Is English a flexible and tolerant language?

1) Simple answer is a "yes". There may be a historical reason for this in how English has developed over time, losing 'stricter' grammatical forms, but also it is truly a global lingua franca.Teaching English I'm really aware how soon learners get to a point of being able to do a lot with very little. My view is that English is comparatively easier to pick up and get going with functionally. It's a kind of upside down pyramid when it comes to progressing with using the language. Much broader at the top levels, narrower at the bottom. 2) I see on Reddit a lot of well written posts from non-natives.

Absolutely, we make crap up all the time and nobody thinks twice about it. When writing something formal or professional then we take a bit more care, but in casual messaging and conversation, it's all over the place. And yes, i generally think the level of english from non native speakers is better than they tend to give themselves credit for, however, it's also difficult to say how much is directly from a person versus a translator app.

English is supe flexible. Take a noun, any noun, turn it into a verb. It might not be acceptable on an exam, but a native speaker will understand you.

In addition to what others have said, yes, colloquial English is very tolerant. Basically any noun can be used as a verb. In terms of formal grammar though, I wouldn't say English is particularly more flexible than French.

Sometimes English is error-tolerant and the ESL speaker only sounds slightly off. Sometimes English is **extremely** unforgiving. Here's a YouTube clip of two English-speaking actors talking about working with a French Canadian director. They like the guy but talk about how the director's non-standard English makes it sound like he's trying to sexually harass everybody: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YLvBp-ZVwaE](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YLvBp-ZVwaE)

I think I would say yes, and I have been speaking Scandinavian languages and French since I was a kid. French is deceptive because it seems fairly simple for an Anglophone but once you start to study it at an advanced level it becomes quite difficult. I have had more trouble with French than even with Thai. Also, there’s no central authority governing the English language, which is different than a lot of other countries. We can kind of make things up as we go along in English and that isn’t the same as France or Iceland or any number of countries I can think of.

English can be very accommodating. In fact, non-native English speakers on reddit tend to write more correct English than natives do. 

As to your question for native speakers, yes, on the whole I do think the English of non-native English Redditors is pretty good. Rarely do I read a comment that I simply don't understand (grammatically). Some really common mistakes: "How do you call this?" (it should be: "What do you call this?); "What means this?" (it should be: "What does this mean?"); not understanding that a main verb following an auxiliary verb is always an infinitive or participle, and not interchangeably so (i.e., never: "I didn't knew"; "I hoped to arrived"; "I would have went"; "I couldn't believed it"); being a little too polite in wording (in English we value being *kind*, but that is expressed more by *what* is said than by *how* it is said; of course we do use polite words, and how you phrase something does matter, but foreign speakers often go too far in their polite phraseology); using too many words to say something simple. Your first question is a tricky one. English is flexible in a sense, but not randomly. It accommodates dialectal variation, including what would normally be seen as incorrect: "I seen that new pi'ture 'bout the wicked witch wid' all them songs in it. It's real good." It accommodates neologistic slang. I won't attempt that. But it *does not* accommodate random deviation: "I have seeing the cinema picture *Wicked*, songs is very well."

i speak french too and i agree with you that it's more structured. iirc it has a smaller vocabulary but more demanding grammatical rules. it's hard for me to comment on the relative difficulty of english though, since i grew up speaking it. i feel like there's a lot more to know, but a lot more different ways of getting what you mean said. it's also easier for people to figure out what you mean even if your grammar is a bit strange or your vocabulary is limited. regarding redditors: there's an awful lot of non-native speakers though, at all different levels of fluency. but in general: sure. i don't often find that somebody says somethign and i can't figure out what they're trying to say.

Nobody is perfect at English, you can look back at my Reddit posts/comments and point out a thousand grammatical errors, yet my posts are understandable (I hope). English is nowhere near as strict in their grammar rules as say French or for example I was learning a bit of Italian, and I found it nearly impossible to comprehend the grammar rules. They have like 8 words for the word “the” that change depending on if it’s masculine or feminine, if it’s singular or plural etc. As for your second question, generally yes English among non-native Redditors is good. Like I mentioned before English has very flexible and forgivable grammar rules, so to be honest, if people make any grammatical errors I don’t really pay attention to it. Plus, I’m certainly not perfect, so it would be hypocritical of me to criticise or belittle someone else’s ability to speak/write English.

