What is African-American Vernacular English?
{{African American topics sidebar}} '''African American Vernacular English''' ('''AAVE''') is a name for the way 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|dialects']] [[Pronunciation|pronunciations]] and [[grammar]] are similar to how [[West Africa|West African]] languages.{{cn|date=January 2025}} ==Overview== 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|date=January 2025}} 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|date=January 2025}} ===Hip hop=== [[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|date=January 2025}} AAVE is influenced by [[Southern American English]] spoken by their white slave masters.{{cn|date=January 2025}} ==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]]).}}