AAVE Pronunciation

      In this post,  we are going to deal with the Pronunciation features of the AAVE.  As I said in the previous post, AAVE has some features that differ from the Standard American English. We have seen the vocabulary so, now is time for the Pronunciation.

First of all, we are going to divide up the Pronunciation  into two parts:  In the first part, we will see the pronunciation features in consonants and in the second one, the pronunciation features in vocals.

Consonants:

Let’s start with `` Final consonants cluster ´´ . This term refers to a group of consonants that appear together in a syllable without any vowel between them . So when this occurs in a Word as in `` TEST´´ the final consonant  ``T´´ is reduced. This means that it is no pronunciated.  This rule occurs in every  variety of English, including Standar one. In the AAVE, the reduction of the final consonant occurs variably, that is, it does not happen every time.

-  The `` th´´ sounds can be represented as two different sounds in English: An `` unvoiced´´ one as in thin, think, through  and a `` voiced´´ one as in that, they, and the. In the case of the AAVE, the pronunciation of this sound depends on where it is found in a word.

At the beginning of a word, the voiced sound (e.g. in that) is regularly pronounced as ``d´´ so 'the', 'they' and 'that' are pronounced as de, dey and dat..

At the end of a word, th is often pronounced f. For instance 'Ruth' is pronounced / Ruf/; 'south' is pronounced  /souf/.

The sounds l and r:

        

 When they do not occur at the beginning of a word l and r often undergo a process known as "vocalization" and are pronounced as uh. This is most apparent in a post-vocalic position (after a vowel). For instance 'steal', 'sister', 'nickel' become steauh, sistuh, nickuh. In some varieties of AAVE (e.g. in the Southern US), r is not pronounced after the vowels o and u. The words door and doe, four and foe, and sure and show can be pronounced alike.

Vocals:

Nasalized vowels:

When a nasal consonant as n or m follows a vowel, AAVE speakers delete the nasal consonant and nasalizes the vowel. This fenom is written with a mark `` ~ ´´ above the vowel.

Diphthongs:

We call diphtongs to the pronunciation of two vowels in a same syllable. When we are talking about the AAVE pronunciation, we can find cases in which the dipthong ``ai´´ as in night or my, can suffer a change in its pronunciation. So `` my´´ is pronounced as ``ma´´ a single sound.

Sources:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English/Pronunciation

http://www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/langnet/definitions/aave.html

http://etd.lib.ncsu.edu/publications/bitstream/1840.2/2062/1/Thomasj.1..

Sandra Romero Ferrández

Some Aspects of African American Vernacular English Grammar

         In Today´s post , we are continuing with another point of the AAVE. The African American Vernacular English present some interesting features in its grammar, which makes it little bit different from the Standar English’s grammar.

- Verb Conjunction:

AAVE’speakers use to interchange the past with the past participle:

e.g:    Present                               Past                          Past Participle

     SE          do                                did                           have done

 AAVE        do                               done                        done did 

                                                                                  ( done = have)

For example :   Estándar English : He has eaten his dinner

                           AAVE: He done eat his dinner

- The use of ``be´´ :

The verb `` To be´´ can be included in the sentence as it is, without being conjugated in person and number:

E.g:   He be there!  Or She be working all the time.

Also the verb to be is often not included, it can occur in future sentences, before verbs with –ing forms , before adjective and expressions of location and before nouns.

E.g: He all right ; He there ; He run tomorrow ;  She at home. The club on one corner, the Bock is on the other.

-Future sentences: The future mark to those events that have not occurred yet, is Gonna or gon.  E.g: I don’t care what he say, you gon laugh.

Another  point in verb conjuction is `` the omitting –s of third person singular´´. While in Standard English you must make use of the ``s´´ on third person singular, in AAVE is omitted.

Here is an example:  ‘It seem like the world has gone to hell in a hand basket’

-  Negation

In this case, we can find the ain’t particle, which is used as a general negative indicator. This particle will be used in AAVE, where Estándar English would have used `` don’t ; didn’t, haven’t; isn’t ; aren’t , hasn’t´´.

