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Comment by NikolaeVarius | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrible title and a terrible article.

The claims made here are tied to the fact that English is more or less the primary language of international business. Its well known that people who learn secondary languages tend to know the "rules" around the language and tend to be more specific when using secondary languages.

Its pretty weird for the article to conflate using slang/abbreviations/language tied to cultural norms from a primary speaker as being unable to communicate.

Other languages have built in cultural connotations that pretty much only matter within their specific culture that doesn't really make sense outside of it.

Sure when knowingly speaking to a multicultural audience, its probably for the best to not use idioms and such, but the failures of communication is not tied to the fact that English is being used.

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I wonder where you are from, I for one really recognize this. N=1 but my native speaking colleague indeed dominates meetings. Of course personality is also a factor, but she also talks at incredible speeds in fancy ways that are almost hypnotic. It has made her our fall back when talking needs to be done. But in fact I sometimes feel that I should have conveyed a message myself because she gets the point I wanted to make slightly wrong in worrying ways.

On a different note, we always jokingly use Dutch saying in English:

* Stop stabbing the dragon with me!

* Ah there comes the monkey out of the sleeve!

Ah, well, the more cultures, the merrier!

You're missing the point of the article. If you're Scottish, it's probably hard to not use local flavor when talking, and thus it's hard for an international audience to understand. Even if you know the audience is international. It's just the way you talk.

If you're from Portugal, and you speak English, you're mostly not using some local flavor Portuguese words or expressions or jokes because they wouldn't make sense in English. So you speak simply and you're easy to understand.

> Other languages have built in cultural connotations that pretty much only matter within their specific culture that doesn't really make sense outside of it.

I once was trying to contact an engineer that had worked on a project before me. Their last name in git was just "R". After some searching and asking another colleague I found out that this is a special last name that is abbreviated that way.

I think the problem is that the way English phrases things is often completely bizarre compared to virtually any other language, which is confusing, as a seemingly straightforward sentence may imply something completely unexpected.

I think it might be because of its lack of real grammatical topic, which is otherwise ubiquitous and often more important than the subject.

I think a lot of this odd structuring is due to English leaning heavily on borrowed forms and rules that really have no ties to the underlying language.

Not that I'm blaming the language, just think it's curious at how many conflicting and skewed rules have just become a part of the language over hundreds of years.

Yeah, it gives the language ambiguity and nuance. It's pretty flipping valuable for the day to day poetry of the language. I personally derive a lot of humour from the ambiguity of the language.

I do recall a colleague of mine who was trying to learn English. He said I was one of the more difficult english speakers he'd ever met. It was fun to try to reel that in to be more clear. Eventually I just directed him to the urban dictionary.

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