[emile]

How would you define a native speaker of English?

1 A person who speaks English as their best or first language?

2 A person who comes from a country where English is the language most widely spoken?

3 other...?

[susan53]

Ho ho - a hornet's nest. An area with lots of shades of grey I think. The extremes are easy, but in the middle??? My son is definitely a native speaker of Italian, but is he also a NS of English? He's never lived in an English speaking country for more than a month, but he's been brought up speaking English, and speaks fluently, and idiomatically - but with very occasional interference errors due to Italian, and probably not exactly the same as a British kid of his age would. So ....???

[mesmark]

3. I define NS as having fluent or near fluent command of English.

fluent or near fluent command - define that!

Like Sue said, you can be a NS of more than one language.

[emile]

I define NS as having fluent or near fluent command of English.

fluent or near fluent command - define that!

It could be defined using the IELTS or ALTE levels, but wouldn't a native speaker have perfect fluency?

[simplyesl]

I think it would be combination of 1 and 2. Even if you are really fluent in many (or more than 1) I think there would be one language that the speaker would "translate" from. For example; I can speak understand Chinese, however, I still translate it into English in my brain before/after I have heard/said anything. No matter how good someone is at a language, if they are still translating words/sentences from the language into their base language, then I will only go as far as to define them as Near Native Speaker. Harsh, I know, but that's just what i think.

[emile]

No matter how good someone is at a language, if they are still translating words/sentences from the language into their base language, then I will only go as far as to define them as Near Native Speaker

That sounds fair to me. If you translate when you speak, you will be using English 'thought-patterns' to present Chinese sentences. In the case of Chinese, ever noticed how some students get the grammar correct but still somehow don't sound natural?

[simplyesl]

Quote emile

In the case of Chinese, ever noticed how some students get the grammar correct but still somehow don't sound natural?

YES!!!