E.g : ‘I ain’t know that or’  ‘It ain’t my fault; I did everything the right way.’

Also we can emphasize the use of a `` Double negation´´ that means, when we have a negative sentece, we not only use a negative form of the verb but also in other words that can be negated in the same sentence.  This is a contrast with Standar English where a double negation is considerated incorrect in grammar.

 E.g: I don’t know nothing AAVE – I don’t know anything SE

 - The usage of dem

This form is commonly used in AAVE as a way of marking plurality. In the next example `` Give me dem cups over there´´ we can observe that dem is not only used to refer to that there is more than one cup but also to specify to which one you are referring to.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English

http://www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/langnet/definitions/aave.html

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mdover/website/Social%20Welfare%20Policy%20Main%20Folder/Professional%20Writing%20for%20Policy%20Practice/checklistPDF-Urban_AAE.pdf

http://www.northpark.edu/Academics/Undergraduate-Academics/Academic-Assistance/Writing-Center/Faculty-Resources/~/media/Files/PDF/Current%20Students/Writing%20Center/WC_FullAAVE.ashx

Sandra Romero Ferrández

The African American Vernacular English Vocabulary

            Many African Americans speak a form of english that is a little different from the Standar American  English. We will see these difference in Vocabulary, Grammar and Pronunciation. In this post we are going to deal with vocabulary. 

AAVE does not have a different vocabulary than from the Standar English. We can find the same vocabulary as in Standar American English but some words are particulary forms of African American Vernacular English. 

       According to Patrik Tretina in her book  African American Vernacular English: A New Dialect Of The English Language, the vocabulary or lexicón can be divided into two sections: words that came directly from Africa and loan- translations words, which I will explain what they mean later.

The words that came directly from Africa were brought by the slaves during the United States trade. These are some examples:

Elephant, 

Jazz, 

Oasis,

Sorcery banana,

Banjo,

Goober

Loan- translations words, aslo known as calque, are compound words  which are introduced into the language through the tranlations of the same concept in english.  An example of this type of words will be:

Bad –eye that means  ‘nasty look’

Big- eye that means    ‘ greedy’

Also we can find words which have both African American English and Standar English meaning, for example the word kitchen, which in AAVE not only means the place where you cook in but also the hair at the nape of the neck. 

Finally here are some words collected from several sources: 

AAVE                                               Standar American English

The can                                                Jail

Smoke                                                  Weed

Blunt                                                    Getting High

Jack                                                      Phone

Homeboy                                             A good friend

Fresh                                                    New

A' ight or i-ght                                    Ok, All right

Type                                                     Very 

Crib                                                      Home 

Bounce                                                 Leave

Celly                                                     Cell Phone

Krunk                                                   Exciting

Wifey                                                    Main Girlfriend

Daddy                                                   Main Boyfriend

Scred                                                     Scared

Sources:   

- Green, Lisa J. African American English. Cambridge: Cambridge  University Press, 

2002

- Patrik Tretina. African American Vernacular English: A New Dialect Of The English Language. Scholarly Research Paper.

- http://www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/langnet/definitions/aave.html#vocab-hce

Suggestions: 

 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=african-american%20vernacular

Sandra Romero Ferrández

Dialects. Northern area

Northern United States is sometimes referred to as general American English.

It corresponds to Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Alaska and Hawaii.

The northern area can be divided into two subdialects: Northern and Western. At the same time, they are divided into New England, Hudson Valley, New York city, Inland Northern, Upper Midwestern, Rocky Mountain, Pacific Northwest, Pacific Southwest, Southwestern and Hawaii.

