By all means, let’s discuss language then, if you find it that important.
I am not an English major myself, so I can appreciate that it has some impact, but to me it’s a minor one, compared to many other problems.
By playing – and above all by building - in Muds, I have increased my own vocabulary, spelling, grammar and general language skills a lot. Sure, there were times in the past when I encountered words in Muds that I didn’t know the meaning of, and having to look them up in a dictionary slowed me down a bit. (For instance I didn’t have a clue what 'jerkin' or 'coif' meant).
But I don’t see that as a major handicap, compared to many other bigger issues.
Perhaps a better example would be a group of players we had from one of the former Soviet satellite states. Their English was so bad when they first started playing with us, that they seemed almost illiterate. But this did not perceptibly slow them down in advancing, in fact they were all typical ‘power players’ and they had obviously played other Muds before ours. Their main problem was that some other players mistook their bad English skills for stupidity, and started to banter them. This lead to mutual resentment, and eventually to some disastrous clashes that affected the entire Mud.
In spite of all this, the players stayed on, and their language skills steadily increased over the years. Today you cannot immediately perceive that they are not English, by ‘listening’ to them on the open channels. I don’t know how much part the Mud had in that, but it certainly had some. In fact you could argue that they didn't just 'waste' their time by playing a computer game - by playing that game they also increased their English skills. So maybe we even helped them to a ‘fairer’ life.
Incidentally I find players that drop capitals or punctuation, or use expressions like ‘R U stoopid?’ or ‘ I pwn U’ a lot more of a problem than those that don’t have English as their native language. Even in a RP enforced Mud, you could get past the problem by roleplaying a visitor from a foreign country. Since many roleplayers already adopt phoney accents, what’s wrong with playing a French Knight or a Bulgarian Ambassador?
And speaking of communication problems, we also have a couple of players that are blind. They never ask for any extra favours to compensate their handicap, (apart for some technical code things that could make things easier for them, like a toggle to turn off battle-spam and ascii maps). In fact I am amazed and impressed by how well they get along in the game.
Related to the communication issues is
typing skill, which I see as a much larger handicap than limited English. My own typing speed has increased a lot by mudding, but I still have to look at the keyboard, which undoubtedly puts me at a disadvantage against skilled typers in most situations, not just combat. But I regard this as my own fault for being too lazy to learn to type by the touch method, and not something that makes the game unfair.