Until the 20th century, the dialect known as Black English got little attention from the scholarly community: racial attitudes are no doubt a major reason for this neglect, but until the late 19th century few dialects apart from standard English were seriously studied. In the last fifty years or so, however, Black English along with other varieties has attracted many linguists curious about its history and its use today. As this research has been pursued, many new facts have come to light, but new questions and controversies have also arisen.

Black English is also known as African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and has had other names as well including Black English Vernacular (BEV), Negro English, and Ebonics. Regardless of the name, this variety has a history that is only partially understood. Among the questions that linguists continue to ponder are the following:

How much of a role did African languages have in the formation of AAVE?
How much of a role did the provincial dialects of Britain and Ireland play?
How closely is AAVE related to the Creoles of the West Indies?
How much has AAVE changed in its four centuries of use in America?

The picture above, which was taken in Charleston, South Carolina , suggests some of the complications in that regard. The building in the foreground housed slaves who belonged to the family living in the larger house nearby. Oral tradition has it that two groups of slaves were involved: those living downstairs served the family in the big house while those living upstairs were sent out to work elsewhere, perhaps as agricultural laborers or (more likely) as day laborers in the city of Charleston. While the house seems spacious enough, it is said that the upstairs was quite crowded due to the number of slaves lodged there.

Some parts of the oral tradition may be possible to verify if, for example, letters are found that discuss the occupants and the work of the slaves. On the other hand, it may never be known just who the slaves came into contact with or even where they worked. If the occupants of the upstairs quarters did mostly agricultural labor, they may have had more contacts with slaves who had come directly from Africa (those able to survive the horrendous conditions aboard the ships that brought them). On the other hand, the occupants may have been working on construction sites where they heard vernaculars of white American, British, or Irish laborers. The language contact involved in such encounters could lead to many kinds of influence: black day laborers, for example, might have taught some English to new arrivals from Africa, and they may have passed on some new words or other structures to whites (or may have been influenced in their own speech by what they heard the whites say).

To move beyond speculation, language historians need good sources. Especially valuable would be any written representations of the early slaves' speech in, for example, a letter or a story or court records. The likelihood of finding highly accurate material is not very great, in part because slaves were rarely valued for what they could say. Even so, there are helpful indications in the narratives of former slaves who could recall the period around the Civil War. Such accounts will no doubt help to clarify questions about the nature of slavery and language in various places. In any case, it it is clear that neither Charleston nor any other area should be studied in complete isolation from other regions.