Gotta love ya, America.
I came to the sudden and disturbing realization that every person I've ever had the pleasure of communicating with in person in American English falls into one of two categories. If said person fudges grammar/syntax/spelling/sentence structure enough to make you wince on the inside, s/he eventually proves to be 1) a homegrown, born-and-bred American or 2) a foreigner who's learning the language and doing so by using it as often as s/he can. Now, if someone has a nearly perfect grasp of English, this person is either 1) highly educated (no matter which country s/he hails from) or 2) a foreigner growing up in America who had to learn the rules of American English in order to not sound like a "furriner", i.e. "everything has about 23 exceptions to the rule, but learn the rule first, dang it". Is it that Americans don't give much of a flip, or is it that English as a rule kicks most people's butts on a general basis? I've spoken to Brits, and quite a few have looked at the Yanks with this expression of complete and utter bafflement that they could mangle their mother tongue so unabashedly. Something about this bothers me, but I'm not sure what.
Or as my friends have quipped, "Maybe we all should have gone to immigrant school, Sanctum. Then maybe we could have kicked your butt when we were all sitting our college entrance exams." [Still disturbing.]