yet another angle that people don't like to discuss because it is uncomfortable. Every European nation state is built around ethnicity as the bedrock of society. This makes it nigh on impossible to integrate fully in these countries.

The way this manifests is different in each country, but the fundamental reason is the same. In the german case, take the words of Messut Ozil, the former footballer - when the German team wins, he is German. Lose, and he is the immigrant. He is ethnically Turkish, i.e. not ethnically German.

The same will apply to your kids as well.

I want to be clear, not every German person is a frothing racist, i would argue that the racists are a minority. It is, however, important to note that the reactions of the individual and the reactions of society can be different, sometimes polar opposites.

In sharp contrast to this are the US and Canada, where there is no shared definition of "white" even though the majority of their populations are ethnically European. In that case, "European" spans everything from Irish and Greek, to French and Austrian. Less than a hundred years back, Irish people were not seen as white. Today, that idea is laughable. The fundamental difference between the US and Canada on one side and German or european society on the other is that the old world is built around exclusion, while the new world is built around inclusion.

This is one important reason why skilled immigrants leave europe, and is also why i left.

> Every European nation state is built around ethnicity as the bedrock of society.

What do you mean by it being the bedrock of society? I haven't found ethnicity to be an important part about being a citizen here at all.

> A nation state, or nation-state, is a political entity in which the state (a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory) and the nation (a community based on a common identity) are congruent.

The traditional view taught in history books is as follows:

> Before the french revolution, states extended as far as their kings' military power allowed them to, and the king derived his claim to power from god.

> After the french revolution, states formed around the concept of a common shared ethnicity, language, and culture (nation), with the claim to power deriving from the people.

> This shared national identity was instrumental to the unification of many separate kingdoms into the German confederation.

EDIT: That view is not necessarily correct (see the comments below), but it is what most people will have learnt in school

YSK: This is a disputed view. Wether nation comes first, or the state, is something academic historians don’t agree on.

While it sort-of fits if you limit it to France, it breaks down even when you cross the border to Germany.

Three different countries speak German as their official language, and Germany itself wasn’t really a nation-state until Nazism. It was a multi-ethnic empire before that, and a bunch of random kingdoms and ducheys before that. And after 1945, it was not a nation-state either, since it was somewhat famously 2 states.

> I want to be clear, not every German person is a frothing racist, i would argue that...

Of course not every German has fallen into the abyss of such insanity, but sorry to inform you (for those that have never been), way too many have. There are also levels to it as well, where various people may not be so open about it, but very much embrace and practice it. This then is reflected in housing, jobs, or even nightclubs.

> The way this manifests is different in each country, but the fundamental reason is the same...

While in agreement with this argument, the levels of hostility can be very different, depending on the European country. Views and treatment of other people in regards to color or xenophobia in the Netherlands, Germany, or the Czech Republic can be wildly different.

The US and Canada should not be viewed as better, but how things manifest themselves are different, which can result in different experiences and outcomes. Maybe better or maybe even worse.

You’re right but I think the US/Canada are just exceptions. Essentially every other nation on earth (not just Europe) is what you describe Europe to be.

Most natively born Europeans are never accepted as fully worthy members of their community either.

> In sharp contrast to this are the US and Canada, where there is no shared definition of "white" even though the majority of their populations are ethnically European.

I think you've got this turned around. In the US and Canada "white" is all you have. In Germany you have Germans, in France you have French, in the US, you have "white," which usually means "untraceable white mutt, at least one grandparent didn't speak English, don't be surprised if they're a bit Lebanese, Indian or Mexican."

The difference between Europe and the US is that in the US, the only important thing is not to be black. Europe's hostility is more finely tuned because they have more culture and community to protect (more continuity, more history, etc.)

Once that's gone, it's gone. Greece can't get back its Greekness by importing more Greeks, whereas the US (and the other Anglosphere colonies) can get more white by taking in anyone who isn't black. The colonies are places that often started by being filled with British prisoners; i.e. standards were nil. The standard was that you were white, could kill natives, and in the US, catch slaves.

The lack of an overarching culture in the US is probably why slave and ex-slave culture had such an outsized influence. It's uniquely American.

I've been living in the US for over 60 years and don't recognize the country you are describing.

Mesut Özil was himself very German until he retired and saw the potential in cozying up to Erdoğan. Now he's a nationalist.

I thought if you have a blue card A1 is suffice?

> Story 2: In an international working environment, German may not matter much at the IC level. But I’ve seen countless situations where Germans exchange a glance with each other, and suddenly the final decision is not what was agreed upon in the meeting. Over time, I’ve learned that there are many unwritten rules behind the scenes, and when you speak their language, you start to understand them.

I mean, how many CEOs of major German companies are non-German? The country does seem much more insular than the Anglosphere.

> I mean, how many CEOs of major German companies are non-German?

A quick headcount says Mercedes, Adidas, Bayer,...

https://www.consultancy.eu/news/1605/one-third-of-executives...

It pays off to do the actual research before passing judgment.

CEO of Mercedes was born in Sweden to Swedish parents; has blue eyes. CEO of Adidas has a Norwegian father and grew up in Norway; has pale skin, reddish-blonde hair and blue eyes. CEO of Bayer was born and raised in the US. Last name is "Anderson". Has pale skin and blue eyes. Two of them could pass as German (at least until they started talking): most Norwegians don't really look like Germans and the CEO of Adidas is no exception.

Now let's do the top 5 companies in the US (by market cap). CEO of NVidia was born in Taiwan to Chinese parents and immigrated to the United States as a child. CEO of Google was born in India to Indian parents, came to the US after college. ditto CEO of Microsoft. CEOs of Apple and Amazon are a white men who grew up in the US.

Yeah, my wife speaks German and can easily understand Swedish (and probably Norwegian). There’s not a big cultural and linguistic for a Norwegian to come into a German company. It’s like an Australian coming into an American company.

Why does every country in the world have to look like the US?

I wasn't making a value judgement. I was just curious.

I live in Austria, and from my experience it's the higher management that is almost exclusively native Austrians. But the highest (C-level) and lowest (IC-level) staff is international.

Germany is only another economic–region–state under the EU.

How dare they require you speak the local savages' hard language after you've already been working for a multinational corporation for six years.

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