Prosodic and intonational features

Distinctive in the area of East Anglia pronunciation is the tendency for stressed vowels to be lengthened, with any unstressed vowel being correspondingly reduced to [ə] or even disappearing. This is in marked contrast to the even syllable stressing which is characteristic of North-east England.

Especially amongst older Channel Islands speakers, stressing occurs which presents as being distinctly non-native: this might involve reversal of patterns typical of RP, or heavier syllable stressing than might otherwise be expected. Stress shifts are quite usual in polysyllabic verbs (only) in Irish English.

It is frequently remarked that Welsh English has a particularly lilting (or, more pejoratively, a ‘sing-song’) intonation pattern, an observation that is also made concerning Orkney speech. Recent observations on an apparent causal post-tonic rise in pitch in Welsh English ties the feature to a corresponding feature in Welsh. This high terminal intonation might also regularly be encountered in Ireland and in Northern and South-eastern England: the extent to which the high tone is rising or at a plateau is variable across accents, with that of North-eastern England being recorded as the latter and that of Glasgow as the former. In Scotland outside Glasgow, statements in most accents show a falling intonation. The extent to which the feature of terminal intonational raising is related across different regions is currently unclear.