If someone is born and studied in England but is a descendant of Chinese migrants, is he or she considered as a native speaker?
Thanks.
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In my opinion they are a native speaker if they learn the language from birth. So if their parents spoke English as the child learned, then the child is a native speaker. They could also be bilingual if the parents spoke two languages.
If the parents did not speak English at home, but the child learned English from friends and at school, I would probably consider that native also.
In either case they would probably have mostly an English Accent, with maybe a touch of Chinese accent.
I never noticed it myself, but long term friends have told me that my father had a slight British accent even though he was born in the US. His parents were British and didn’t move to the US until they were in their 40s, so his parents never lost their British accent. Some of it rubbed off on my father. For sure my father used some British words and phrases that are less common in the US.
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Up until about age 12, homo sapiens have a very special ability to learn language. They simply absorb language, but doing so requires large amounts of energy. At age 12 we have all the language we need for evolutionary survival, and so this special ability goes away. Adults have to work to learn a new language.
I would think that anyone who learns a language in this period would be a native speaker.
I used to work with someone whose parents spoke Spanish and English. She was a perfectly bi-lingual.
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