Yuan
Hello natives. Just got a question confused me. I was wondering whether ‘native English speakers’ and ‘English native speakers’ mean the same. Or one of them just refer to the English?
2023년 10월 31일 오후 1:14
답변 · 7
1
'Native English speakers' sounds more natural, but it has the same meaning as 'English native speakers.' Changing the order of the adjectives, generally, won't change the meaning, but it can affect the naturalness of how it sounds.
2023년 10월 31일
First, it’s wrong and usually even offensive to say ‘Hello natives’. Here, it really isn’t because we know from your other mistakes that your English level isn’t that high. Better is: I have a question for native speakers of English. (To be honest, the very definition of being a ‘native speaker’ is rather vague but unfortunately English doesn’t have a better term.) The best things to say are: Native speakers of English Native speakers of English from (America, England, Britain, the UK, the US, Australia etc) Native English speakers ‘English native speaker’ is technically grammatically wrong because ‘speaker’ or ‘native speaker’ isn’t the relevant noun, ‘English speaker’ is. But it’s the type of the error that’s common. For example, I could easily say ‘I’m a native speaker’, but only if from the context we know that we are talking about a specific language, in my case, English. I.e. it would be short for ‘native English speaker’. But it doesn’t make sense to shorten the phrase and then add back the word in the wrong place. It suggests that you’re trying to convey a different meaning. For example, if we know we are talking about the English language, it would be correct, grammatically at least, to say “I say ‘boot’ and I’m an English native speaker. Don’t worry about what those Americans say.” That would be short for ‘I’m a native English speaker from England’.
2023년 11월 1일
If you consider "English" and "native" both to be adjectives then there is no difference. The order of adjectives does not matter. The danger here is that "native" is also a noun. If the listener interprets it that way then the meaning changes. An English native would be someone born in England. If you say "native English speakers" there is no danger of such misinterpretation. Why do you have an apostrophe after "speakers"?
2023년 11월 1일
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