“I speak it quite well”, he said in a very posh English accent
I was born in Appalachia (Welch, WVA, USA), and so I inherited the version of English that is spoken there. There is some Native American Cherokee Indian blood in me too, but I don't identify much with those people, except spiritually. When Dad came back from WWII, an officer in the Army and later the Air Force, we moved away from our West Virginia heritage and lived as "Air Force Brats" at various Air Force bases scattered throughout the United States, as well as in foreign countries. A lot of our residences were in the South: Louisiana, Florida, Texas.
I discovered that English as taught in our schools, way back then, was regional in accent, meaning, and structure. For example the phrase "poke salad" was unfamiliar to me. I had heard the word "poke" used synonymous with "paper bag" so assumed "poke salad" was a salad that was first prepared by picking "greens" and placing them in a poke (bag). Close, but no cigar! The "poke" was reference to a poisonous weed called "pokeweed" that had to be boiled and strained several times to remove the toxin. The British also use different words to mean cookies, crackers, and similar food items. I had no idea what "
tea and crumpets" refers to... perhaps tea and biscuits? Could a bagel also be a crumpet?
I love the English language, no matter how or where it is spoken. Some dialects are difficult to understand, and some "English" is actually a bastardization of English, French, Spanish, Latin, German, Italian, Yiddish, Creole, and (of course) Chinese, which a lot of us now call Chinglish. There may even be English versions in Tagalog and Japanese as well as other languages, but I know nothing about that. I do know that English is a dynamic language, unlike Latin which never changes. English-trained speakers and writers borrow (steal) from other languages to express their ideas. No one seems to care... well, I don't care. Your mileage (or kilometers) may differ.