By continuing you agree to eChinacities's Privacy Policy .
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
Q: Are there foreigners who use Chinese as their only means of communication at work?
Just wondering, are there foreigners who only use Chinese, no English, French etc, at their work place here in China? By this I mean handling e-mails, other documents, report writing, computations/calculations, holding meetings and doing just every thing in Chinese a 100% of their time at work. I'm counting out translation & interpretation work. And my focus is not on those who might have come to China when they were 5, grew up and attended all their education here, but I mean someone who comes to China, say at the age of 20, 25, 30 and starts learning the language. If there are any, how many years did they spend on their language training to acquire such levels of proficiency?
11 years 47 weeks ago in Business & Jobs - China
No that will never happen because that will just be eliminating all of that employees' potential which is to speak CHinese and their native language. Why in the world would someone only speak, write and communicate with others in only one language when they can do both?
Although it is possible, the likeliness of this is almost nonexistent. I say this because if there is a Chinese person who can do the job, they will get it, not a foreigner. If they need a foreigner to do the job, the foreigner will not need to be so good at Chinese to get the job done. These types of jobs will probably pay very low, and a foreigner may not even want the job because of that.
And if for no other reason, despite being proficient in Chinese, Chinese coworkers will probably send emails and things in English and will speak to the foreigner in English for multiple reasons.
I am sure there are foreigners who have a good enough level of chinese to use it as the sole means of communication, I for one use it at almost 95%, even for written, the exceptions are when I need to communicate with my boss and when I need something important in written form done without any misunderstanding.
