3 ms·

I don't think native speaker count really means anything though - you learn the subset of English for your domain pretty quickly. The entirety, sure, maybe the

• filoleg 3y ago
  > I don't think native speaker count really means anything though Especially since there are plenty of people who aren't native speakers, but got to the native level of fluency (usually, due to moving to an english-speaking country at some point and spending 99% of their time in english-only environments for many years). How do we account for those? I always had trouble with the whole "native speaker" categorization, because I definitley don't fall under it by definition, but English is legitimately my most comfortable and most frequently used language by far, and has been this way for over a decade. Like, the only thing that gives away my non-native status is that sometimes my accent comes out accidentally, but that's just stupid muscle memory. I am way more comfortable with english in every aspect (speaking, writing, etc.) than my actual native language, despite often having an accent in english, but never in my native language (which i have exactly zero foreign accent in).
• throwaway894345 3y ago
  Yeah, I probably agree, I was just trying to clarify because it took me a little bit to figure out why he thought Mandarin was the most widely spoken language.