Quote Originally Posted by charlestonian
I have always wondered: If I have lived in the US the most of my life, does it qualify me as a native English speaker? Can somebody tell me?
I suppose it's something of a slippery-slope. Truly, I'd say yes, but you can probably take two different meanings from the term:
-someone who speaks a language as a mother tongue (ie the first language they learned)
-someone who speaks a language at a native level
Really it doesn't matter, IMHO whether you were techinically born in an English-speaking country -- if you can communicate at a native level that's really all that's important. Again, this whole thing is entirely subjective.