African-American Vernacular English

African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), sometimes formerly known as Ebonics, is the variety of English natively spoken by most working-class and middle-class African Americans. This variety is also spoken among some African Canadians. Having its own unique grammatical, vocabulary, and accent features, AAVE is employed by middle-class African Americans as the more informal and casual end of a sociolinguistic continuum. However, in formal speaking contexts, speakers tend to switch to more standard English grammar and vocabulary, usually while retaining elements of the vernacular (non-standard) accent. AAVE is widespread throughout the United States, but it is not the native dialect of all African Americans, nor are all of its speakers African American.

Like most varieties of African-American English, African-American Vernacular English shares a large portion of its grammar and phonology with the regional dialects of the Southern United States, and especially older Southern American English, due to the historical enslavement of African Americans primarily in that region.

Mainstream linguists see only minor parallels between AAVE, West African languages, and English-based creole languages, instead most directly tracing back AAVE to diverse non-standard dialects of English as spoken by the English-speaking settlers in the Southern Colonies and later the Southern United States. However, a minority of linguists argue that the vernacular shares so many characteristics with African creole languages spoken around the world that it could have originated as a creole (or semi-creole) language, distinct from the English language, before re-converging with English.