African American Vernacular English

African American Vernacular English (AAVE), variety of American English spoken by a large proportion of Black Americans. Many scholars hold that AAVE, like several English creoles, developed from contacts between nonstandard varieties of colonial English and African languages. Its exact origins continue to be debated, however, as do the relative influences of the languages involved. AAVE is not as extensively modified as most English creoles, and it remains in several ways similar to current nonstandard dialects spoken by white Americans, especially American Southern English. It has therefore been identified by some creolists as a semi-creole (a term that remains controversial).

AAVE is a vernacular form of American English primarily used in the home or for day-to-day communication. Many do not accept its use in more formal or official occasions, such as in workplaces or schools. It should not be confused with language varieties spoken by such specialized subgroups as urban youth, in which one will come across words and phrases not typically used in the basic vernacular.

The structural similarities between AAVE and American Southern English (e.g., double negatives, as in “I ain seen none”; relative clauses starting with what, as in “everything what he told you”; and double modals, as in “he might could help you”) are attributable to their parallel development on the cotton plantations of the southeastern United States from the diverse varieties of English brought to the colonies by the original settlers. The emergence of AAVE as a separate dialect may be correlated with the emergence of African American traditions in music, religious practices, and cooking styles, all of which developed separately from the practices of white American communities—although these other areas show less-inhibited influence from African cultures in ways that have still not been adequately explained. The influence of African languages on the structure of AAVE has been rather elusive, limited to some features—such as copula omission, lack of subject-verb agreement, and absence of subject-auxiliary inversion in main clauses (illustrated below)—that this dialect shares with Caribbean English creoles and Gullah. The origins of these peculiarities probably should not be located exclusively in Black African languages, as explained below.

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Among the most commonly discussed features of AAVE are: (1) omission of the copula be in such sentences as “Larry sick,” “Sharon gon come,” and “Glenn playin,” (2) consonant cluster simplification, so that, for example, the pronunciation of passed or past is often indistinguishable from that of pass, (3) double negatives, as in “She don wan nothin,” (4) lack of subject-verb agreement, as in “He do,” (5) absence of subject-auxiliary inversion in direct questions, such as “Why you don’t like me?” and “Where he is?,” (6) subject-auxiliary inversion in subordinate clauses, such as “He aks me did I do it?,” (7) omission of the auxiliary do in questions such as “What you want?” (a feature germane to the absence of subject-auxiliary inversion and typologically related to the absence of the copula as a semantically empty verb), (8) consuetudinal or invariant be, such as “Billy don’t be telling lies” (different in meaning from “Billy don’t tell lies,” because it refers to repeated processes rather than to a repeated activity), and (9) the use of steady to indicate persistence, in constructions such as “She steady talking” to mean “She persists in talking.” Most of these features are not unique to AAVE; they are shared, at lower frequencies, by other nonstandard varieties of English. They are said to be variable because they do not occur categorically; they alternate with their standard counterparts (when applicable), and they occur in frequencies that vary from one speaker to another—and sometimes within the same speaker, from one setting to another. Aside from the ethnic identity of its speakers, AAVE is perhaps most distinctive in its intonation and some stress patterns, which it still shares with white American Southern English in such instances as the stress in the word police falling on the first rather than the second syllable.