My guess is that he's talking about commenting code, not actually writing it.

I've had multiple coworkers remove comments or reject CRs because there were too many comments. If you foster a culture where comments are discouraged then it's less of an impediment

I mean you still have to comment on issues, and even within the code itself you need to name things in ways that make sense to others.

It's not that English specifically is required to do this, but if the organization is American it does seem like English would be the default and proficiency would be pretty important.

Is that a culture you want to foster, though?

I can say that I didn't agree with it. But that's what lead devs were pushing. The common mentality among devs is that releasing is more important than building something sustainable.

> there were too many comments

I didn't even knew this was a thing. I write tons of comments thinking they could be appreciated in case somebody has to glance at the code.

for example, if they need to create a class or a function, how do they name it ? I live in the non English speaking world, I had to learn a minimum of English to be able understand, reason about and write code.