Some of the most important features are the following:
In New England R's are often dropped, but an extra R is added to words that end with a vowel. A is pronounced AH so that we get "Pahk the cah in Hahvuhd yahd" and "Pepperidge Fahm remembuhs.
In New York, When an R comes after a vowel, it is often dropped. IR becomes OI, but OI becomes IR, and TH becomes D as in "Dey sell tirlets on doity-doid street" and fugedaboudit (forget about it). This pronounciation is particularly associated with Brooklyn but exists to some extent throughout the city.
In Inland Northern it’s combined elements of Western New England and Upper Midwestern. Marry, merry, and Mary are pronounced the same.
Some original Hudson Valley words are stoop (small porch) and teeter-totter.
Some words in the Western Dialects are adobe, beer bust, belly up, boneyard, bronco, buckaroo, bunkhouse, cahoots, corral, greenhorn, hightail, hoosegow, lasso, mustang, maverick, roundup, wingding, Many words originally came from Spanish, cowboy jargon, and even some from the languages of the Native Americans.
In The Rocky Mountain, some words are kick off (to die), cache (hiding place), and bushed (tired).
In The Pacific Northwest, a pidgin called Chinook Jargon was developed between the languages of the Native American tribes of this area.A word from Chinook Jargon is high muckamuck (important person), which is still used today.
Alaska is also influenced by the native american language. Some words are  bush (remote area), cabin fever, mush (to travel by dog sled), parka, stateside.
Pacific Southwest is influenced by the dialects of the Northern and North Midland. The people here are particularly fond of creating new slang and expressions, and, since Hollywood is located here, these quickly get spread to the rest of the country and the world. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, an extreme exaggeration of this dialect that ("Valley Girl" or "Surfer Dude") was popular among teenagers and much parodied in the media with phrases like "gag me with a spoon" and "barf me back to the stone age." Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Whoopie Goldberg in her one women show are    two famous examples.
Southwestern: it was very influenced by Spanish people, because of the ten generations who lived here. Some local words are: caballero, cantina, frijoles, madre, mesa, nana, padre, patio, plaza, ramada, tortilla.

A special case is the dialect spoken in Hawaii,  There was a Hawaiian Creole developed from a pidgin English spoken on the sugar plantations with workers from Hawaii and many other countries. Some words are: look-see, no can, number one, plenty (very). It isn't widely spoken nowadays. Nonstandard Hawaiian English was developed from Hawaiian Creole, and it's spoken mostly by teenagers: aloha, hula, kahuna, lei…

Here, I'll show you a video of the movie mentioned above ''Fast Times at  Ridgemont High'' starring by Sean Penn.

That's all about dialects. I hope you've enjoyed it!
Source:
http://robertspage.com/dialects.html

By: Patricia Domínguez

Origin of American English Language

The origin of the English language in United States took place in the last decades of the sixteenth century, with the arrival of the expeditions commissioned by Walter Raleigh to the ‘’New World’’. The First venture was a failure. In 1584 the first group of explorers landed near Roanoke Island, in what is today called North Carolina, and established a small settlement. But conflict with the Indians followed, and it proved necessary for a ship to return to England for help and supplies. By the time those arrived, in 1590, none of the original group of settlers could be found. The mystery of their disappearance has never solved.

The first permanent English settlement dates from 1607, when an expedition arrived in Chesapeake Bay, and called the settlement Jamestown, after James I. Then, in 1620, the first group of Puritan settlers arrived on the Mayflower ‘’The Pilgrim Fathers’’, searching for a land where they could found a new religious kingdom ‘purified’ from the practices which they found unacceptable in the English Church of the time. They landed at Cape Cod, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and established a settlement there. By 1640 around 25,000 people had settled in the area.

It’s important to appreciate that these two patterns of settlement resulted in different linguistic consequences. The southern explorers came mainly from the West Country, and brought with them the characteristic west-country accent. In contrast, the Puritans came mainly from East Anglia and the surrounding countries, and their accent was quite different.

The separateness of the colonies remained for much of the seventeenth century, but during this time increasing contacts and new patterns of settlement caused the sharp divisions between accents to begin to blur. New shiploads of settlers brought people with a variety of linguistic backgrounds. By 1700, the immigrant population of the continent had increased to around a quarter of a million.

In the early eighteen century, there was a vast wave of immigration from northern Ireland. By the time Independence was declared in 1776, it is thought that no less than one in seven of the American population was Scots-Irish. They were seen as frontier people, with an accent which at the time was described as ‘broad’.

