African American Vernacular English/Pronunciation

African American Vernacular English (AAVE), differs from standard Mainstream American English (MAE) pronunciation in a number of ways. These mostly involve reductions in consonant clusters, as well as the alteration of the dental fricatives: ð and θ ("th"); and the velar nasal: ŋ. Sound Changes TH sounds: ð and θ The dental fricatives: ð as in thy, and θ as in thigh, are cross-linguistically uncommon, and in many dialects of English (not just AAVE), they become alveolar/dental plosives "d" and "t", labio-dental fricatives (v and f) or both. In AAVE, they can become either, and the change depends on the context. At the start of a word, they become plosives, therefore ð becomes d so that "the" is pronounced "da" /ð/ ---> /d/ so that /ðʌ/ ---> /dʌ/ θ becomes a t so that "thin" is pronounced "tin." /θ/ ---> /t/ so that /θɪn/ ---> /tɪn/ Velar nasal: "ng" AAVE does not have the velar nasal /ŋ/ (ng) found in MAE, instead, it becomes /n/, a feature is also found in some southern American English dialects. /ŋ/ (represented as <ng>) is pronounced /n/ (<n>) so that talking (IPA /tɔːkiŋ/) becomes talkin', or /tɔːkin/ Consonant cluster reduction Final consonant clusters English has a large number of word-final consonant clusters, these can be divided into three types. Note that for the present time, we are not including consonant clusters formed by plurals and past tense, as AAVE has different rules for those. 1. Unvoiced consonant clusters sp st sk ft pt 2. Voiced consonant clusters nd ld rb rd 3 Mixed consonant clusters mp nt nk lt rp rt rk All English dialects have already begun the process of cluster reduction, (notice the pronunciation of "thumb" and "thing", "talk") however AAVE takes it further. In normal circumstances, all final consonant clusters of the first two types are reduced, with the second letter not being pronounced. In the third kind, with mixed clusters, the final consonant is pronounced. Therefore test ---> tes' /test/--->/tes/ tend ---> ten' /tend/--->/ten/ but tent ---> tent (no change) Morphophonology In AAVE, morphological markers are retained, even if they result in word final clusters Plural The plural marker in AAVE is pronounced, even if it forms a word-final cluster. Therefore pest ---> pes' /pest/ ---> /pes/ but pets ---> pets (no change) Past tense The past tense marker is also retained compare past ---> pas' /pæst/ ---> /pæs/ passed ---> passed /pæst/ ---> /pæst/ (no change) Possessive Initial consonant clusters MAE has a number of initial consonant clusters containing three sounds. In this clusters, the first letter is always /s/ (MAE has a few loanwords from Yiddish which start with an "sh" sound, but AAVE does not have these words) the final letter is always /r/, and the middle letter is always an unvoiced plosive: /p/, /t/, or /k/. spring string screen In AAVE, the consonant cluster "str" is reduced to "sr", however "spr" and "skr" are pronounced in full. Final R Er- Is pronounced as [ʌ]. Like Holler is pronounced as Holluh <oor>, Or,Our, <ure>- The r or re isn't pronounced so it sounds like doe, foe, shoe, and yo. A- [ʌ], like, I have uh dolla. Words such as talking and partner are pronounced like pawtna and tawkin