Writing to non-native speakers of English

I regularly meet people whose first language is English, who have no serious knowledge of any other language and yet have to communicate in writing with people all over the world.

It is hard for them to imagine the difficulties of working in one's second (or third) language. How could they know how to use English in a foreigner-friendly way?
British English and international (or world) English are not the same. Indeed, there are undoubtedly hundreds of identifiable Englishes. I am not an expert on that, although there is plenty of interesting information available on the subject.

We cannot expect and would not advise those monolingual communicators to use Euro-English or Afro-English, so what should they do?

I have personal experience of being the only first-language English person at a European sales conference. This was many years ago, but the problem has changed only in scale rather than in nature since then. When I did not understand a word a presenter used, I asked what it meant. This amused the assembled company who had not asked the same question because there was too much else that they had not understood. They made the reasonable, but mistaken, assumption that as a native English speaker I understood every word. One of the words in question was "Horeca". This meant, apparently, hotels, restaurants and cafes - in other words the market into which we were trying to sell lighting products. It was not a term that we used in the UK but the conference hosts assumed it to be international.

I tell this story because it illustrates how difficult it is for people who are based primarily in one country to know which expressions their readers from another country will understand. I have used the word "hassle" in the company of public sector staff in the Middle East and found that several of them had not come across it.

I believe that we first-language English speakers have been born with a massive advantage and that we should not be arrogant. We should make serious efforts to make ourselves understood in an international way when the occasion requires it, rather than expecting the world to guess at our linguistic peculiarities. If we can do this while retaining some individual style, that is a bonus. Above all let us try to be easy to understand.
If this little tale reminds you of personal experiences, please share them. I would love to hear of expressions you have confused people with - or been confused by. A collection of anecdotes could help me to add content to Grammar to Go which will help business people to communicate with their overseas colleagues.

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