There are many mixed dialect areas, and ‘pockets’ of unexpected dialect forms. But the mains divisions of North, Midland and South are still demonstrable today.

An important aspect of American life, its cosmopolitan character, was present from the beginning, and this had linguistic consequences too. The Spanish had occupied large areas in the west and south-west of the country; the French were present in the northern territories around the St. Lawrence, and throughout the middle regions (French Louisiana)as far as the Gulf of Mexico. The Dutch were in New York and the surrounding area. Large numbers og Germans began to arrive at the end of the seventeenth century, settling mainly in Pennsylvania. And there were increasing numbers of blacks in the south, as a result of the slave trade from Africa.

During the nineteenth century, these immigration patterns increased: Large numbers of Irish came following the potato famine in the 1840s; German and Italians came, escaping the consequences of the failure of 1848 revolutions; And  as the century wore on, there were increasing numbers of Central European Jews.

The chief linguistic result of this multilingual setting was a large number of loan words from Spanish, French, German, Dutch and the other immigrant languages. Words such as boss, caboose, coleslaw (Dutch), bayou, cache, poker (French), mafia, capo, espresso (Italian), cafeteria, canyon, coyote (Spanish), dumb, delicatessen, no way (german)…

Source:

''The English Language'', David Crystal.

http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/history/American_files/image005.jpg

By: Patricia Domínguez.

Dialects. Southern area

For geographical, historical, cultural and other reasons we recognize another regional dialect of English in America called ‘’Southern’’.

Southern United States corresponds to  Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.



French and the African languages spoken by the people brought over as slaves had an important influence on Southern United States.
The English of the southern United States may be the most studied regional variety of any language.

An important feature of Southern English is its differential politeness. Forms of address in general are described over and over as being different and more significant than elsewhere. ‘’Sir’’ and ‘’ma’am’’ are among the most frequently mentioned of the forms of address with particularly southern uses. The use of ‘’sir’’ and ‘’ma’am’’ to one’s parents as required element of the answer to a yes/no question, is widespread in the south. It’s used to express friendly solidarity, to emphasis…

Another important feature is the use of conditional syntax, an strategy for indirectness: Full if-then constructions as well as conditional clauses alone, are used to hedge assertions.

Another characteristic is speaking at a higher level of generality, as well as the frequent use of formulas such as ‘’I don’t mean to pry’’, before requests for information and ‘’I wish’’, to introduce requests for action.

Also, the use of question intonation.

They tend to drop Rs the way New Englanders do, but they don't add extra Rs.
Some local words are: boogerman, funky (bad smelling), jump the broomstick (get married), kinfolks, mammy, muleheaded, overseer,tote, y'all, big daddy (grandfather), big mamma (grandmother), Confederate War (Civil War), cooter (turtle), fixing to (going to), goober (peanut), hey (hello),mouth harp (harmonica), on account of (because).


Also, I have some videos related to this:

Source:

http://robertspage.com/dialects.html 

English in the Southern United States Nagle, Stephen J. Sanders, Sara L. Aarts, Bas



By: Patricia Domínguez

Dialects. Midland Area.

Some Dialectologists (for instance, Hans Kurath) have differentiated three different regions, in which it’s spoken different dialects: Northern, The Midland and Southern, although there are some of them who distinguish just two different regions, northern and southern.

First of all, I’m going to define the concept of dialect: A dialect is a variety of a language that is distinguished from other varieties of the same language by features of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others geographically or socially.

In this entry, I’ll focus on the Midland area, which corresponds to Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

So few scholars have addressed the question whether the Midland dialect actually exists. Midland dialects does, in facts, exist. The scholars Primer(1890) and Hempl (1896) appear to have been the first to use Midland as a label for a dialect or for a dialectal area in the United States. A Midland which separates the North from the South.

As I mentioned above, Hans Kurath has widely contributed in this investigation. Kurath divided this region into two discrete subdivisions: the "North Midland" area, and the "South Midland".

