Nativespeaker

Native speaker is a term used to describe a person who has acquired a language from early childhood in an everyday, naturalistic environment and uses that language as their dominant means of communication. The definition emphasizes acquisition order rather than age at which literacy or formal study begins, and it does not require monolingualism.

In practice, native speakers typically have intuitive command of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and idiomatic expressions, and they can understand and produce language with speed and flexibility in familiar contexts. They also carry cultural and social knowledge embedded in language use.

Many native speakers are also bilingual or multilingual, having learned additional languages later in life. The category can vary by region, dialect, and community. Some people identify as native speakers of more than one language when they acquired multiple languages in early childhood.

In linguistics and language education, the notion of a native speaker is debated because it can imply a normative standard that excludes varieties and may bias data or assessment. Critics argue that linguistic competence should be understood in terms of actual performance and communicative effectiveness rather than conformity to an idealized native norm. In practice, native speaker status is often used as a practical criterion for roles such as teaching, translation, or the development of language tools, but it should be applied with awareness of dialectal and individual variation.