A fun and engaging take on the Bible, translated into modern-day slang and African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Stream the free audiobook, follow along on your favorite podcast app, or grab it in print and Kindle on Amazon.
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About this translation
This is a fun and engaging take on the Bible, translated into modern-day slang and African American Vernacular English (AAVE). AAVE is a recognized dialect of the English language, built on linguistic structures of African languages and retaining features from West and Central African languages. Some of these include:
AAVE uses aspect markers like be to indicate habitual actions (e.g., “He be working” means “He usually works”), similar to how aspect is marked in many Niger-Congo languages.
AAVE sometimes omits the verb to be in sentences like “She tall” (meaning “She is tall”), a feature found in several African languages.
AAVE uses multiple negation (e.g., “He ain’t never been there”), a structure that parallels negative concord in some African languages.
Final consonant cluster reduction (e.g., tes for test) and pronouncing th as d or t (e.g., dem for them) also appear in some West African languages.
Some AAVE sentence structures resemble constructions in African languages, such as question formation without subject-verb inversion (e.g., “What he doing?” instead of “What is he doing?”).
This translation is not intended to replace your literal-translation Bible, but instead to provide a way for you to enjoy and understand its larger concepts and teachings.
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