Is English really able to function worldwid as a communicational's tool?

[Jan]

Working everyday among English spoken people , not only native English speakers, had convinced me about how little efficient communicatively English language is.
Don't you feel a little embarrassed when actually only native speakers and handful of others no native speakers could match minimum standards?
Jan

[Alan]

Hi Jan,

Your comment:

[Jamie (K)]

I think it's only inefficient as a communication medium when the people using it aren't up to minimum standards.

One of my friends found himself working in an international company where English was the official language. However, he couldn't use the full range of his very good English, because few people there would have understood him. So for him, English became inefficient simply due to the low level of his coworkers' English.

[Jan]

Good evening ( now I have here evening)

I certainly would be able to find and name from my professional career really many many examples, all my live is one big example.
Actually , I had changed my point of view from being very enthusiastic
to very sceptic purely under pressure of an everyday seaman's life.
English is now studied in my case longer than twenty years and I don't feel comfortable using it , I don't have any confident's feeling as as it was in case of German or even Russian.
Experience coming from my observations would be that the minimum standard is achieved mostly by people educated while young for considerable
long time in some of English spoken countries . It means three or four years school time.(some of them have even a pretentious ambitiousness
to be call native speakers with amusing effects for native English speakers).The rest of us would be able to come up to the required level only for some relatively short time after this we are fast taken back to "stoneage".
It is necessery when at all to talk about it to be very honest because only when we
are frank we would be close to the truth.
Try to see a bit over an English or American national interest.
I hope it would be the beginning of discussion no the end and it has little to do with any of my "obsessions"
Jan

[Jan]

I have today changed the radar display from chart mode to conning mode prior to request of a native English speaker to define present weather conditions. It was necessery to find only currently windforce, using the chance I have asked him how he understands a word conning.His answer "I don't know is it connected to weather",when explaining him what does mean, he mentioned submarines
( English navy named submarine towers as conning towers but not only)

Nothing like observation, contol over the ship or similar what could be close to subject.

I feel tired ... as long as just "foreigners" are involved I may trying to explain a lot
but when natives are coming on the scene than stay on alert (fear of every step) .

I would appreciate very much if you could point out any grammatical mistakes.
Jan