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Wiktionary says that the Japanese for "Native speaker" can be either "母語話者" or
"ネイティブスピーカー". What difference, if any, is there between the two?

Searching the corpus on jisho.org only got one hit for the kanji form, and no
hits for the katakana form.

On lang-8, I saw someone [correct](http://lang-8.com/5255/journals/11524) from
母語話者 to ネイティブスピーカー as the kanji form was not as common.
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word-choice
Difference between 母語話者 and ネイティブスピーカー
This probably falls into the category of words that have become more popular
in the katakana form compared to the kanji form. If you are talking about the
difference in meaning then there is none as far as I can tell from usage. If
you are talking about difference in terms of when you should be using which
word, I would suggest that the younger generation will be more comfortable
with ネイティブスピーカー (since this is how many of the overseas students refer to
English or Japanese native speakers). I have not heard them use the term 母語話者,
but perhaps it is used more in written Japanese.
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Conclusion first, neither term is particularly common.

Ironically, however, places like this (SE) are not very good to discuss the
matter. Why not? Because the Japanese-speakers who are on here, myself
included, are already at least bilingual to an extent and, in general, they
would tend to be more interested in foreign languages or "Language" in general
so that they would spend more time discussing language-related subjects than
the average Japanese person. For that reason, someone might jump on me saying
that my first sentence is wrong and we use those terms all the time.

The first time I had ever heard the word 「ネイティブスピーカー」(it is one word in
Japanese) was when I was in high school. That was around the time when some
large-scale English conversation schools had emerged and started advertizing
on TV. 「ネイティブスピーカー」 was their catchword; they hired those people. Good-bye to
the old days of learning English from Japanese teachers.

Funny thing, in restrospect, was that the word was practically never used to
refer to a native speaker of any other language -- particularly one of
Japanese. Just as in child language acquisition, over-generalization and over-
simplification do often occur when a culture imports words from another.

「[母語話者]{ぼごわしゃ}」 is rarely used outside of those who are interested in
linguistics or a particular foreign language, either. I do not think I myself
had ever used it actively before I was in college. It is _almost_ like a
technical term for linguists.

One could say one would hear 「ネイティブスピーカー」 more often than 「母語話者」, but that is
largely because of the advertisement by Eikaiwa schools. The truth, however,
is that neither one is used in the Japanese-speaking world as often and widely
as "native speaker" is used in the English-speaking world. Japan is not an
immigration-based country like many English-speaking countries are. We as a
nation just do not have the custom of asking each other on the street the
question "What's your native language, man?"

Another (perhaps more linguistically convincing) reason that we do not use the
two words in question is that we use the word 「[母国語]{ぼこくご} = one's native
language」 way more often. If you use it, you do not need to use 「ネイティブスピーカー」
or 「母語話者」 because **you can say 「X語を母国語とする人」** instead of saying 「X語の母語話者」 or
「X語のネイティブスピーカー」. It is only a matter of what sounds more natural in either
language.
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I think ネイティブ **(without スピーカー)** , is the most common word used by ordinary
Japanese people. To me 母語話者 sounds too technical in ordinary conversations and
casual writings.

ネイティブ is considered _exactly_ the same as ネイティブスピーカー by ordinary Japanese. To
them, ネイティブ is ネイティブスピーカー, nothing else. Thus ネイティブスピーカー is far less
frequently used in conversations because it's unnecessarily long.

But professionals or serious students may tend to avoid using ネイティブ, because
they understand that _native_ is different from _native speaker_ in English.
Perhaps in Wikipedia we will see bare ネイティブ rarely because such people will
eventually edit the articles and "fix" them.

When I started learning English at junior high school, ネイティブ was already a
very common phrase which was used everywhere. I didn't even know that was a
commercial catchphrase at first, and I can't imagine a Japanese student older
than 14 who doesn't understand what ネイティブ means.
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To make it simple, both are correct, you might find 母語話者, in books, newspaper,
any written document although not very used.

母語話者 is the real japanese word who existed before ネイティブ was imported in
japanese from english.

ネイティブ is the most used word , which is a contraction from ネイティブスピーカー, which is
comming from the english ネイティブ

In japanese you have different level of language, and different context to use
them. Let's say you write a Phd Thesis, writing or reading a book about
linguistic you better use 母語話者. On the other side for everyday usage 母語話者 will
look weird so you better use ネイティブ.
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