According to Oxford Languages, a division of Oxford University Press and publisher of the Oxford English (OED), it was stated that African American English, with its roots in African language and creoles, has been a major influence on the development of English vocabulary. This has particularly started in the 20th and 21st centuries when full categories of words and phrases have been contributed and had a profound impact on the way how English is used in the United States and worldwide.

Do you speak American . for educators . Curriculum . College . AAE | PBS. (n.d.). https://www.pbs.org/speak/education/curriculum/college/aae/

Greenwood, S. (2024, April 14). Facts about the U.S. Black population. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/fact-sheet/facts-about-the-us-black-population/

Kester, E. (2022, June 10). African American English articulation differences and language characteristics. Bilinguistics. https://bilinguistics.com/african-american-english-articulation-differences-and-language-characteristics/

MULTiCSD - African American Vernacular English (AAVE). (n.d.). https://sites.google.com/pdx.edu/multicsd/global-languages/african-american-vernacular-english-aave?authuser=0

Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE). (n.d.). The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/odaae

As African Americans moved from slavery into farm tenancy, features emerged in AAE that were shared with Southern White vernaculars. These include grammatical forms such as yall and fixin’ to and phonological features like monophthongal /ai/ and the pin/pen merger. However, even as shared features emerged, AAE maintained its distinctiveness by typically not participating in the Southern Shift that affected vowels in Southern White vernaculars. Developments during the Great Migration in the 20th century enhanced AAE’s distinctiveness. During the Great Migration such well-known features as durative/habitual be, ain’t for didn’t, and had + past as a simple past became widespread.

AAE, then, is a product both of its unique heritage and the historical and demographic processes that promoted its independent development and also of people who valued (and still value) it as a mode of communication and as an instrument for identity and solidarity.

• Situated in southeastern New York state in the northeastern United States, New York City is a city and port situated at the mouth of the Hudson River.

• Encompassing Manhattan and Staten islands, the western parts of Long Island, and a small portion of the New York state mainland north of Manhattan, it is the biggest and most powerful city in the United States.

• In actuality, New York City is made up of a large number of neighborhoods dispersed throughout its five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.

• African Americans made up about 20 percent of the population

• Hispanics/Latinos made up about 28 percent, and people of European ancestry, or "white non-Hispanic," made up about 31 percent

• Asians made up the fastest-growing segment of the population, increasing from a negligible percentage in 1970 to over 15% at present.

• The majority of foreign immigrants to New York City in the 2010s (40 percent and 38 percent, between 2014 and 2018) were from Latin America and Asia.

• Dominicans made up the largest group of foreign-born people in terms of nationality, followed by Chinese, Mexicans, Jamaicans, Guyanese, and Ecuadorians.

Ann (1979) stated that,

• Since Verrazano discovered New York Harbor in 1524, numerous groups speaking foreign languages have besieged New York City.

• New York City is a dialect island in modern English because, in spite of this influence, its English has clung to conservative elements that are absent from its environs.

• New York pronunciation has very little prestige, despite the fact that New York City is one of the biggest and most economically significant cities in the world. This component deliberately alters language.

Geeraerts, D. (1994). Varieties of lexical variation. In Euralex 1994 Proceedings (Vol. 7883).

Lankevich, G. (2024, May 1). New York City. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/New-York-City

National Park Service. (2017). Colonial and Early American New York. Retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/places_colonial_early_american.htm

Newman, M. (2014). New York City English (Vol. 10). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG.

Sȩn, A. L. (1979). English in the Big Apple: Historical Backgrounds of New York City Speech. The English Journal, 68(8), 52–55. https://doi.org/10.2307/815156

"Take non-rhoticity or r-lessness - two terms meaning lack of a consonantal /r/ after vowels - as in words like four and fourth. Although stereotypical New Yorkers might be thought of as dropping their /r/s consistently, Labov notes that there is usually variation. As such, he describes this trait as a variable, which he labeled (r) - with (r-1) as the pronounced or r-ful variant and (r-0) the r-less one." (Michael, 2014)

1. Vowel sound

   "Driven" /ˈdrɪvn/

   In African English, the vowel sound in "driven" may be heard as a long sound. The vowel sound in "driven" could be with /ɜː/ or /ə/ as the way they pronounce it very thick. Hence, when the speaker said the word "driven", it may sounds like "dri-veen" with a long e.

• Rhoticity

  African American English may exhibit non-rhotic or rhotic pronounciation of the word 'r' sound depending on the speaker and the regional variety. Some African American speakers may drop the 'r' sound in certain contexts.

• For instance, the speakers in the samples video does eliminate the sound 'r' in her sentence of pronouncing words. In the word "are", the speaker pronouncing it as / ɑː / with eliminating the alphabet 'r'.

New York American : "I bought a boat"

Transcription :

African American : /juː bɔt ə boʊt/

New York American : /aɪ bɔt ə boʊt/

New York American : "What are you doing tomorrow"

Transcription :

African American : /wʌt ɑː juː ˈduɪŋ/

New York American: /wʌt ər jʊ ˈduɪn təˈmɑːroʊ/

New York American : I've driven with him.

transcription :

African American : /aɪ hæv ˈdrɪvᵊn wɪð juː æt naɪt./

New York American : /aɪv ˈdrɪvᵊn wɪð hɪm./

New York American : Being out of the loop isn't fun, is it?

Transcription :

African American : /sɪns aɪ lɛft juː aʊt ɒv ðə luːp,/

New York American : /ˈbiːɪŋ aʊt ɒv ðə luːp ˈɪzᵊnt fʌn, ɪz ɪt?/

• Glottal-T

  - T-glottalization in informal speech which the "t" sound in words like "bought" may be pronounced as a glottal stop [ʦ] rather than a real "t" sound. Consequently, "bought" may sound more like "baw'".

i. Stress

• In the video samples, the speaker emphasize the word " night" in the sentence. " I have driven with you at night. " The speaker emphasize the word " night " to make the other character realize how bad is his eyesight at night.

• Besides that, the speaker also utilized the same prosodic feature of stress in the other sentence.

  " Since I left you out of the loop, " , the word "loop " in the sentence is being stress by the speaker due to remind the exact phrase that the other character is using. Hence, the speaker repeated the exact phrase but emphasize it a bit more.

ii. Accent

• As the speaker originality is Africa, her accent is super thick and sometimes it is hard for the other characters to understand what she says. In the video samples, she said, " I see what you are doing." but the way she pronounce is faraway different from the other character in the conversation. For instance, the word "are" was pronounce as / ɑː / where her eliminating the alphabet 'r' in the word.

• There is the fact that words may mean several things, as with the more restricted and the more general reading.

• The same kind of referent may be named by various semantically distinct lexical categories

• The same kind of referent may be named by various words, which may or may not differ from a semantic point of view; this type of variation, then, encompasses the previous one

• The fact that a specific lexical phenomenon (such as a preference for expressing a particular meaning by means of one item rather than another) may be subject to the influence of contextual factors, like a speech situation asking for a particular style, or geographical distinctions among groups of speakers.