Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

I agree with this totally and I am a native English speaker. English often has many confusing and ambiguous terms that can only be known by having a very well developed sense of context.

Have many non-native English speaking friends, I understand their difficulty with the language. When communicating with my friends I try and choose appropriate words to avoid misunderstanding until I can grasp the level at which they understand English. It bothers me when I see other people communicate to non-english speakers and they either get irritated or they don't understand how what they said could be misunderstood. It is as if they've never evaluated the difficulty of their own language.

Then it gets even worse because in casual conversation people will throw in all kinds of slang and just totally made up words. As native English speakers you can pick them apart and get an idea of what's happening even if you don't know the specific slang. A non-native speaker has no hope at all.

With all communication it's important to know your audience and address them in a way they can understand.

I'm a native English speaker and I find the use of colloquialisms, abbreviations, and the like frustrating as well. There is no good reason to not take care in the choice of words when communicating in a professional setting, regardless of the language used or the native language(s) audience receiving the communication.

I try to work really hard on not using too many idioms and sayings in slack. Same goes for memes specific to American culture. Or if I use one accidentally, define the meaning.

OTOH sometimes other native English speakers get frustrated with this, and I’ll hear feedback like “YES WE KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS” when in reality this person is just speaking for themselves...

It’s a tricky balance because if I know someone has a shared cultural context, idioms, etc can make the communication more fluid, efficient etc. So I find it’s a constant calibration.

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.

This explains a lot. I only speak English, but I've been working on communicating more clearly. I used to provide a lot of backstory/context when talking because I wanted people to know how to interpret what I was about to say. It turns out the real problem was me not speaking plainly and simply. When you use the right words people are more likely to take what you say at face value (that's probably a phrase I shouldn't use) rather than assume some interpretation of it.

English is a very flexible and expressive language, but those features aren't what you want to use for precise communication.