AAVE: African American Vernacular English — Ling 101

[00:00:00]hello everyone welcome to the Laing focused Channel and my name is Paul today we're going to talk about African American vernacular English African American vernacular English which you may also hear referred to as Ebonics is a group of dialects of English that developed among African American communities in the United States because of the expressive and innovative nature of these dialects they are very influential and they are the source of many slang expressions and idioms that are used in general American English and even international English yet despite the fact that English speakers borrow their favorite pieces of aave there's still the persistent belief that its speakers speak bad english or broken english as though they're constantly making mistakes when they speak but any linguist will tell you that's not how language works aave is not broken standard english it's simply not standard english it's something else enslaved African people were first brought to what is now the United States in 1619 and over the next two centuries hundreds of thousands more were brought over similar to the development of english-based Creole languages in the Caribbean aave developed from contact between speakers of West African languages and their english-speaking slave masters as well as indentured servants from Great Britain and Ireland but while aave has some creole like features it's much closer to standard English than Caribbean Creoles are one theory suggests that it arose as a result of the slaves learning the dialectal English spoken by the indentured servants who were poor and oftentimes not proficient in standard English another theory suggests that it developed as a creole language but then converged with Standard English through a process of decree ol ization the more accepted theory is the first one but there was probably also some creole influence from the slaves brought to the u.s. from the caribbean with black americans living as a largely separate community first under slavery than under segregation it makes sense that they would develop their own enduring dialects and it also makes sense that they would develop their own in-group expressions and idioms that were difficult for hostile outsiders to understand the great northward migration of the twentieth century helped establish a VE as an enduring dialect group throughout the country first off let me be clear that not all African Americans speak aave and there are some people who do speak it who aren't African American and as is typically the case with non-standard varieties of a language aave exists on a continuum with standard English and people mix the two of them to varying degrees depending on the situation their socioeconomic status and their perception of the dialect and it's also true that there's variation within aave based on region and generation but I'll describe some typical features that are unquestionably a part of aave people often associate aave with its slang especially words and expressions that have crossed over into other varieties of English often through music and other media words like dis which is short for disrespect beef meaning a conflict squash meaning to put an end to something cosign meaning to vouch for someone give props meaning to give praise or recognition to someone and lots of other expressions like that but this kind of slang is not representative of aave slang by its very nature is always changing the vast vast majority of vocabulary is standard English vocabulary even though sometimes words are used slightly differently either in form or in meaning the core of aave is really its grammar and its phonology let's examine its grammar verbs there are a lot of little differences in how verbs are used first is and are are often left out she over da that's before a phrase showing location he will funny do that's before a noun phrase they gotta crazy here it's left out before an adjective they're also left out before the present progressive ing he don't know what he talking about note that is and are are the only forms of to be that are dropped am is not left out and neither all the past tense forms was and were more on those later or be also isn't or can't be dropped at the end of a sentence Oh what it is the basic rule is that they can only be dropped in aave in the same contexts in which they can become contractions in standard English habitual B there are contexts in which speakers of aave used B when is or are would be used in standard English for example we be working 24/7 B has a special purpose when used like this it indicates habitual action this sentence is also possible we work but that just means working right now rather than habitually working over an extended period of time another example he always be telling people what to do so you can see that the use of B is not a random choice or mistake it's systematic and it's grammatically correct according to the rules of aave there's also an intensive habitual marker this is similar to habitual B but is more emphatic he's they run away forward this means that it happens pretty much all the time it's habitual there's also an intensified continuous marker steady it shows that the action is in progress but not necessarily habitual over a longer period of time you never listen I've been told you to stop but you steady play for the word plan here I would probably say playing around or messing around lack of person number agreement before we saw this sentence he don't know what he talking about this part he don't may have stood out to you as different verb conjugations are generally flattened so that they are the same regardless of person and number and they was acting crazy they was rather than they were in the present tense this usually means that the third person singular form doesn't have an S yeah you work at the shop down the street he work rather than he works that's the basic pattern most of the time a common expression that seems to contradict this rule is gods - okay you trevor August's go notice the S on gods even when it's not in the third person singular gods - seems to have developed as distinct from God ah both being contractions of have got to gotsta is more emphatic than God ah completive or perfective done the word done is frequently used as an aspect marker showing that an action has been completed you know you don't messed up right this is often interpreted as referring to an action completed in the very recent past but that's not necessarily the case it could be further back in the past but using done gives the feeling that the situation after the action is different than the situation before it you don't woke up the whole neighbor the word beam is also used with verbs in two ways one way is called unstressed beam it's used like half beam or has been in standard English Shema made for a long time there's also stressed beam when beam pronounced more like bin is stressed it means that the action occurred a long time ago or that the action or state has been continuing for a long time she been Mary this means that she's been married for a long time the stress on bin indicates that the marriage began in the remote past so the phrase for a long time is unnecessary in fact when using stressed beam it's actually ungrammatical to include an adverbial phrase like that up in finish my homework ma there are a few special ways to express the future in aave one way is using gone or gonna which is a contraction of going to we go visit them soon gonna is used in casual speech and a lot of varieties of English so this is no big surprise another more distinctive feature form is finna I'm finna go home this is a contraction of fixin to which is frequently heard in dialects of the southern US like I'm fixin to go home often they hit the dough in a circuit hit the dough or hit the door meaning leave there's also a special form used in the first person singular imma I'm away right here while you you ready imma developed as a contraction of I'm gonna it may be a contraction of I'm gonna but it's now used slightly differently