African-American English
African-American English is the group of English dialects spoken predominantly by Black people in the United States and, less often, in Canada. Most commonly, African-American English is an umbrella term that refers to a dialect continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to more standard American English. Like all widely spoken language varieties, African-American English shows variation stylistically, generationally, geographically, in rural versus urban characteristics, in vernacular versus standard registers, etc. There has been a significant body of African-American literature and oral tradition for centuries.
Name
The broad topic of the English language, in its diverse forms, as used by Black people in North America has various names, including Black American English or simply Black English. Also common is the somewhat controversial term Ebonics and, more recently in academic linguistics, African-American Language.History
African-American English began as early as the 17th century, when the Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved West Africans into Southern colonies. During the development of plantation culture in this region, nonstandard dialects of English were widely spoken by British settlers, which probably resulted in both first- and second-language English varieties being developed by African Americans. The 19th century's evolving cotton-plantation industry, and eventually the 20th century's Great Migration, certainly contributed greatly to the spread of the first of these varieties as stable dialects of English among African Americans.The most widespread modern dialect is known as African-American Vernacular English. Despite more than a century of scholarship, the historical relationship between AAVE and the vernacular speech of Whites in the United States is still not very well understood; in part, this is because of a lack of data from comparable groups, but also because of the tendency to compare AAVE to northern vernaculars or even standard varieties of English while conflating regional and ethnic differences, as well as disregarding the sociohistorical context of AAVE origins. For example, features of AAVE grammar such as complex verb tenses and zero copula may have been inherited from African languages such as Hausa. AAVE shares several linguistic features with Southern White Vernacular English. Furthermore, the farm tenancy system that replaced slavery in the American South drew in Southern Whites, leading to a context for an interracial speech relationship dynamic among socioeconomic equals throughout the South and leading to many shared features until the start of WWII. In this case, changes that became robust after the 1930s most strongly mark ethnic distinctions in speech.
Dialects
African-American Vernacular English
African-American Vernacular is the native variety of the majority of working-class and many middle-class African Americans, particularly in urban areas, with its own unique accent, grammar, and vocabulary features. Typical features of the grammar include a "zero" copula, omission of the genitive clitic, and complexity of verb aspects and tenses beyond that of other English dialects. Common features of the phonology include non-rhoticity, the metathetic use of aks instead of ask, simplification of diphthongs, a raising chain shift of the front vowels, and a wider range of intonation or "melody" patterns than most General American accents. AAVE is often used by middle-class African Americans in casual, intimate, and informal settings as one end of a sociocultural language continuum, and AAVE shows some slight variations by region or city.African-American Standard English
African-American Standard English is the prestigious and native end of the middle-class African-American English continuum that is used for more formal or public settings and in more careful speech than is AAVE. The term has been largely popularized by linguist Arthur Spears. This variety exhibits standard English vocabulary and grammar but often retains certain elements of the unique AAVE accent, with intonational or rhythmic features maintained more than phonological ones. Frequently, middle-class African Americans are bi-dialectal between this standard variety and AAVE, tending toward using the former variety in school and other public places, so that adults will frequently even codeswitch between the two varieties within a single conversation. The phonological features maintained in this standard dialect tend to be less marked. For instance, one such characteristic is the omission of the final consonant in word-final consonant clusters, so words such as past or hand may lose their final consonant sound.African-American Appalachian English
Black Appalachian Americans have been reported as increasingly adopting Appalachian/Southern dialect commonly associated with White Appalachians. These similarities include an accent that is rhotic, the categorical use of the grammatical construction in "he works" and "she goes", and Appalachian vocabulary. However, even African-American English in Appalachia is diverse, with African-American women linguistically divided along sociocultural lines.Despite its distinctiveness, AAAE shares many features with other varieties of Appalachian English, including the use of nonstandard pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. AAAE also shares features with other varieties of African-American English, particularly those spoken in the South. For instance, a study of African-American communities in the Appalachian region of Virginia found that the dialects of these communities shared many features with both African-American English and Southern White English.
