Job Discussion Forums

[Qaaolchoura]

Being a US citizen this is merely of academic interest to me. But I've seen ads for Turkey and other places that require citizenship and secondary/tertiary education in an English-speaking country, but don't define English-speaking country. Are there any places that count people from countries other than some subset of the big 7 (US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, NZ, South Africa) as native speakers?

I know that there the official language requirement explains allowing second-language Anglophones from Quebec, Puerto Rico, and most of South Africa while disallowing native speakers from Israel. And I know that Caribbean, African, and South Asian Englishes are pretty much unintelligible, except when the speaker has lived in another English-speaking country.

But people from Singapore, Malta, and Mauritius seem to speak English pretty well, as well as having it as the official language. Plus Philippinos from Manila seem to have very good English, as do upper-class West Indians and Pakistanis (though oddly not so much Bharati Indians in my observation). All in all it seems like you could greatly expand your pool of "native speakers" by being more flexible.

So yeah, are there any countries which determine native speaker as official language (or language of government as in US and UK) of native country + speak English intelligibly to consulate or employer?

Regards,
~Q

[sistercream]

Certainly in Hong Kong it depends on individual employers: some of the less reputable ones only want obviously Caucasian faces even if they come from outer Slobbovia and can hardly string a simple English sentence together.

More reputable places don't care if you're black, white, brindled, from an *officially* Anglophone nation or from Moldova as long as your English is of native speaker standard (with a fairly neutral accent) and you have qualifications acceptable to the Immigration Department so that they can get your visa processed. I've met a some excellent Polish, Filipina and German English teachers here.

I've also met Filipino TEFL teachers working legally in both mainland China and in Taiwan.

[wailing_imam]

In Hong Kong and Japan, Singaporean teachers are able to work as 'native English teachers' now.

The notion of 'native speaker' is, as you know, a falsehood usually tied to history and race. However, things are changing and native English speakers from non-historical native speaking countries (UK, USA etc) are now getting the recognition the deserve.

However, the white face and passport from US, UK, AUS, NZ and CAN remain the mythical native speaker ideal that many students and schools foolishly believe in.