Requests for native speakers to answer questions

Question

I have been seeing a somewhat increasing trend lately of questions which end with a variation of this sentence:

I would like to hear a native speaker's opinion, please.

Though I am sure that the OPs do not intend any harm, I do not feel this is a productive addition to a question. Honestly (and keep in mind that I am a native English speaker) I find it a tiny bit offensive. We have so many amazing users, and a good portion of them are non-native speakers who write excellent answers. It's true that there are some questions which naturally lean toward asking "Does this sound right to native speakers?" (especially when discussing differences between AmE and BrE, etc.). But I think there's a difference between that and simply appending a request that only native speakers provide answers to any question.

Native speakers can make mistakes. Non-native speakers can post the most excellent answer you've ever seen. And vice-versa. I think it's counterproductive and goes against community-building to attempt to exclude a group of people from answering your question. And anyway, the request cannot be enforced... Anyone can post an answer. If it's right, it'll get upvotes. If it's wrong, it'll get downvotes or comments saying so. If the OP's goal is to make sure they get a correct answer, trying to limit the responses to those of native speakers isn't going to do it. I've posted a few incorrect answers before, and I was glad to receive corrections. If there are users assuming everything I post is 100% guaranteed to be true and correct simply because I am a native speaker, well, that's probably not good for anybody.

So... As I felt this was counterproductive, unenforceable, and had the potential to make non-native speakers feel bad, I have been editing the sentence out of questions when I see it. But as I see this is something which isn't going away, I thought it was time to bring it up on meta. I'd like to propose that we make this official policy, and that others join me in editing sentences like these out of questions. But I also recognize that there might be another side to the discussion, and I welcome hearing the community's thoughts.

Answer 1

I'm a non-native speaker and also a new face around here. I suspect that I might also be part of the cause of this recently increasing trend of such a sentence and those similar lines. Although I'm quite certain that this elephant in the room had existed before I signed up with our ELL community.

With good intentions, I usually answer questions when I believe that I can provide a good answer, and even when I have only an incomplete answer (which happened often enough when a question is actually a set of multiple questions), I usually posted a comment. I hope that my answers and comments can be helpful to the OPs and those who might find them later. And yet, I still found my answers downright wrong sometimes. It's a good thing that many users here, both native and non-native speakers, are kind enough to correct me nicely and politely. And I'm grateful for that.

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It would be a lie if I said that I didn't feel uncomfortable at all when reading such sentences. In any case, I believe that non-native speakers, myself included, are reasonable enough not to answer a question such as "What would native speakers think when they hear this sentence ...?" But, when it's obvious that anyone could answer a question, I couldn't help but wonder why the OP had to add that line. For me? And for others like me?

However, I understand the OPs perfectly. They want their answers and they believe that the best answer should come only from native speakers. The same thing also happens in my country. Many well-to-do people spend 25,000++ U.S. dollars a year just for their kid to have a chance to study with native English speaking teachers. I've also once seen a mother who gave an interview proudly about her five-year-old son speaking English very well, even better than his mother tongue. It's crazy!

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With this understanding, I learned to avoid to answer questions from such OPs, once I had some idea about their attitudes after a few exchanges. Most of them are reasonable enough. As I said, they just want their best answers, which is fair enough. They just don't know for sure which answers of mine are right, and which are wrong.

TL;DR The best thing for the community, in my opinion, is to leave such a sentence untouched, because that's what the OP wants, until the OP has got a good answer, then we remove it.

Answer 2

As a native English speaker -- and thus having no reason to be biased against such a request -- I agree that 90% of the time it's pointless. Sure, most of the time, the thoughts of someone who has been speaking and writing a language every day for the past 40 years are likely more helpful than someone who started attending a language class yesterday. But there are plenty of non-native speakers who know the language very well. In some ways a non-native speaker may have an advantage: because he had to actually study the language instead of just picking it up, he might well know the rules better. You could, of course, say "I am looking for an answer from someone knowledgeable about proper use of the language", but ... as opposed to what? "I am looking for an answer from someone who doesn't know what he is talking about"?

There are contexts where a native speaker would be more qualified. For example, questions about how someone learned the language as a child. But for the most part, yes, I'd just drop such statements.