I think the US has so many immigrants that we’ve become very flexible. I’m not sure about in England.

1. I'm probably around a B2 level in French and I'm a native English speaker, so I can see both sides of your question. English is probably just as tolerant as French. (A lot of the English language came from French). It's easy to "make mistakes" in English, but the rules don't really matter that much in the real world. If I say "me and him are friends", it's incorrect. "He and I are friends" is correct. But it doesn't really matter because everyone will understand what the incorrect one means anyway. You probably just know more of the French rules, so it seems more rigid :) Also, written languages are always more strict than spoken languages. 2. Yeah I feel like Redditors are pretty great with English. Mistakes are made, but writers are usually understood. My written French isn't nearly as good haha

English is tolerant Redditors however, are not

1. I mean, it's the \*most\* tolerant, if that answers your question. It has the highest number of speakers living outside "native" countries, a thriving following, no central agency proscribing correct and incorrect use, a system of spelling that can charitably described as "everything goes." Compare that to a language like Italian, where they can't even borrow a word like "leader", without changing the spelling to "líder" so that it fits in the language. We take their "chianti" and pronounce it "k" like they do, and their "ciao" and pronounce it "ch" (as they do), and that's it. Spanish takes Italian's "ciao" and spells it "chao" so that it fits their rules. Each generation literally makes up random words. Urbandictionary is packed with this stuff. 1.5 Languages with extensive lists/charts for forms of conjugations and declensions (i.e. most languages) requre learners to get the specific form right. Not "sabo", but "sé". Not "je alle", but "je vais". English has this with the verb "to be" (as most languages do), and not much more, the rest are pretty easy in the present tense. So yeah, if you get one wrong, you're quite wrong. It's confusing. "Je allons, what??". In English, you can just say the I/we/you/they, then the verb... even if you say something like "I must to go to the store" it's understandable. "He has throwed the ball". "They likes to eat." Eh, one mistake, it's immediately understandable most times. 2. Yes. In general, it is very easy to get up to level B1 in English. As u/nadsatpenfriend said, English learning is more of an inverted pyramid, the beginning is thinner but it gets more complex as it goes up. So you can string together a sentence, maybe run it through a spell-check, and you've got a really nice sentence. Not native-sounding, but really nice. That being said, Redditors are well beyond the level of most of my students. Sometimes it feels like all redditors are C1 or higher, but of course this is a place for learners of all levels, and some people are just starting out on their journey (but again, making great progress fast).

Yes. You can butcher english pretty badly and it can still be understandable. It does to some degree depend how you butcher it, but there's a wide variety of how even native speakers say things.

I think it helps that English speakers are far more used to interacting with non-native speakers of English than people from other countries. It means English speakers have practice at interpreting rubbish syntax with limited vocabulary and will just kinda roll with it. Besides, it's not as though most of us speak a second language particularly well anyway, so if we want to communicate, then sometimes broken English is our best option, so we have to put effort into dealing with it. Understanding non native speakers, particularly non native speakers with a relatively low proficiency level, is its own kind of language skill.

A bilingual French Canadian guy once told me "If I have to make a speech in public, I'd much rather do it in English because it's so much easier to screw up in French than in English"

1- yes, I think so. It’s very easy to speak English “wrong” but still be totally understandable. 2- that depends on the redditor. Sometimes you’ll encounter a “sorry for my bad English” person who writes like the English language is their job, sometimes you can tell they’re non-native but English speakers will not correct mistakes or weird phrasing because they can understand, and sometimes it’s incomprehensible. The internet takes all types. While it’s a common meme that learners “speak better English than people who speak English,” I don’t find that true at all. What’s more accurate is that learners and native speakers make wildly different mistakes, and native speakers are just not very tuned in to the types of mistakes learners make. Non native speakers are unlikely to mix up “you’re” and “your” (but native speakers are), but might use an archaic regionalism they learned in class or put the words of a sentence in the wrong order. American anglophones often romanticize foreigners as well and assume they’re smart, so assume their mistakes are not mistakes, or overlook that the non native speaker with impeccable English is privileged enough to have had 20 years of formal education, access to English media, and the opportunity to travel in English speaking countries.

