[anthonj]

I think there is also a chicken-egg problem in almost every country that doesn't use English as official language:

If you are not an engineer you must have an almost excellent level of local language --> an excellent level of a language is only possible if you are immersed daily over a long time and have the time to study --> to live there you need a job --> back to start

Different counties have different tolerances regarding how quick you pick up the local language. For Germany and France this tolerance is almost 0, for Netherlands it's much higher.

[prolly97]

Anecdotally I've noticed that among the coworkers I've had from other countries, the ones who manage to learn danish and stay, have generally been in areas with lower density of foreign workers.

My theory is that in areas with lower densities of foreign nationals, you'd benefit more socially form learning the local language.

[bossyTeacher]

This makes sense. By default, foreigners stick with their fellow countrymen pretty much everywhere. Not having them around gives foreigners a reason to socialise outside their bubble. I believe this is the reason why Denmark has the so called guetto laws.

[rawbot]

In Germany, if you are an non-software Engineer, you MUST have an excellent level of the language. I have not seen a single Engineering position that doesn't require C1.

[anthonj]

I know some electronic and mech engineers with no german skills, but it's always in young startup in major cities.

[aleph_minus_one]

> If you are not an engineer you must have an almost excellent level of local language --> an excellent level of a language is only possible if you are immersed daily over a long time and have the time to study

I disagree: for many jobs, it is expected that you have a decent level of English, but at least in Germany, you are often not immersed a lot in English. So you have to get decent in English with barely any immersion.

I thus have a feeling that because many Germans had to learn hard to get somewhat decent in English on their own, they have the same expectation on immigrants to learn really hard on their own to get good in German fast (without demanding immersion).

[eldaisfish]

Your argument ignores one important aspect - incentives.

English is the global lingua franca, hence the incentive to learn English is incredibly strong. Outside of Germany, what exact benefit does the German language get you?

[aleph_minus_one]

> Outside of Germany, what exact benefit does the German language get you?

German is also official language in Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. In many neighbouring countries it is also often well-understood and/or there exist language minorities.

> English is the global lingua franca

From my professional experience I can tell that depending on the countries or persons from countries that you deal with, Spanish, French, Russian or Chinese can be much more important than English.

So, calling English the global lingua franca is in my opinion rather based on a selection bias on specific countries.

[hunterpayne]

"So, calling English the global lingua franca is in my opinion rather based on a selection bias on specific countries."

In software, if you don't speak English, you don't really exist. Same for pilots and some other industries. Spanish programmers will need to learn English even for jobs in Spain. I have no idea what you are talking about.

[graemep]

Other big industries. Finance and banking switches to English the moment you deal with anything international. Academic publications and conferences in many fields are heavily tilted towards English. You have more specialist textbooks in English than in any other language in many fields.

[aleph_minus_one]

> In software, if you don't speak English, you don't really exist. Same for pilots and some other industries. Spanish programmers will need to learn English even for jobs in Spain. I have no idea what you are talking about.

I know from programmers from Russia that in this country, you can pretty much do software development without knowing any English, Russian suffices (to the surprise of programmers from other countries). This is also why it cannot taken for granted that a programmer who comes from Russia knows English (at least more than minimal, shallow knowledge from school).

I heard similar things about programmers in China.

[throw-the-towel]

Can confirm. Many a time my colleagues tried to write some comments in English, and the result was so broken I wished they hadn't even tried.

[hunterpayne]

Dude, software itself is written in English, not just English but it is most often (but not always) encoded in a character set that is English specific (can't even do French). The docs for every single platform, API and language are in English. You can get translations for some stuff and auto-translate the rest. But you can't even file a bug without English. The people you know probably don't write software, they are probably using computers to scam people and deploy software written by others to aid in that.

[anthonj]

Some level of english is required in every country. And you are exposed to it quite frequently in a way or the other (which european country doest start teaching it from elementary school? ). My uni required me to follow course in english and write and defend a thesis in English. You are exposed to english a lot. And on top of that it's a simple lanuge.

Try to lean polish, or chinese. Or german as a Japanese native. Won't be that easy.

[aleph_minus_one]

> which european country doest start teaching [English] from elementary school?

I never had English lessons in primary school (Germany), and as far as I am aware, English lessons in primary school are still not that common.

> You are exposed to english a lot.

This is not my experience.

> And on top of that it's a simple lanuge.

Getting some elementary, broken knowledge of English is not very hard (English is more forgiving here than German or Russian). Getting good in English is insanely hard (much harder than for many other languages like French).

> Try to lean polish, or chinese. [...] Won't be that easy.

For me, finding a (near-)native speaker for widespread languages would be rather easy:

Option 1: I work for an international company. Thus finding someone who is either native speaker or at least very good in the respective language would not be hard.

Option 2: You are aware of "superconnectors", i.e. the persons who know "everybody"? Well, I know a few of these people. Just give one of them a call: "Hey, do you know someone cool who speaks language X well and is willing to serve as a teacher for Y hours/week? For this, I am willing, for example, to teach this person programming or whatever this person wants."

The non-easy part is just finding the necessary time for learning the respective language.

[nikanj]

The same problem also exists in countries that use English as their first language. If you don't speak passable english, you will have a hard time integrating or finding an engineering job.