African-American Outer Banks English
African-American English in the North Carolina Outer Banks is rapidly accommodating to urban AAVE through the recent generations, despite having aligned with local Outer Banks English for centuries.The dialect has been studied by linguists and has been documented in various works, such as the book African American Outer Banks English: A Sociolinguistic Study by Elizabeth C. Zsiga. This book provides a detailed description of the language, including its grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. It also provides a history of the dialect and examines how it has changed over time.
African Nova Scotian English
African Nova Scotian English is spoken by descendants of Black Nova Scotians, Black immigrants from the United States who live in Nova Scotia, Canada. Though most African-American freedom seekers in Canada ended up in Ontario through the Underground Railroad, only the dialect of African Nova Scotians retains the influence of West African Pidgin English. In the 19th century, African Nova Scotian English would have been indistinguishable from English spoken in Jamaica or Suriname. However, it has been increasingly de-creolized since this time, due to interaction and influence from the White Nova Scotian population. Desegregation of the province's school boards in 1964 further accelerated the process of de-creolization. The language is a relative of the African-American Vernacular English, with significant variations unique to the group's history in the area. There are noted differences in the dialects of those from Guysborough County and those from North Preston, the Guysborough group having been in the province three generations earlier.use data from early recordings of African Nova Scotian English, Samaná English, and the recordings of former slaves to demonstrate that speech patterns were inherited from nonstandard colonial English. The dialect was extensively studied in 1992 by Shana Poplack and Sali Tagliamonte from the University of Ottawa.
The grammar of ANS is largely based on standard English, but there are several distinct features that set it apart from other varieties of English. These features include the use of the negative concord—which is the use of multiple negative words in a sentence to emphasize the negative—and the double negative, which is the use of two negative words in a sentence to express a positive meaning. In addition, ANS also has its own pronunciation rules, such as Th-stopping and G-dropping.
A commonality between African Nova Scotian English and African-American Vernacular English is r-deletion. This rate of deletion is 57% among Black Nova Scotians, and 60% among African Americans in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, in the surrounding mostly white communities of Nova Scotia, r-deletion does not occur.
Older African-American English
Older, or earlier, African-American English refers to a set of many heterogeneous varieties studied and reconstructed by linguists as theoretically spoken by the first African Americans and enslaved Africans in British America and, later, the United States. Of primary interest is the direct theoretical predecessor to AAVE. Mainly four types of sources have been used for the historical reconstruction of older AAVE: written interviews, ex-slave audio recordings, the modern diaspora dialects of isolated Black communities, and letters written by 18th- and 19th-century African Americans. The use of the zero copula, nonstandard plural forms and negative concords were occasional or common variants in these earlier dialects, and the last item even the preferred variant in certain grammatical contexts. Other nonstandard grammatical constructions associated with AAVE are documented in older dialects too; however, many of them are not, evidently being recent innovations of 20th-century urban AAVE.Gullah
, or Gullah, is the distinct language of some African Americans along the South Carolina and Georgia coast and extending slightly into North Carolina and Florida. Gullah is an English creole: a natural language grammatically independent from English that uses mostly English vocabulary. Most Gullah speakers today are probably bidialectal. A sub-dialect of Gullah is also spoken in Oklahoma and Texas, known as Afro-Seminole Creole.The language is derived from a mixture of African languages and English, with words and phrases from Caribbean and West African languages such as Akan, Wolof, and Fula. Gullah has been described as a "linguistic bridge between Africa and the New World". The Gullah culture is deeply rooted in African traditions, particularly in the practice of storytelling and the use of handicrafts. Gullahs have a strong connection to the land, and their traditional fishing, farming, and basket-weaving practices reflect this. In recent years, efforts have been made to preserve Gullah culture and language. The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission was established in 2006 to help protect and promote the Gullah culture. The commission has partnered with universities, museums, and other organizations to develop programs and initiatives to preserve Gullah language and traditions.