[Tor3]

Well yes, that's (I believe) the reason English actually works as an international language, despite being horrible in so many respects (pronunciation, tons of exceptions, etc etc): It also has so much redundancy that even if you get all the grammar wrong the meaning is still there. "I is strongs". When someone knows a tiny bit of English it's often easier to communicate in English than in that person's language, even if you're studying said language. Unfortunately, kind of, but that's how it is.

[fennecbutt]

Yeah exactly. "Me arms big power" would make me go "Oh yeah you do have mighty biceps my dude".

And to the latter point I got that all the time in Japan, but I think main reasons are: they wanna practice, but even more they wanna practice with a native English speaker bc it's a novel experience for em!