Clare Turlay Newberry (1903-1970)

Vogue Italia, February 1999.

It was 2012 and I was a "white washed" (not real but you know what that means) junior in undergrad and an entire chapter included in this textbook was dedicated to our pidgin/dialect whichever your argument. 14 years later and the amount of borrowing with and without permission of rest of English is truly a marvel to the point where things I know damn well are just AAVE are attributed to wide ranging sources such as "Gen Z/Alpha slang" and "gay lingo" and "internet speak" in general. Our range

These are just a few of our many common grammatical rules:

Habitual "Be": In Standard English "He is working" means right now or generally. In AAVE "He be working" specifically means he works regularly or habitually, a distinction that Standard English can't make without adding extra words.

Copula Deletion: Dropping forms of the verb "to be" in places where Standard English requires them ("She tired" instead of "She is tired" or "They going" instead of "They are going")

Double Negatives: In Standard English, two negatives make a positive. In AAVE, using multiple negatives ("She ain't never going") simply adds emphasis to the negation, a common feature in many of the world's languages.

Metathesis: switching sounds within a word, the most famous example being "ask" as "aks," a pronunciation that has roots in Old English.

Remote "Been": When you say "I been knew that" the stressed "been" means you've known it for a long time, remotely in the past, which doesn't exist in Standard English without adding extra words.

Completive "Done": "I done told you already" is a way of saying the action is finished and the matter is settled with an emphasis on finality or frustration.

Subject-Verb Disagreement: In AAVE verbs are often uninflected for the third person ("She walk" instead of "She walks") to simplify conjugation.