The relevance of speaker types in cases of language shift was first noted by Nancy Dorian, who coined the term semi-speaker to refer to those speakers of Sutherland Gaelic who were predominantly English-speaking and whose Gaelic competence was limited and showed considerable influence from English.
[7] The distinction between fluent speakers and rememberers is important in fieldwork, but accurately determining where a member of a language community falls on the speaker-rememberer continuum can be challenging.
A semi-speaker is a speaker who has acquired at the least a basic linguistic competence in a given language but does not generally use it regularly in conversation.
The word "semi-speaker" was introduced by linguist Nancy Dorian in describing the last speakers of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic.
[2][1] When semi-speakers form a significant part of the speech community, language contraction often ensues, as the linguistic norms are accommodated to speakers' competences.
When only a terminal speaker remains, that person will not remember a complete form of the language as it had been spoken by a larger community which used it in all domains.
[12] He lived in an isolated, hilly area, and was about 80 years old when he was contacted by a team of sociolinguistic language surveyors; he has since died.