Native Speakers I have been recently reading a book on Applie | Cedric's Journal

Native Speakers

I have been recently reading a book on Applied Linguistics by Guy Cook, and I have encountered a very interesting opinion on native speakers I absolutely agree with.

What we usually mean by the term native speaker? 1. Person, who acquired the language naturally in childhood through a combination of exposure and the need to communicate. 2. Person, who uses the language correctly. 3. Person, who entails knowledge of a community that uses the language.

The author states, however, that this threefold definition is relatively unproblematic for small languages spoken mostly in one particular place, like Icelandic, but it is not precise in the case of English.

Many English speakers grew up with and use another language. Their cultural loyalty is wholly or partly to a non-English-speaking community. None of this, however, necessarily reflects upon their expertise. Certainly, there are often minor differences in accent, phrasing, or confidence in grammaticality judgments. Yet this is not included in the term of a native speaker.

It is important to state here that native speakers are not necessarily proficient in all aspects of language. The term native speaker says nothing about proficiency in writing, but only about proficiency in speech. Indeed, some native speakers are illiterate. The native speaker’s knowledge of the language is implicit rather than explicit (my favorite one). It means that native speaker cannot necessarily explain the rules he or she uses. And the last one, to be a native speaker implies nothing about the size of your vocabulary or the ability to communicate across diverse communities.

Considering all mentioned above we can say that the expertise of the non-native speaker exceeds that of many native speakers.

So if someone doubts your language skills because of yours being a non-native speaker, tell him to him to get lost (If you are like me) or politely say that he is mistaking.