The “Native Speaker Fallacy” myth

The “Native Speaker Fallacy” myth is a recent thing I’ve been hearing about on Chambers and other forums. It presupposes that people who have learned a language like me, (I learned Spanish as an adult), have just the same fluency and pronunciation capabilities as a native speaker.<br><br>I have lived in Spain for 18 years and speak Spanish fluently, albeit with an accent. I have lived in Norway for 13 years and speak Norwegian fluently. None of my friends have ever had any trouble understanding my Spanish or Norwegian, and I have few problems with understanding other Norwegians or Spaniards. However, the “Native Speaker Fallacy” people claim that a non-native speaker can have the exact same pronunciation, intonation, cadence and even accent as a native speaker. They also think that studies that have shown that when native speakers hear a non-native speaker’s accent they have trouble understanding non-native speakers is an outdated theory.<br><br>To prove my point, I have been listening to a podcast called Coffee Break Spanish, which is a podcast for beginners. The two native speakers are living in Scotland and Glasgow, and their accents are very crystal clear. However, one of the presenters is a non-native speaker named Carmen who has lived in Scotland since she was six. If you listen to the podcast, her accent isn’t quite as crystal clear, even if you can clearly understand what she is saying without problems. <br><br>Now, you might think this is a minor difference, but the difference is minor because this isn’t a difficult topic. Now imagine if they were discussing something more complex and challenging. I am not claiming that “Native Speaker Fallacy” people are always difficult to understand, but in general, they are more difficult to understand and need to be listened to more carefully and patiently because they don’t have that crystal clear accent that native speakers have.<br><br>There is no “follow-up study” to counter the claim that native and non-native speakers do not have the same abilities when it comes to a second language because there is no need. We are not claiming that a non-native speaker cannot speak fluently, speak grammatically correctly or without significant mistakes, but that you will always notice a slight difference. It’s like a chat GPT text: it might seem natural but there is always slight nuances and prepositions that just isn’t 100% natural.<br><br>It is like an eight-year-old claiming that he can swim just as well and just as fast as Michael Phelps. Maybe the eight-year-old can swim 15m, but they have no idea how Michael Phelps can swim 200m. Maybe the non-native speaker can understand a simple sentence, but they don’t know what it is like for a native speaker to understand a long, complex sentence with lots of difficult vocabulary on the first go.