Fluent english speaker wonders about job in non-english

emanon

Hi,
I have about 10 years experience in Navision from the 3.x up to Attain (or MBS) 4

I´m thinking about changing countries but I want to go to a non English speaking country (Not America,Australia,England). How much of a barrier is it ?

Please share your experience with me, in private if you don´t want to post to the forum.

Thank you,
Emanon

Administrator

[Topic moved from Jobs Wanted to General Chat forum]

Marije_Brummel

You can easily come to holland. Everyone doing NAV speaks english and on large implementation it is no problem.

While here you can start learning dutch.

David_Singleton

emanon wrote:

Hi,
I have about 10 years experience in Navision from the 3.x up to Attain (or MBS) 4

I´m thinking about changing countries but I want to go to a non English speaking country (Not America,Australia,England). How much of a barrier is it ?

Please share your experience with me, in private if you don´t want to post to the forum.

Thank you,
Emanon

Hi emanon,
I was very interested to see this topic, and glad to now have a chance to reply.

Basically my introduction to Navision was in the former Czechoslovakia. I implemented the first official version of Navision sold in the former communist block countries. I was given the Austrian (basically German minus Datev) version of Navision and had to semi localize it to Czech. At the time I spoke ZERO Czech and enough German to order Bier und Schnizel mit Kartoflen. (We did eventually get a so called English version to work with).

The implementation was such a success that we started to localize Navision for other countries, seven in all. I traveled all over Europe, and non of the countries I worked in were Native English countries, till I eventually started working in London.

It was a great experience. Although the language barrier was a bit of an issue, I think it was not insurmountable, and definitely I would do it again.

Go for it, go to a country where there is very little English spoken, you will love it.

I hope more people will reply to this thread with their experiences, because I am very interested to hear what everyone else thinks, and more importantly from those that have done it.


PS thanks Luc and Alain

David_Singleton

Oh, and the languages I had to work in were Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Latvian, Russian, Slovenian and of course English and German.

My Czech is now pretty much fluent, though my Hungarian ends at "nem tudom magyarol".

kriki

David Singleton wrote:

"nem tudom magyarol".

I suppose it means "I don't understand Hungarian?"

Some remark the Netherlands and Flanders: I've heard a few times that Dutch is one of the most difficult languages to learn. But it helps to understand something if you understand English or German. Also in Flanders, most people doing NAV speak English.

In Italy it is quite a problem. Most people working with NAV have only a basic understanding of English. And outside NAV, you are lucky finding someone who speaks English. This is improving with the youngest generation.
In general, not speaking Italian can be a problem in Italy outside the tourist centres.
I remember (some months ago) a person working in Italy and not speaking Italian but only English. At a certain point his wife had to go to the hospital for some visit. They didn't speak Italian and the doctor spoke ONLY Italian. To solve the problem, he phoned an Italian colleague (that knows English) at work to act as interpreter by phone!

David_Singleton

kriki wrote:

David Singleton wrote:

"nem tudom magyarol".

I suppose it means "I don't understand Hungarian?"

Some remark the Netherlands and Flanders: I've heard a few times that Dutch is one of the most difficult languages to learn. ...

you might want to try to learn Hungarian, Finish or Estonian before you make that remark. :shock: you would suddenly see that Dutch is not so hard.

Anyway back on topic, I feel that living in a country where you don't speak the language is not a major problem, but I would say that its something for a single person, as I couldn't imagine the difficulties of bringing a husband or wife also into such an environment (children though would not be a problem).

The thing is that you will have so much to offer in terms of your knowledge of Navision, that the language will not be a stopping point.

Go For It!

David_Singleton

emanon wrote:

...I´m thinking about changing countries but I want to go to a non English speaking country (Not America,Australia,England)....
Emanon

One more question Emanon.

Do you have an idea which country you would like to move to?

emanon

No.
Central Europe sounds most interesting to me but am open for possibilities.

Waldo

David Singleton wrote:

kriki wrote:

David Singleton wrote:

"nem tudom magyarol".

I suppose it means "I don't understand Hungarian?"

Some remark the Netherlands and Flanders: I've heard a few times that Dutch is one of the most difficult languages to learn. ...

you might want to try to learn Hungarian, Finish or Estonian before you make that remark. :shock: you would suddenly see that Dutch is not so hard.

Dutch is easy (even I can do it). Flemish is the real challenge .

Anyway ...
I only have a three month experience with my traineeship. I went to Finland. Based on that experience, if I would ever move to another country ... indeed ... it would be a non-English speaking country as well.

(by the way, I created a program that tests and analyzes "jumps" on a force platform. It is used by both the Finnish and Norwegian Ski Jumping Team for their jump analysis ... it is clear how I rolled into NAV, isn't it )

David_Singleton

Waldo wrote:

... Dutch is easy (even I can do it). Flemish is the real challenge ...

