African American English

This article covers African American English as a dialect of the English language. For the concept of Ebonics as an independent language, see Ebonics .

The African-American English (Engl .: African American English (AAE) , also known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and less accurate than Black English , Black Vernacular , Black English Vernacular (BEV) , Black Vernacular English (BVE) and colloquially as Ebonics known) is a variety of English common to the African American population in the United States . Compared to the standard language, it is characterized primarily by deviations in grammar and pronunciation . A separate form of African American English that still exists today is the so-called Gullah , which has only a few thousand native speakers and is found on the islands south of Chesapeake Bay .

development

The ancestors of most African Americans were Africans who were brought to plantations in the southern United States by slave traders . Accordingly, Afro-American English has developed into a continuum between its own sociolectal variants of Southern English and its own language with roots in a Creole from English and, above all, Wolof , attested in the 18th century . In order to be recognized as a language of its own, however, there has been a lack of political and social factors that would make it an expanded language .

Differences to standard English

grammar

Compared to standard English, verbs are usually not conjugated (correct would have to assume null morphemes , since the underlying categories do exist). The copula can fail, e.g. B. "She my sister". Overall, the verbal system is characterized by a highly differentiated system of aspects that emphasize the closeness or duration of an action.

pronunciation

The pronunciation is very different from the English of most Americans of European descent. Characteristic here are, among other things, the omission of plosives at the end of the syllable, non- rhoticity , and the vocalization of the ending / l / .

literature

• Lisa J. Green: African American English: A Linguistic Introduction . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002. ISBN 978-0-521-89138-7
• Sonja L. Lanehart: Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English . John Benjamin, 2001. ISBN 978-1-588-11046-6 .