near-native

• nearnative

From near +‎ native.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /nɪə̯ˈneɪ̯tɪv/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪtɪv

near-native (not comparable)

1. Nearly native; close to be seen as indigenous to a particular habitat.
   • 2002, Maria Kihlstedt, “Reference to past events in dialogue. The acquisition of tense and aspect by advanced learners of French”, in Rafael Salaberry, Yasuhiro Shirai, editors, The L2 Acquisition of Tense–Aspect Morphology (Language Acquisition & Language Disorders; 27), Amsterdam · Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 328 of 323–362:

     On the other hand, Coppieters' (1987) study of nearnative speakers of French, selected by nativespeaking friends and colleagues for perceived nativeness in production, showed nonnative intuitions on the perfective/imperfective distinctions in French in a judgement test.

   • 2015, Bettina Koch, Patterns Legitimizing Political Violence in Transcultural Perspectives. Islamic and Christian Traditions and Legacies (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – Tension, Transmission, Transformation; 1), Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, →DOI, →ISBN, page 5:

     Anyone who has been engaged in language translation or has read the same text in two different languages knows that some nuances may be lost in translation, and this untranslated five percent or so makes a difference. As long as not all people have fluency or near-native knowledge in all languages and cultures, translation cannot be avoided, and, thus, one must accept at least some ambiguity.

near-native (plural near-natives)

1. A person who is not native.
   • 1992, David Birdsong, “Ultimate Attainment in Second Language Acquisition”, in Language‎^[1], volume 68, number 4, page 721 of 706-755:

     […] these data constitute little support for the notion of generalized competence differences between natives and near-natives.