native speaker

Noun

1. A person who grew up with a particular spoken language as their mother tongue.
   • Native speakers of English get paid much more than locals in the schools.
   • The differences between acceptable constructions like "Have you a book on modern music?" and unacceptable ones like "Read you a book on modern music?" need no Chomskyan signposts for a native speaker[.] - 1985, Robert...
   • In the past, secondary classrooms have perhaps been seen as largely native speaker environments, but this is certainly no longer the case and secondary teachers are fully aware they need pedagogies and materials that...

   Antonyms: non-native speaker

   Hypernyms: speaker person

   Coordinate Terms: native signer

   Related: NS