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>understand almost everything said...

If by 'almost everything', you mean stuff that a non native English speaker could have understood anyway, then yes.



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> Everybody knows ...

Especially non-native English speakers, right.


> especially for a non English speaker

If you don't speak English, every word will be confusing.


Are you not a native English speaker? I'm a native English speaker, and the meaning of everything was immediately obvious to me. In fact, I've heard similar constructs used in English before.

Aye, he Accidentally the whole English language.

Though given the article, the title can be construed to make sense, albeit still badly worded.


If someone does NOT understand English very well, sometimes he understands other things... just like this guy.

>In English, on the other hand, it is very easy to write non-idiomatic sentences or spell things completely wrong without noticing if you are not hinted by some fluent speaker.

This is the big strength of English. Even when you completely mess it up the person on the other side can usually understand what you are saying. Also native English speakers are quite tolerant of non-native speakers making a mess of the language - while we expect everyone to speak English, we don’t expect you will speak it without mistakes.


> You likely read/write English better than a native English speaker already.

Kinda by definition this can't be correct. English is defined by what the native speakers speak. It might be that sometimes how they say things doesn't match up to how you were taught was correct, but it is likely to be correct for their dialect.


Maybe to a non native english speaker the context could be misconstrued.

Since people here are often ESL. I'll put it this way: "English is a rich language."

Please try to think about how the context of what I said could be interpreted. If you take literally everything at face value - you're truly not thinking critically about anything.


".. always amazed by the little clues that are behind by otherwise proficient non-native speakers."

could you elaborate?


"Do people speak English well?" you mean. I normally wouldn't point it out, but given the context...

Does someone only understand English by being able to explain the language? Can someone understand English and not know any of the grammatical rules? Can someone understand English without being able to read and write?

If you ask someone to pass you the salt, and they pass you the salt, do they not understand some English? Does everyone understand all English?


I understood that paragraph without problems, and I'm not even a native English speaker.

You're talking about something else - individual words (at least in this passage) are certainly known to everybody.

But what % of English speakers do you think can understand the passage?


non-native : 67% It's good to hear that I know 67% of English words.

maybe a non-native english speaker

Similarly, English syntax errors - which are extremely common among non-native speakers - usually don’t prevent you from being understood, either.

E.g. “I wondered what did he do” will be understood perfectly by virtually 100% of English speakers, but will immediately mark you as a non-native speaker (the correct form is “I wondered what he did”).


> Is that what it signals? As someone who isn't a native speaker but believes themselves close to one, I don't read it that way.

Maybe you are right. I read it that way but I'm not a native speaker either.


If someone gave me that sentence, I wouldn't know whether the person that wrote it was a native speaker or not.
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