I've never understood this. I dated a DR that was not an English native speaker. Her English written and spoken was better than 99% of Americans. Yet on the rare occasion when she didn't know some rarely used word she always acted like she had done something terrible to everyone by asking what it means.

In private she constantly agonized on pronunciations and such that she already had perfectly mastered. I couldn't take it and had to move on. I was not interested in a lifelong english class. I asked her "do you lie to people about where you are from?" No. Then why are you trying to pretend you are a native speaker? No one cares.

I really just don't get it, people are incredibly forgiving of non native speakers most of the time. The only people that are not you don't really want to know anyway.