A language cannot be tolerant, but its speakers can be. At worst, ESL speakers' errors just make me giggle. I am less tolerant of regional accents than I am of foreign accents oddly enough. The Appalachians accent is much less appealing to me than an Irish one. I think French has dropped so many letters in its journey from Latin, that it relies more heavily on accurate pronunciation and strict word order.

Half of English is just medieval French though 😂 But yeah, it's a varied language with many dialects that do things totally differently. I think most people don't care much if they can understand you.

English may very well be one of the easiest languages to learn to an every day, communicative level (obviously technical English is a different story, as is spelling generally); it's quite flexible for speakers and listeners (for example, even very young children have no problem understanding Yoda from Star Wars). What can make English challenging, is its use of idioms and sometimes-confounding cultural references.

I find that English speakers are not snobby around our grammar. If you are a foreigner and we understand what you’re trying to say, even if it’s grammatically incorrect, we don’t give a single shit. If we understand you we understand you. If we don’t we will go “huh? I don’t understand” that’s it. Maybe it’s because so many people try to speak English that it’s just not that remarkable when someone has an accent or does it wrong. We don’t bother ourselves requiring perfection.

This is a really interesting question. As a native speaker myself, I find the location / local culture (specifically city vs. Countryside) plays a huge part in how well the meaning of a question from a non-native speaker is understood, both in terms of accent and any mistakes. I come from a big city and am very used to hearing English spoken as a second or even third language, whereas friends visiting me sometimes struggle if they are from a small town.

For day to day conversation, English is very flexible and forgiving. If you are writing a grant proposal or some other formal document, write a book to sell, etc. then you want to be much more "in bounds" but for getting through daily life? As long as I can sort out your premise I don't typically correct you unless you ask. English levels on reddit (and in real life) varies a lot, as long as you are willing to engage in good faith most speakers will either engage with you or ask you to find someone else who can.

You mean is the language flexible? More than French. Are native speakers flexible with non natives learning the language? YES, 100%. You’ll find assholes here or there but the truth is, we are flexible with grammar and sayings and slang. We aren’t going to stop you and correct your language. We might restate your question with the correct word usage to make sure we understand your question. Or we might ask 2 separate questions to see which you mean, but normally we don’t tell you you’re wrong or ignore you if you’re trying. The main errors I see with English learners are: 1. Article usage and 2. Prepositions usage. ELL usually miss them all together or mix them up. But this is also common for kids who don’t have the full grasp of the language yet and we just restate the sentence with the right article or preposition. ELL: Do you have a green card? Me: Do I have the green card? Yes, it’s in my purse. ELL: I have a question to Michael. Me: what’s your question for Michael? We are correcting you but not being an ass about it.

1. Yes. Even within the population of native English speakers, there's SO many different dialects out there, not just the standardized forms. Britain alone has several that are heavily regional. There's a good degree of leniency given by speakers I would say in order keep things comprehensible and smooth flowing. 2. Yes, probably because there's so much English content for Redditors to learn off of that once they're (somewhat) comfortable with production, they do so at a level similar to the natives who use this site. Also helped by the fact that English in general is the world's lingua franca.

english is accommodating to people with good accents

I imagine most English speakers (certainly from England) are hugely impressed with the level of non-native speakers of English when compared to their own level of any second language. Is it tolerant and flexible?, Well due to their being a different dialect/accent every few miles here (UK), yes we are very used to people speaking the same language very differently. In a formal teaching setting it is more strict (in that most native speakers wouldn't get good grades in ESL tests - or even understand half the questions), but it real life, very flexible.

First question: I would say yes. I dont hear many mistakes made by 1st language speakers of English, when they are made its usually made with tenses like the past perfect and even the present perfect. Also the 2nd conditional in the US has gone to shit: *"If I would have known that I would have done this instead"* should be *"If I knew that I would have done this instead".* Im wondering if this is borrowed from Spanish maybe. Second question is a tough one as its hard to know if someone is non-native.

English is a language with a lot of influence from other languages, and specifically in America is spoken by lots of different communities with unique dialects and backgrounds. You may not sound native, but you'll be understood.