Who is native speakers

Learn more. Meaning of "native speaker of English" Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 8 months ago. Active 3 years, 8 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. MBorg 1 1 silver badge 11 11 bronze badges. Bogdan: What's the bounty for? This question appears to have a satisfactory answer. You may add a comment or even edit the question to explain what it's there for. There were even books about this subject — Theta Bogdan: How many other answers on this site are book-length, exhaustive screeds?

Even if it were exact science, you could approach a problem from various perspectives. Bogdan: It seems that the meaning of the word word "native" is pretty obvious in this context. It means you grew up speaking the language. Even if you attain a faultless mastery of the language after you're out of the small-child stage of learning, you are not a native speaker; you are a fluent speaker tips hat to RegDwight.

Show 4 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Robusto Robusto k 37 37 gold badges silver badges bronze badges.

I've not heard it before, but it made me laugh :- — psmears. I know this question is old but Jasper Loy: In his answer, Robusto said that many non-native speakers speak better than native ones. What causes confusion, and often ignorance, is the presence of a different accent. Take my case for example—As someone raised in India, my T has a harder emphasis and my Ws and Vs sound different from a person raised in the United States.

This is due to the influence of my other native languages, Hindi and Telugu. The languages I learn in the future will have a similar influence. Colonial hierarchy and years of internalized racism have made European accents desirable, while Asian and African accents tend to be mocked and devalued.

Anglocentric Anglocentrism bilingual bilingualism biliterate code switch encode francophone interpreter lingo native render speaker speaking translate translation transliteration Vantage Waystage word for word idiom See more results ». Translations of native speaker in Chinese Traditional. See more. Need a translator? Translator tool. What is the pronunciation of native speaker? Browse nationwide. Native American. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. Word of the Day kind-hearted.

Contrast with non-native speaker. An extremely proficient speaker of a second language is sometimes referred to as a near-native speaker. When a person acquires a second-language at a very young age, the distinction between native and non-native speaker becomes ambiguous. In recent years, the concept of the native speaker has come under criticism, especially in connection with the study of World English , New Englishes , and English as a Lingua Franca : "While there may be linguistic differences between native and non-native speakers of English, the native speaker is really a political construct carrying a particular ideological baggage" Stephanie Hackert in World Englishes--Problems, Properties and Prospects , Instead it can be seen as a continuum, with someone who has complete control of the language in question at one end, to the beginner at the other, with an infinite range of proficiencies to be found in between.

Sage, It is surely a common sense idea, referring to people who have a special control over a language, insider knowledge about 'their' language. But just how special is the native speaker? Multilingual Matters, The notion of 'native speaker' takes for granted the homogeneity among, and superiority of the linguistic competence of 'native speakers' and legitimizes the unequal power relations between 'native' and 'non-native' speakers. Walter de Gruyter,