African-American English (AAE) is the umbrella term for English dialects spoken predominantly by Black people in the United States and, less often, in Canada; most commonly, it refers to a dialect continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to more standard American English. Like all widely spoken language varieties, African-American English shows variation stylistically, generationally, geographically (that is, features specific to singular cities or regions only), in rural versus urban characteristics, in vernacular versus standard registers, etc. There has been a significant body of African-American literature and oral tradition for centuries.

The broad topic of the English language, in its diverse forms, as used by Black people in North America has various names, including Black American English or simply Black English. Also common is the somewhat controversial term Ebonics and, more recently in academic linguistics, African American Language (AAL).

African-American English began as early as the 17th century, when the Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved West Africans into Southern colonies (which eventually became the Southern United States in the late 18th century). During the development of plantation culture in this region, nonstandard dialects of English were widely spoken by British settlers, which probably resulted in both first- and second-language English varieties being developed by African Americans. The 19th century's evolving cotton-plantation industry, and eventually the 20th century's Great Migration, certainly contributed greatly to the spread of the first of these varieties as stable dialects of English among African Americans.

The most widespread modern dialect is known as African-American Vernacular English. Despite more than a century of scholarship, the historical relationship between AAVE and the vernacular speech of (especially southern) Whites in the United States is still not very well understood; in part, this is because of a lack of data from comparable groups, but also because of the tendency to compare AAVE to northern vernaculars or even standard varieties of English while conflating regional and ethnic differences, as well as disregarding the sociohistorical context of AAVE origins. For example, features of AAVE grammar such as complex verb tenses and zero copula (omitting forms of the verb 'be') may have been inherited from African languages such as Hausa. AAVE shares several linguistic features with Southern White Vernacular English (and even more with older Southern dialects). Furthermore, the farm tenancy system that replaced slavery in the American South drew in Southern Whites, leading to a context for an interracial speech relationship dynamic among socioeconomic equals throughout the South and leading to many shared features until the start of WWII. In this case, changes that became robust after the 1930s most strongly mark ethnic distinctions in speech.

African-American Vernacular (AAVE) is the native variety of the majority of working-class and many middle-class African Americans, particularly in urban areas, with its own unique accent, grammar, and vocabulary features. Typical features of the grammar include a "zero" copula (e.g., she my sister instead of she's my sister), omission of the genitive clitic (e.g., my momma friend instead of my mom's friend), and complexity of verb aspects and tenses beyond that of other English dialects (e.g., constructions like I'm a-run, I be running, I been runnin, I done ran). Common features of the phonology include non-rhoticity (dropping the r sound at the end of syllables), the metathetic use of aks instead of ask, simplification of diphthongs (e.g., eye typically sounds like ah), a raising chain shift of the front vowels, and a wider range of intonation or "melody" patterns than most General American accents. AAVE is often used by middle-class African Americans in casual, intimate, and informal settings as one end of a sociocultural language continuum, and AAVE shows some slight variations by region or city.

African-American Standard English, a term largely popularized by linguist Arthur Spears, is the prestigious and native end of the middle-class African-American English continuum that is used for more formal, careful, or public settings than AAVE. This variety exhibits standard English vocabulary and grammar but often retains certain elements of the unique AAVE accent, with intonational or rhythmic features maintained more than phonological ones. Frequently, middle-class African Americans are bi-dialectal between this standard variety and AAVE, tending toward using the former variety in school and other public places, so that adults will frequently even codeswitch between the two varieties within a single conversation. The phonological features maintained in this standard dialect tend to be less marked. For instance, one such characteristic is the omission of the final consonant in word-final consonant clusters, so words such as past or hand may lose their final consonant sound.

Black Appalachian Americans have been reported as increasingly adopting Appalachian/Southern dialect commonly associated with White Appalachians. These similarities include an accent that is rhotic, the categorical use of the grammatical construction "he works" or "she goes" (rather than the AAVE "he work" and "she go"), and Appalachian vocabulary (such as airish for "windy"). However, even African-American English in Appalachia is diverse, with African-American women linguistically divided along sociocultural lines.

Despite its distinctiveness, AAAE shares many features with other varieties of Appalachian English, including the use of nonstandard pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. AAAE also shares features with other varieties of African American English, particularly those spoken in the South. For instance, a study of African American communities in the Appalachian region of Virginia found that the dialects of these communities shared many features with both African American English and Southern White English.