Re:Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?
by pvaldes on Monday May 22, 2017 @04:37AM
(#14391944)
> Romanian, Bulgarian, Pakistani, etc. -- never learns Catalan even after two decades living there. They manage perfectly fine without Catalan.
What type of jobs is expected for them?
Re:Ask HN: What are the Madrid and Barcelona tech scenes like?
by Mediterraneo10 on Monday May 22, 2017 @06:25PM
(#14397376)
Romanians and Bulgarians work in an enormously broad range of fields from the most unlettered agricultural work to senior IT developers. Pakistanis run a lot of corner shops where you'd think they could easily learn Catalan, but so few ever do.
I wouldn't discourage the OP like that. Most of Barcelona's huge immigrant population -- Romanian, Bulgarian, Pakistani, etc. -- never learns Catalan even after two decades living there. They manage perfectly fine without Catalan, and become proficient in Castilian instead. (Of course, their children learn Catalan as they go through the local school system.)
Of course, I think it would be rude for a white collar person like the OP to move to Barcelona and never learn Catalan, but he could certainly move there and get by with Castilian for the first several months.