What German level is needed to work in Germany?
Currently, expats need a B1 (lower intermediate) level in German to be able to work directly in the country without a pre-settled agreement with an employer, to apply for a vocational apprenticeship, and to obtain permanent residence.
With only an A1 level (elementary), a foreigner is allowed to study for an English-medium course at a German university. Without any German skills, a student can get an internship or work placement in the country for a maximum of 90 days.
While there is no legal proficiency requirement if you have a pre-settled contract with a specific employer, it remains difficult to obtain jobs without any knowledge of German. Only very high-level technical jobs, like IT experts and research scientists, can usually bypass language requirements.
A new learner can attain an A1 level with 60-70 hours of guided learning, and B1 requires 250-300 hours. If an expat is learning German part-time, it should take 3-6 months to reach A1 and 1-1.5 years to attain B1. The official German proficiency exams are administered by the Goethe Institut. This cultural institution also offers classes in most countries around the world.
Why can't English easily be an administrative language in Germany?
According to the EF English Proficiency Index 2021, Germany is among the top 10 countries in the world with the most fluent non-native English speakers. Over half of the population is fluent in English, with a greater concentration in large cosmopolitan cities (the capital Berlin, Düsseldorf, Bavaria, Hamburg & North-Rhine Westphalia). Despite this, all administrative procedures are carried out in only German, the mother tongue of 95% of the population.
Germany is the most economically powerful country in the European Union, and the EU is strongly committed to multilingualism. The EU has 24 official languages, and all of its new legislation needs to be translated into them. According to an EU brief about linguistic diversity published in April 2022, multilingualism preserves member countries' cultural identity and is a symbol of their sovereignty within the union.
Furthermore, conducting administration in a foreign language is difficult because legal translation is very tricky. Legal concepts vary widely between countries with different histories, political systems, constitutions and codes of law. For example, according to the professional translator Rosalyn Newell on her blog The Translator's Teacup, the German legal term GmbH (“company with limited liability”) is impossible to translate into an American or British concept. As it exists only in German, Austrian, Swiss and Liechtensteinian law, it cannot be equated with “Ltd” and should be left in the original language.
The German Civil Servants' Association has warned that not all offices across Germany will be well-equipped to deal with a massive amount of legal translation. Germany's situation is different from that of countries whose political systems used multiple languages from their early nation-building days. For example, it was easier for Canada to enshrine administrative bilingualism in 1969 because Quebec had legal documents in French since the 15th century.
According to the Germany-based website, I Am Expat, the regions of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt lag behind in the number of English speakers. While cosmopolitan cities may legislate city-wide bilingual administration, it might prove unproductive to extend it to areas with fewer expats and English speakers.
Currently, the German government requires foreigners to hire a professional translator at their own cost to translate their documents before applying for a student visa, a permanent resident visa, a job, etc. The German Civil Servants' Association thinks that it is unrealistic to transfer that responsibility to German offices, which would become overwhelmed with bureaucracy.
Do other countries have similar language proficiency requirements?
The case of Germany is comparable to many other countries. English is not an official language in most of South America, with the exception of former British colonies like Jamaica and Suriname. In Europe, it is an official language in only the UK, Ireland and Malta. As for Africa, half of the continent uses English officially. Most of North and West Africa doesn't, as it's a region more historically connected by the lingua francas of Arabic or French.
In Asia, South Asian countries, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea use English as a legal, administrative and professional language because of their colonial pasts. Meanwhile, East Asia and Southeast Asia rely on their own local language.
The Middle East has a mixed situation: while countries in North Africa don't use English much, wealthy Gulf countries (UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia) and Israel have had large expat populations for so long that many workplaces and social circles mainly use English. An expat can thrive there without knowing any Arabic or Hebrew.
Many European countries have similar language requirements to Germany. For instance, France also requires a B1 level in French for most jobs and a permanent residence permit. Some of Europe's countries have lower requirements, as is the case of Scandinavian nations and Italy, which demand only A2 (upper elementary) for long-term residence. A2 corresponds to the C level of Sweden's SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) course, which is offered free of charge to most new migrants/expats.
Turning our gaze to East Asia, China has its own proficiency scale for Chinese, the HSK. An HSK 4, the equivalent of a B1, is the requirement of most workplaces and of the permanent resident permit. In contrast, its neighbor Japan has no official language requirement. Even so, learning Japanese as an expat is important to connect with people as English proficiency is low there (less than 8% according to Foreign Policy).
The same is true of many Latin American countries: while many do not have a Spanish requirement for residence, it's important to know the language to socialize beyond “expat bubbles” and truly experience the culture.
