Especially when his request has little to do with the "loudness war."

Apparently you are unaware that English is the native language of the United States. Otherwise you wouldn't ask such a silly question.

But I'm swedish remember...

It also helps to understand that we tend to not be multilingual, with exceptions, of course. Most of us have no reason to speak more than one language. Higher education does often require us to take foreign language classes. Our education system is based on memorizing the minimum amount of required info, and not actually learning things, so even then we stay monolingual. Because this is the norm for us, we project on to other cultures. Americans often comment on forums about how people from other countries speak English well. Its not meant to be derogatory. We think of it as something special, because it is something special by our standards. Any perceived insult is due to cultural misunderstanding.