ignore folder from htaccess rewriterule - php

Question

I don't understand htaccess at all except from it's function to "pretify" url's and I know this question has been asked a milion times, i have tried nearly all of them but none of the answers worked for me.
So basically i have givin my own go at creating a cms and a structure to go with it. the "cms" is located in a subfolder called system with it's own respectable index.php
my htaccess is configured to take the var "page" and retract the .php extension from it in the url. everything works fine until i start calling pages from the system subfolder.
My question is, how can i get htacces to ignore this folder and continue it's rewriting rule despite the user currently being located in the subfolder?
my htaccess is set up as follows:
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^([^\\.]+)$ $1.php [NC,L]
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?page=$1 [QSA]
<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>
ErrorDocument 404 home
ErrorDocument 403 home
#php_flag display_errors off

Answer 1

Have it like this:
ErrorDocument 404 /home
ErrorDocument 403 /home
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymLinks
# skip subfolder from any rules
RewriteRule ^subfolder(/.*)?$ - [L,NC]
# add .php extension
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.+?)/?$ $1.php [L]
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^system/(.*)$ system/index.php?page=$1 [L,NC,QSA]
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?page=$1 [L,QSA]
<Files .htaccess>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>