It’s true we want to charm you with our readymade expressions. And with our curry. Because we have a favor to ask of you. The truth is, we need you more than you can ever know. The reason? Sometimes when we write our own words, we can’t look too closely because we begin to have waves of self-doubt. Sure, it’s easy to go with the flow of our language until we try to stop and think about how any of it works. We sometimes experience floating anxiety when we hear a non-native English speaker using who and whom correctly, since even if we did know the difference, we would never say it anyway. Except in private with a secret foreign lover OR at a professional conference of academic types. We would rather you just close your eyes and mimic the words we say because reading our reference books never really helped us much, either. Our language only makes sense when it is part of a giant game of Flüsterpost. In short, we are strangers to ourselves. And let me say as a native of the Anglosphere: without you, dear ESL speaker, I simply cannot be I – or is it me?
-A Concerned Citizen