Answer 3

I'm not sure I see this "exclusion" that you speak of. I never thought:

"I would like to hear a native speaker's opinion, please"

implied:

(A) "I'm not interested in hearing a non-native speaker's opinion"

or:

(B) "I only want to hear a native speaker's opinion."

I've always interpreted the remark to mean:

(C) "Everyone is welcome to answer, but I'm hoping at least one native speaker answers my question."

If the remark was meant to convey (A) or (B), then I'd be very much bothered by the remark, too. If the remark means (C), though, I'm rather indifferent about it.

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That all said, even if my more inclusionary interpretation is the accurate one, I agree with you that the remark doesn't really add much to the question.

Here's my advice to those hoping for a range of opinions from knowledgable people: If you want a wider range of opinions, then ask a compelling question. The more one can put into a question – more context, more background, more insight about why you are asking, more about why or how, and less about a simple yes-or-no – the more likely the question will gain positive attention from well-qualified people who will want to join in.

In other words, I'm a native speaker, but I don't think I'm any more likely to answer a question because it includes an appeal for a native speaker's opinion.

Unless the community comes up with a compelling reason to leave this appeal as a footnote in the question, I have no problem with Wendi – or anyone else with sufficient rep to make an edit – doing a quiet revision and removing the sentence from the question.

Answer 4

I don't think it's unreasonable to want a native speaker opinion. Native speakers of any language are much better at identifying whether a sentence sounds natural or unnatural, too formal, etc., even though they are not better at identifying why.

I post French questions at french.stackexchange.com because I want to sound more like a native French speaker, and I definitely do not want Americans telling me "rules" they learned in high school. To me the definition of "this is grammatical French" is "a French native speaker would say this."

Of course non-native speakers can achieve native levels of proficiency, but it's very rare -- when is the last time you met a person who started learning your native language after the age of eight or so and was so good that they tricked you into thinking they were a native speaker? For me, it has happened once in my life.

However, there is a flip side. Namely, native speakers are likely to be worse at giving good guidelines for rules in a useful way (e.g. how do you know adjective order in "big red house?") because we have never studied these rules. A lot of the time, answers written by native speakers tend to be full of prescriptivisms that we learn in school about "mistakes" that native speakers "make" and not so helpful to someone trying to learn the language.

I also find that native speakers don't know so much about other dialects; the other day, a question made me think "nobody who speaks English says that" turned out to be about an Australianism.

In short: whether a speaker is native or non-native is highly relevant, both negatively and positively, to how an answer to a question should be interpreted. I don't think it's rude to ask.

Answer 5

I agree with WendiKidd's OP. There's nothing to be gained from restricting who should answer.

However some questions may be specifically about a particular branch of English, i.e. British, American, Indian, etc. and the nature of the question will make it apparent that answers from 'natives' of that area will be preferred. Even so, the question is best phrased "how would a Brit say this" rather than "Can a Brit native speaker please tell me how", precisely because it invites a wider discussion that may elicit comparisons with other Englishes (is that a word?) that help the OP's understanding.

English is very widely dispersed and it is useful to remind people that 'their' English is not the only one.

Answer 6

My answer could be repetitious but I also want to show my opposition toward addressing native speakers in a question,

• It is read like an offense to a non-native speaker who can answer the question.

• Even native-speakers don't need to be addressed to answer specific questions, it's an offense to them too. (it is read like a demand)

• ELL as it implies is a place who language learners gather together to lean English, nothing implies that even a native-speaker should be present in this community

However, the OP may be interested to know what is natural or common among native speakers, it differs from addressing native speakers, it just should include sentences like

What a native speaker may think of ....

What is common or natural among native speakers ...

But not

As a native speaker, what do you think?

Answer 7

There are just some aspects of language which linguists can describe adequately only by examining native speakers' judgments. I have found some answers from non-native speakers inadequate at best, if not downright misleading. That's why I hope answers to my questions come from educated native speakers. That doesn't mean, of course, that answers from non-native speakers are definitely incorrect. It might be a good idea for non-native answerers to identify themselves as native or non-native speakers before we can decide for ourselves how much faith to put on an answer.

Answer 8

I do not see it as a problem if a poster requests answers from native speakers. In my short time on this site, I have seen many answers by a non-native speaker that have just been downright wrong.