The Influences of Africanisms on American English: The Variety of Afro-American English

Download or read book The Influences of Africanisms on American English: The Variety of Afro-American English written by Milena Pollmanns and published by Grin Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (Englisches Seminar), language: English, abstract: There are many different types of the English language. Primarily there are distinctions between regional varieties, like British English (British Standard English resp. RP) and American English (AE). Those two differ in their linguistic characteristics, for example the pronunciation, namely the orthography and its phonetic realization. This term paper deals with the African-American variety of English, its special features, and shows how meaning can differ from Standard American English to the African American variety of English. African American Vernacular English (AAVE); also variously called African American English (AAE), African American Language (AAL), Afro-American English and less precisely Black English (BE), Black Language (BL), Black English Vernacular (BEV), Black Vernacular English (BVE) or Ebonics, which is used especially by those peoples who maintain that this variety has African origins, is an African American variety of American English (Tootie 2002: 218). Or how Smitherman would call it, a style of speaking English words with Black flava (2006: 3). Even without being to the United States, most people have heard samples of AAVE through movies or rap lyrics. "African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is the term most current among linguistics today" (Tootie 2002: 218)