WHO IS A NATIVE SPEAKER?

Native speaker (native speaker) – a representative of a linguistic community who owns the norms of the language, actively uses this language (which is usually his mother tongue) in various everyday, socio-cultural, professional spheres of communication.

CRITERIA FOR DEFINING A NATIVE SPEAKER

In science, there are several criteria for identifying a person as a full-fledged carrier of a certain language. According to the six most common, a full-fledged native speaker is an individual who:

• learned the language in early childhood (during the critical period) from his parents – native speakers,
• has an intuitive, natural knowledge of the language (for example, is able to easily and uncontrollably understand speech not addressed to him),
• capable of fluent spontaneous speech,
• communicatively competent (recognizes different types of relevant speech situations and can behave in accordance with accepted communicative norms),
• perceives himself as a member of the language community,
• speaks without a foreign accent.

If an individual does not have all, but most of these features, then he can be defined as “near-native speaker”.

From Wikipedia