Not a mistake but a genuine meaning question

[BrainNotAvailableTryAnotherOne]

English is my second language and I only started learning it in my late 20s. I have been living and working in the U.K. for 10 years now but still can't read between the lines sometimes so this is a genuine question.

Someone on the phone recently told me "your English is better than my xxx (my first language).
I found it rude as I can easily assume the person knew nothing about my first language (not usually studied here), so to me it sounded like "your English is better than nothing"

But I have just read this expression here on another thread in a well meaning context, where the OP thinks well of the non-native.

Does the sentence actually mean "your English is good"?

It’s a joke. Because obviously your English is way better than their knowledge of your first language.

It’s because we’re so bad at learning other languages in this country, compared to so much of the world that speaks English as a standard second language. We have guilt.

Yes, it does- it’s a compliment!

(The person saying it was pointing out their own deficiencies, and saying well done to you on speaking more than one language)

It generally means something like, "Please don't worry about any minor language mistakes you think you might make — after all, you're the one making it possible for us to have this conversation at all; if it were me having to carry the weight of making sure we understand each other, we wouldn't be able to communicate at all". It's usually a light-hearted, self-deprecating comment intended to take the pressure off the person using a second language. Possibly in context it was a clumsy thing to say, but I've only ever heard it used in a way that's intended to be nice.

That's great, thank you

Hope we were able to make you feel better about the conversation you had! It's horrible not knowing if you've been subtly insulted or not.

@ClumpingBambooIsALie yes thank you! This was exactly the point

Everyone's English is better than my Romanian, Egyptian, Swedish etc. and I'm one who has a smattering of one or two other languages.

It was a compliment, OP. (but not a complement)

It was really being self deprecating saying "I'm hopeless at other languages, your English is really impressive."

Your written English on here is indistinguishable from that of a native speaker. The person was probably envious (in a good way) of your language skills.

It's a compliment! I find that most people who learn English as a second language have a better knowledge, understanding and use of grammar than many 'native' English speakers.
Many Brits too lazy to learn another language and are mangling the English language (as you will see from the posts here!)

Definitely not an insult! It’s acknowledging that you have two languages and the other person doesn’t, so they’re very impressed even if you make some small mistakes.

Maybe it is a little patronising though - I’d never thought of it that way until now.