Ebonics is a name some people have used for the English that many Black Americans grow up speaking — the everyday talk of African American communities, with its own sounds, words, and grammar. It is not ‘broken English’ and not slang only; it is a real kind of English. The word was built in 1973 as a blend of ebony (a dark wood, used here to mean Black) and phonics (the sounds of speech). Robert L. Williams and other scholars put it in print in 1975. Some people still say Ebonics; many linguists and younger writers now prefer African American English, because in the 1990s the word became a fight in the news, after a school board in Oakland wanted to recognise it in class. Newspapers sometimes used it loosely, as if it just meant street talk. If you meet it now, it still points to that kind of English, but it can feel dated or political, depending on who is speaking.

非裔美國英語（舊稱 Ebonics；口語有人說「黑人英語」）。語言學界現在較常說 African American English。