The Midland does not show the homogenous character that marks the North and The south.

Some general dialectal features of American Midlands are the following:

Midland speech is firmly rhotic.

In South Midland, A ‘’TH’’ at the end of words or syllables is sometimes pronounced ‘’F’’, and the word ‘’ARE’’ is often left out of sentences as in Black English. An ‘’A’’ is usually placed at the beginning of verb that ends with ‘’ING’’, and the ‘’G’’ is dropped; an ‘’O’’ at the end of a word becomes ‘’ER’’.  ‘’T’’ is frequently added to words that end with an ‘’S’’ sound. 

Some words are: bodacious, heap, right smart (large amount), set a spell, and smidgen. 

A well-known phonological difference between the Midland and the North is that the word on contains the phoneme /ɔ/ (as in caught) rather than /ɑ/ (as in part). In some areas, words like "roof" and "root" (which in many other dialects have the GOOSE vowel /u/) are pronounced with the FOOT vowel /ʊ/.

A common grammatical feature of the greater Midland area is so-called "positive anymore": It is possible to use the adverb anymore with the meaning "nowadays" in sentences without negative polarity, such as ‘’Air travel is inconvenient anymore’’.

Many speakers use the construction need + past participle, as in the car needs washed, where speakers of other dialects would say needs to be washed or needs washing.

A peculiar dialect is the spoken in Pennsylvania, which is widely influenced by a dialect of German spoken in this country. We can see sentences like "Smear your sister with jam on a slice of bread" and "Throw your father out the window his hat." They also invented ‘’dunking’’ from the German "dunken" (which means to dip).

Here, I'll show you a video related to this:

In the following entries, I will talk about the Southern and Northern areas of United States.

I hope you have learned something with this.Sources: 


http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dialect


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_American_English


http://robertspage.com/dialects.html


http://www.evolpub.com/Americandialects/AmDialMap.gif


Language Variation and Change in the American Midland : A New Look at ‘Heartland’ English
Murray, Thomas E. Simon, Beth Lee

By: Patricia Domínguez Anaya.

African American Vernacular English

By the term African American Vernacular English (AAVE), we mean the dialect spoken by those people of black American ethnic group from the United States. Before we talk about the African American Vernacular English, we must know who are the African American for a better understanding in the development of African American Vernacular English.

 Background

      African American are citizens from the United State of America who had a partial or total ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub- Saharan Africa. Most African American people are descendents from African who were taken to English colonies as slaves to work in the New World.

    Originally, African American  were settled in the South  (from Texas in the West to the Carolinas in the East), where they provided a labour force for the plantaions of the whites in this region.

With the arrival of the industry in the United States, there were a migration from the south to the north producing a notable increase of African Americancs who were settling in the north and north east, industrial centres.

African Americans suffered decades of slavery, inequality and injustice. These circumstances were changed by Reconstruction, development of the black community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement.

Let's go to start

We can use different terms to refer to the African American Vernacular English. For example African American Language, African American English, Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular (BEV) and Ebonic.

 There are two main views on the origin of African American English:

1) Creole Hypothesis: According to linguistic Derek Bickerton, it's considered that creole languages develop when language learners do not have sufficient contact with native speakers of Standar American English. These people are forced to create a language based on their native languages in combination with language that they don't know. 

2) Dialect Hypothesis: According to Cleanth Brooks '' The slaves  learned their own new language

by ear and oral tradition and thus preserved what they had heard.

To be more clear, in the first theory the African Americans  develop their own language, in other words, a pidgin language which consists of using English and some West African vocabulary and it is applied  to the grammar rules of their native tongue. And in the second one, the African Americans develop the language with an exclusion of African influence.

Source: 

http://www.uni-due.de/SVE/VARS_AfricanAmericanEnglish.htm

http://dooku.miun.se/engelska/englishB/languageprof/Student%20work/VT07/First%20final%20drafts/Toini%20Rydgren.htm

http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/AAVE/creole/

By Sandra Romero Ferrández