A lot of people are using the abbreviation AAVE on TikTok and getting backlash for it. What does it mean and who all can say it without repercussions?
Scroll below to find out its full form and meaning.
What does AAVE mean?
The full form of AAVE is African American Vernacular Language. It is sometimes also called BVE – Black Vernacular English.
Urban Dictionary explains the acronym as follows –
AAVE, which is an acronym for African American Vernacular English or in other words, Black Vernacular English (BVE) Known outside of the academic and sociophonologic setting as “Ebonics”, AAVE is a dialect that hails from West African linguistics.
It’s not “ghetto talk”, what she’s speaking is a dialect called AAVE and it does not reflect her learning capacity.
This isn’t slang that has been created on TikTok or any social media. The acronym has existed for decades but it wasn’t well known.
African communities naturally coined their own term for it but what AAVE means is the African way of speaking English. The only way AAVE is different is in the accent.
What does it mean on TikTok?
TikTok has a trend of appreciating different accents and observing how it is different from normal pronunciation.
AAVE is interesting to see so it is one of the most trending topics on TikTok right now. But the result is that a lot of people from other cultures are trying it out and it seems to be offensive to the African community.
They are requesting that other communities should not use that way of speaking as it sounds like they are mocking the African community for being different.
As you can see in the video here, the Africans have taken the language and made it their own. It doesn’t mean that they don’t understand normal English or are incapable of doing that. It just means that they have a different way of saying the same things we do.
Let us all be respectful and not try to imitate AAVE as it hurts the sentiments of their culture.