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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 stand

• TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
  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.
  • DiskoHexyl 2mo ago
    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
  • dgs_sgd 2mo ago
    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.
    • parineum 2mo ago
      A country like the USA?
      • ryandrake 2mo ago
        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.
        • justacrow 2mo ago
          Any $200k+ SW engineering jobs?
          • marseysneed 2mo ago
            In the bay area you can get away with very little english proficiency
          • nkrisc 2mo ago
            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.
          • ang_cire 2mo ago
            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.
  • vachina 2mo ago
    Exactly. Your life will be easier if you have B1. Your correspondence with everything is in German.
  • moomoo11 2mo ago
    nah. i speak english and have zero interest in learning another language. english is the best language for business and everything else.
    • dbetteridge 2mo ago
      Then don't move to a country that has another language as a requirement?
• rurp 2mo ago
  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.
  • nkrisc 2mo ago
    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.
  • graemep 2mo ago
    > 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).
  • jonash54 2mo ago
    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
    • sdevonoes 2mo ago
      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.
• thenoblesunfish 2mo ago
  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.
• deleted 2mo ago
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• ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
  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.
• djaro 2mo ago
  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.
  • jeroenhd 2mo ago
    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.
    • sdevonoes 2mo ago
      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
• mananaysiempre 2mo ago
  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.
  • watwut 2mo ago
    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.
• totetsu 2mo ago
  [flagged]