Yes I have heard that, but I was replying to this:

kriki wrote:

...I've heard a few times that Dutch is one of the most difficult languages to learn. ...

Waldo

I know ... and I was just taking Flemish into the picture

DenSter

Waldo wrote:

I know ... and I was just taking Flemish into the picture

Flemish is almost Dutch. I could voice my opinion why Belgian people speak almost Dutch instead of Dutch, but that would turn into an ugly fight

Waldo

Well ... Dutch is almost Flemish you mean ..

David_Singleton

Waldo wrote:

I know ... and I was just taking Flemish into the picture

I gotcha. Sorry I misunderstood.

Interestingly most people if asked what is the hardest language to learn will normally mention either a/ a language they speak fluently or b/ one they tried to learn but failed. In the case of a/ the reason is that if you speak a language fluently, you hear all the mistakes made by someone that speaks the language very well, so in our minds we assume it must be a hard language to learn.

English is often said to be very hard to learn, but that really isn't true, though its is hard to perfect, the fact that there are so many people to speak with give everyone the chance to speak it pretty well. On the other hand, because there are so many people trying to learn it, any "polls" will always list English as hard to learn, but that's just statistics. Czech for instance is probably the hardest of all Slavic languages, but still is no where near as difficult to learn as Hungarian. Still more people list Russian as harder to learn than either Czech or Hungarian, simply because less people try to learn it. Also being "Hard To Learn" does not mean it is a complex language. Chinese for example is grammatically very simple but that does not mean it is an easy language to learn (especially if you plan to write it as well).

David_Singleton

emanon wrote:

No.
Central Europe sounds most interesting to me but am open for possibilities.

Anyway back on topic.

The first question is : "is a major reason for moving to an non-english speaking country" because

a/ Cultural and language, in that you want the opportunity to experience somethign different?
b/ Because you have something to offer that will make you unique and give you an edge?
c/ Some other reason?

if a/ then Central Europe is a great place. It is fun to learn a non main stream language, though the culture in most of Central Europe is not that much different to Western Europe, and it is the EU these days anyway. definitely though its still a lot different to the life in Denmark.

b/ Then Central Europe is too late. The costs here are ridiculously high, and the salaries are not commensurate to the cost of living. Personally if you want to build a future then my bet would be on China or India, though of course India being an English speaking country does not fit with your first request. Opportunities would still exist a bit further east say to Ukraine, where opportunities are still there for people with "Western" ideas.

c/ ???

Miklos_Hollender

Before I came to the UK I talked with two solution centers in Holland and the general impression was that although speaking Dutch isn't required it's a clear advantage and if they can they would rather choose a candidate who does. Same thing in Germany at a big sports shoes company, you surely know who I mean *wink*

Now I'll stay here for a year and then move to Austria - has great food, is close to Hungary, there are many advantages from my point of view - and I'm studying German like crazy as it seems it is a must.

A sidenote. One can get quite lonely in a foreign country even if you speak the language, as you don't have childhood friends around, people think you don't have much sense of humour because you don't understand the jokes that reference local TV sitcoms that they saw but you not etc. If you don't even speak the local language, that's like condemning yourself to a solitary lifestyle.

Vartan0408

Hi great question;

Don't worry about that, in the low countries (BE & NL); almost everyone speaks more than enough English; Even the french native speakers from our IT Department or Consultants do everything in English. And if you want to work close with the Sales Department; I can't imagine a Sales Person in a blue chip company not being able to speak the language of Shakespeare...

kapamarou

You can also come to Greece. People who don't speak English here are rare to find...

And you can enjoy also the sea and the sun from May to late September !!!

kriki

kapamarou wrote:

You can also come to Greece. People who don't speak English here are rare to find...

And how is this possible? The TV-programs are NOT dubbed into the local language, but subtitled in the local language!

kapamarou

kriki wrote:

kapamarou wrote:

You can also come to Greece. People who don't speak English here are rare to find...

And how is this possible? The TV-programs are NOT dubbed into the local language, but subtitled in the local language!

First of all because it is really bad to change the voices of the actors... [-X

Here in public schools children take foreign languages courses, and since the age of 7 or 8 they start learning at least English.

When you look for a job here, English is a prerequisite and knowledge of additional languages is a plus.

You've been here? If you have, did you have an difficulties communicating with people.

You can easily come and work here, but you could earn more money by opening a private company teaching foreign languages to children. It would pay better...

kriki

I've been in Greece the first time on my honeymoon-cruise to see some Greek islands in a short time.
And because we liked is so much we we came back on vacation for 2 weeks on 2 different islands ([anti]-Paros and then Ios).
And we didn't have any problem communicating.
And we plan to come back again! We still have to see some islands and also the main land. And also my little daughter didn't see Greece yet.