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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

>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.

> 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.

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.

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.

> 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.

A country like the USA?

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...

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

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?

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.

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

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."

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.

People will understand the words even with imperfect pronunciation which varies across a country, and I don't think B1 tests for this. In German the certification for B1 is basic to achieve even for people from different language families (alphabet familiarity is a big plus) especially if they already speak English.

Countries expect basic proficiency in the local language because they expect new citizens to integrate, not create isolated bubbles. At some point having a large mass of citizens unable to speak the local language starts being a burden on the whole society. They go to the hospital or to the authorities where they have to be provided with a service, and then it becomes a problem for the ones having to perform it.

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.

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.

> 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!

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.

> 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.