An Introduction to Ebonics

Scrabble Tiles Arranged to Read ‘You Choose Your Words’ Ebonics is an English creole of the African American Vernacular English (AAVE), spoken predominantly by the African American diaspora. It’s widely used in Charlie Mon’s Never Imagined , an urban fiction story representing the Black experience in a low-income neighborhood of San Bernardino. Keep reading to learn how Ebonics sounds and looks and how it’s perceived in pop culture. The Sounds of Ebonics Ebonics pronunciations are pretty distinct, but there’s no consistency to them. For instance, some speakers omit the final consonant in monosyllabic words ending with two consonants. You can expect to see terms like ‘past’ pronounced as ‘ pas ’, ‘hand’ as ‘ han ’, and so on. Turning a disyllabic word or a phrase containing two words into one monosyllabic word while uttering a sentence is also common. For example, the term ‘alright’ is pronounced ‘aight’, and ‘you all’ is pronounced ‘y’all’. You’ll also see ‘ I’ma ’ u...