as a declaration of immediate action whereas I'm gonna or I'm gon is a little further into the future negation the negative in aave is frequently expressed with ain't though not in all contexts with a verb in the simple present tense don't is used rather than ain't he doesn't live here anymore he'll you know lo in the present continuous ain't is used man I ain't even tryna here are there this is like saying I have no interest in hearing what you're saying notice that ain't often blends in with the words around it I ain't is more like I ain't I ain't even is more like I and even man I ain't even tryna here are there in the past tense it's used I didn't say anything they say it's also used with the present perfect I haven't said anything they said nothing by the way notice that there is a specific difference in the verb tense between I ain't say and I ain't said those aren't random variations you might have also noticed that anymore and anything are replaced with their negative counterparts resulting in a double negative actually both that and ain't appear in other dialects of English as well and aren't unique to aave but it does have a unique kind of double negative or sometimes triple negative construction called negative inversion okay nobody's saying like she can it's standard English this would be nobody can sing like she can't ain't nobody go home till we finish nobody's going home until we finish in this construction the auxiliary verb moves to the beginning of the sentence and becomes negative possessives possession in aave tends to be shown by syntax with the apostrophe s ending deleted for example Yamada house notice that the word dad has no apostrophe s ending but it's clear that dad is the one who possesses the house because dad comes right before house in the sentence for possessive adjectives in the third-person subject pronouns are used they was looking for a furnace notice that they appears twice once as the subject and again as the possessor but again we know the second one is possessive because it appears right before the noun friends asked constructions aave features several interesting uses of the word ass first it intensifies an adjective who's that some random s ba this has been adopted by speakers of other varieties of English to some extent and even some speakers of standard English use it in casual settings when they want to be more expressive it also reminds me of something Australians and New Zealanders say to intensify adjectives they might say something like this beer is cheap as not ass but as a second together with a possessive it's used in place of a pronoun but with a sense of urgency yo as don't learn this means you're going to learn but the subtext is that you're chastising or warning someone the third it can also be used as a reflexive in place of self get yo ass and Santos that just means get yourself inside the house yo ass replaces yourself this is used in other varieties of English as well but in a much more limited capacity pronunciation African American vernacular English also has a characteristic accent or rather a range of accents that share some common features we can't talk about all those features here but let's look at a few of them Arlis pronunciation hey ve tends to be or less at the end of words similar to the accents of England and some North Eastern American accents brother mother sister at least in some varieties of aave when are appears after Oh or you the are disappears and the word ends in an O sound door becomes dou floor becomes hello your becomes yo sure becomes so some dipthongs become monophthongs for example my ride becomes bara ride refers to a car by the way in standard English the vowel in my and ride is a diphthong basically meaning that the vowel shifts from one to another within a single syllable I I in aave it's just one continuous vowel sound ah also my might be pronounced with the schwa when it's unstressed in rapid speech like ma changes in th sounds in other words interdental fricatives fuh in the the voiceless th sound tha is sometimes replaced by fir bath Bev south-south the way these th sounds are rendered as fir reminds me of some dialects spoken in England voiceless tha sometimes becomes too Horta this sound tah is a voiceless dental stop which is somewhere between two a T sound and tha the voiceless th sound with might become weight and in that sample you can hear the globalization of the to sound it often becomes a glottal stop just like T does in general American English in certain contexts like at the end of a word voiced the sometimes becomes duh or the this is a voiced Dental stop you could say that it's somewhere between a D sound and the voiced the sound that might be dead some consonants are silent this includes the final consonant in some consonant clusters for instance past is pronounced pairs and hand becomes a to be clear this happens in other accents as well including mine but it tends to be more consistent in aave even in some contexts in which I would pronounce the sound also initial consonant sounds are sometimes dropped in auxiliary verbs like don't and quasi auxiliary verbs like gonna I don't know becomes oh no this process probably also resulted in the future form imma that we saw before some words have different stress which can actually undo the vowel reduction of standard English in standard English well at least in general American English this word is pronounced police in aave it's pronounced police actually the man in the recording stresses the second syllable but it's often stressed on the first syllable and as with some other features of aave this is also a feature of southern speech in general so that's interesting right in my accent the O is dropped or at least reduced but an AAA ve the O is clearly pronounced so when sounds are dropped in a dialect like AAA ve is that any different from me dropping certain sounds when I speak the truth is that the phonology of any spoken variety of English is separate from English spelling and every variety has somewhat different phonological rules that its speakers follow should speakers of aave be encouraged to give up their dialect in favor of standard English well keep in mind that all over the world in various different languages there are dialects that people use in informal situations while they learn the standard language at school and use that in formal situations including writing there are dialects of German Japanese Arabic and countless other languages and people switch between dialectal speech and standard speech depending on the context you can make a good argument that everyone in a society should learn the standard language well in order to increase their opportunities and to improve communication between different segments of society but there's nothing that makes a dialect incorrect if your intention is to speak that dialect while speaking a dialect at a job interrview might be incorrect in that context speaking it with your friends is so standard English is clearly an important tool but aave is not inferior to it it's simply different from standard English just as all dialects are that includes the dialects of Great Britain Ireland Australia and everywhere else that English has spoken the question of the day to speakers of African American vernacular English to what extent do you use it in daily life and to what extent do you use standard English and can you add any features of aave that didn't appear in the video and to others are there any words or expressions you use that originally came from aave what are they leave your responses in the comments down below the man who recorded the audio samples for this video Laurence is an artist who creates fantastic portraits like these and he can create custom portraits of you too I recommend you follow him on Instagram and check out his work I also want to give a big shout out to all the Lang focused patreon supporters especially the top-tier patrons whose names are on the screen check out patreon.com/lenguin the benefits of the various tiers and to everyone thank you for watching and have a nice stay [Music] [Music]