near-native
/nɪə̯ˈneɪ̯tɪv/
near-native adjective: nearly native; close to be seen as indigenous to a particular habitat.
Adjective
near-native (not comparable)
- Nearly native; close to be seen as indigenous to a particular habitat.
- 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.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...
- 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...2015, Bettina Koch, Patterns Legitimizing Political Violence in Transcultural Perspectives. Islamic and Christian Traditions and Legacies (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – Tension, Transmission...
Noun
near-native (plural near-natives)
- A person who is not native.
- […] these data constitute little support for the notion of generalized competence differences between natives and near-natives.1992, David Birdsong, “Ultimate Attainment in Second Language Acquisition”, in Language, volume 68, number 4, page 721 of 706-755
Forms of near-native
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| alternative form | nearnative |
| Noun | |
| plural | near-natives |
Origin of near-native
From near + native.
Words formed from near-native
- near-native speaker
- near-native species
Words that rhyme with near-native
- native
- dative
- creative
- translative
- equative
- illative
- collative
- induplicative
- innative
- optative
- prolative
- stative
18 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about near-native
- What does near-native mean?
- Near-native means nearly native; close to be seen as indigenous to a particular habitat.
- What part of speech is near-native?
- Near-native can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce near-native?
- Near-native is pronounced /nɪə̯ˈneɪ̯tɪv/ (UK).
Words near near-native in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: near-native (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-near-native.wav.
Cite this entry: “near-native.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/near-native. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.