View source for African-American Vernacular English

{{African American topics sidebar}}
'''African American Vernacular English''' ('''AAVE''') is a name for the way that some [[African-American]] people talk in [[English language|English]].<ref>Mufwene, Salikoko 2001. What is African American English? In Lanehart, Sonja ''Sociocultural and historical contexts of African American English: varieties of English around the world''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 21–52.</ref> [[Linguists]] named it AAVE, which is used by some non-black people. Some of the [[dialect]]'s pronunciations and grammar are similar to how people talk in [[West Africa]].

AAVE first came about in the 16th and the 17th centuries.<ref>Kautzsch, Alexander 2004. Earlier African American English: morphology and syntax. in Edgar W. Schneider ''et al'' (eds) ''A handbook of varieties of English''. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 341–355.</ref> It became famous in 1996, when some educators in [[Oakland, California]], said they wanted to use AAVE to help teach black kids. They called it '''Ebonics''', but the term often has a negative connotation.{{cn}}

There are many rules that govern how the sounds of AAVE are different from [[Standard English]]. Some have to do with [[pronunciation]] and [[vocabulary]] (or [[lexicon]]), but most have to do with [[grammar]], including [[verb]] tenses and [[sentence]] structure.{{cn}}

[[Hip hop]] music has made AAVE more famous since the 1980s. Some people think it is cool and try to speak or learn it even if they are not really familiar with it. Some non-black people speak it well.{{cn}}

AAVE is influenced by [[Southern American English]] spoken by their white slave masters.{{cn}}
== Phonology ==
{{listen|filename=Bobby Womack BBC Radio4 Front Row 26 Dec 2012 b01pg54v.flac
|title=Speech example|description=An example of a man from northern Ohio with an AAVE accent ([[Bobby Womack]]).}}
{{listen|filename=On the phone- Russell Gage.ogg|title=Speech example|description=An example of two men with AAVE accents, the interviewer from Georgia (D.J. Shockley) and the interviewee from Louisiana (Russell Gage).}}

Many features set AAVE apart from other forms of [[American English]] (particularly, [[General American]]). [[McWhorter]] argues that what truly unites all AAVE accents is a uniquely wide-ranging intonation pattern or "melody", which characterizes even the most "neutral" or light African-American accent. Many versions of African American Vernacular English are ''non-rhotic'' (engaging in [[r-dropping]]), turn the ''i'' diphthong into a monothong, etc.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/46310744|title=The word on the street : debunking the myth of "pure" standard English|last=McWhorter|first=John H.|date=2000|publisher=[[Perseus Pub]]|isbn=0-7382-0446-3|location=Cambridge, Mass.|oclc=46310744}}</ref>

Many multisyllabic words in AAVE differ from General American in their stress placement. For example, '''''po'''lice'', '''''gui'''tar'', and '''''De'''troit'' are pronounced with initial stress instead of stress on the last syllable or neutral stress.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57572547|title=African American English : a linguistic introduction|last=Green|first=Lisa J.|date=2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0-511-07823-4|location=Cambridge, U.K.|oclc=57572547}}</ref>

== Related pages ==
* [[Southern American English]]

== References ==
{{reflist}}

{{African American topics}}

[[Category:African-American history]]
[[Category:American English]]