By linguistic definition, a native speaker
of a language has spoken and been exposed to that language from very early
childhood onwards. Some indications of a
native speaker include being able to quickly understand inexplicit or implied
meanings in speech, innately understand their language’s rules, be identified
by other native speakers as sounding as though the language is their first
language, culturally identifying with others who share the native language and
more.
It is a subjective way of defining what a
native speaker really is, leaving the decision of whether or not a person is
considered to be one open to interpretation.
Within groups of native speakers lie people with different language
backgrounds including, but not limited to, different levels of speech
complexity due to factors such as economic status and education, people with
varying accents with different perceived prestige, and people who have been
exposed to other languages through schooling or cross-cultural exposure causing
language transfer. While all of these
individuals may meet the requirement of having spoken the same language from
early childhood onward, the way that their shared native language sounds when
they speak and its language characteristics may be extremely different as a
result of the speakers’ linguistic backgrounds.
This variation makes it hard to gauge who is really a native speaker by
definition. For example, if a child
learned Spanish with their parents at home but grew up speaking English at
school and in their community, would they be considered a native speaker of
Spanish? They may have been speaking it
since early childhood but due to factors such as lack of formal education in
the language, limited interaction in the language and potential language
transfer from English causing an accent or grammatical errors in Spanish, how
can one really determine whether or not this individual should be considered a
native speaker of Spanish?
The debate around what defines a native
speaker stems from the fact that they come in all shapes and sizes. It is simply too difficult to create a robust
definition that determines when a person can be identified as a native speaker
or not because there is no one speaker that can be used as a representative model
for what a native speaker sounds like in any given language. There are so many factors that influence a
person’s linguistic background from the time of birth that no two people can be
exactly alike. Their geographic
location, social status, schooling, exposure to other languages and many other
influences affect the way individuals speak a language, whether it be their
first language, second or otherwise.
This means that it is important to leave the definition of a native
speaker loosely defined to accommodate for the significant variation that
exists within fluent speakers of any language.
After all, language is not black and white; it is constantly evolving,
changing and adapting to the needs of the speakers of today and tomorrow.
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