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Who is a native speaker?
Who is anative speaker? This question seems to confuse – and even upset – a lot of people. Being a native speaker does not mean you come from a particular country, like Canada or somewhere in the UK. Being a native speaker has to do with geography, your familiarity with local cultural references and idioms, and other factors. In this video, I hope to answer this question and clear up some of the confusion. Then you can decide whether speaking “like a native speaker” of a particular place is something you want to set as a goal for yourself or not.
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32 COMMENTS
Hello Adam. Do you, as a native English speaker, learn new words very frequently? I’m Brazilian and I’m a self-taught English speaker since I was 10 years old, and man… it’s astounding and mind-boggling how massive the English language is vocabulary-wise, and even after 15 years, I haven’t even scratched the surface of it all yet. One example that really sticks out is when I’m reading an article by a journalist. Journalists are wordsmiths by nature because that’s the medium through which they do their job, and I learn new words from them so often. The English has such an extensive collection of idioms, verb+preposition combinations (phrasal verbs), vivid verbs that are incredibly specific, synonyms in general, etc. I’m a gamer, so I read game reviews a lot, and the journalists that write them just straight up crank out idioms and phrasal verbs that I never heard before like gangbusters! They have this academic, Thesaurus-fueled army of “jargonized” big words that tend to go over my head when I read those writings.
Does any of this happen to you as a native English speaker and teacher?
Nicely written post Luke :)
Yes, I sometimes still come across new expressions. Keep in mind that a language is always evolving, so new expressions come up to deal with changes in the real world. Just think of COVID: essential worker is a new expression that came from that, as is contact tracing, social distancing, and others.
As long as you keep reading, your vocab will keep building. That’s not a bad thing ;)
Hello Adam, I am satisfied with your lesson, your style, your accent and, as you said, the main thing is to be fluent with everyone in any part of the world. Thank you and don’t listen to the grumps.
Hi Adam, I have inferior complex with my accent from my native tongue. Yet, you’ve given me a hope to carry on learning English. My Asian accent might be one of my characteristic. Thank you for your encouragement.
Absolutely, FELES. You are who you are. Accept it and live your life. Don’t worry about to others, just make yourself understood to those who want to listen. I lived in Japan and know how it felt when I tried to speak Japanese. Just keep talking :)
I completely agree with you, but I just believe that it is not correct to say in North America, because Mexico is in North America and the official language is Spanish. The correct is to say United States of América.
Thanks for the lesson.
You’re right, we apologize for the oversight!
Hi, EngVid Moderator.
First, we really want to THANK YOU, all of you guys, for your great and outstanding efforts to teach English in more modern and realistic ways all these years.. we truly appreciate and admire you.
Second, If I may suggest or request a lesson on “Car Rental” in English that includes vocabulary, culture & tips. I believe that would be so USEFUL!! THANK YOU!
That’s a great idea! Thank you for the suggestion; I’ll add it to the list of requests.
Fair enough, Taffarel :)
thank you, Adam for sharing that. I beleive there’s totally NOTHING WRONG with saying or learning English as a native speakers. In fact, It’s crucially needed to understand and communicate in English even better. You can’t master a language without understanding and learning the culture… So plz keep on teaching native or natural spoken English.. THANK YOU, Adam.
I am very happy about that video
It was an eye-opening speech. As a contrubution, I think that a native speaker is a someone whose mother tongue is English. However, their accent can be different by where they live. Even the place is the same, this time it can depend on subculture and backround.
Thanks, Adam!
wowo Great lesson and thanks for your advice.
Hi teacher, I liked your video , Iam Brazilian and I love study English .I have never thought about it, now I understood about NATIVE SPEAKER, depends the country you live.
Thank youuuuuuuu
Hello Adam sir,in ” drinking water” what kind of parts of speech “drinking” is?
Hi Pratima,
The full term is water that is suitable for drinking. We just reduce the adjective clause to a simpler adjective (participle).
Hope this helps.
Hi Adam.
Thank you very mucho for this lesson: absolutely interesting and clarifying!!!
I live in Spain and my mother tongue is Spanish, and I think it happens something similar with Spanish than that you explian about English: there are almost 600 million native Spanish speakers and there are many, many, many accents and cultural territories of the language.
And all of them are, of course, Spanish.
Thank you everyone :)
Great explanation. Thank you.
English seems a language changing all the time or a kind of infinite learning!! But I still love english!!!
Hi Adam, it’s good to hear about this. I’m Brazilian end sometimes I was blamed because I have my own accent. So, in special in the workplace people used comment that strange accent could mess up the understand. In my believe, Canada is a multi cultural country end it’s almost impossible don’t find any workplace with only Canadians. All of us are contributing to increase the country in different areas and committed with contry’s development.
It’s true. Canada was built on immigration. Keep working hard and things will always work out well :)
Thank you teacher for those informations, i hope coming soon to Canada.
Adam, thank you for the video! Now I understand better who a native speaker is)
thank you
One of the most accurate explanations about being a native speaker.
Hello Sir. Thank You for your work! It was fairly interesting to hear what means ‘bag of fruit=suit” and ‘to bum a fag=smoke a cigarette’, if I correctly understood your notification. My surname is Litchman, and I have many phrases about my surname, for example, some Irish man told to me that I am ‘an attractive man’, and it was regarding to my surname. And other Scottish man told to me with smile that I am ‘so ugly man’. As I tried to catch these meanings they wanted to name me because I have strange surname. Could you explain me these niceties of slang?
Adam is the best teacher and native English speaker! Thank you very much. You are doing the best job for us!
Hello I want you to explain more about a conversation
I am so glad to see this video. Because specifically in my country everybody waits from you to speak English like a native speaker and when you can’t they start to kidding about your language skills. I know I can’t speak fluently. But I study so hard, not for speak like a native speaker, to be more fluently.