Comment by littlecranky67

As a german living in spain, i feel your pain. While I do speak spanish around B1/B2 level, it took a lot of time and effort - probably the biggest effort in learning something after uni. People are often "you should speak the language if you life there" - yes, agreed. BUT: Hell, if you are a professional entrepreneur, you are already not working 40h week but way more. If in your day job you speak english anyway because it is international, you hardly practice it. Especially in the EU we are taught that we can move freely between nation states - but reality of learning a language takes years. I learned english at age 10, so am practicing for over 30 years now and still learning and anybody could spot that I am not a native speaker. Countries that rely on foreign labour and advertise agressively on skilled immigration (such as Germany does) should not have those strict language requirements. Especially since german itself is a very difficult language.