Who counts as a speaker of a language?


I'm not one to listen to every Ted Talk that I come across, but this one grabbed me. In this short Ted Talk, Anna Babel shares a few personal stories and presents some familiar examples of miscommunication. She starts slowly and wanders through many topics concerning language; including, the role of unconscious bias in listening, speaking, and understanding language.

I kept thinking to myself, are our misunderstandings based on nothing else other than our judgment of the speaker's native language?

Who counts as a speaker of a language? (TED)

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