Word Stress

1. Polysyllabic words ending in –ary, -ory, -ery, -mony, -ative, -berry, -body are pronounced with one primary stress in RP whereas in GA there is an additional tertiary stress on these elements: dictionary ['dikʃǝneri], ceremony ['serimouni], strawberry ['stroberi], administrative [ǝd'ministreitiv], territoty ['teritori], somebody ['sʌmbadi].

2. French borrowings have one primary stress on the initial syllable in RP. In GA they are stressed as in French, on the final syllable, or have two stresses: a primary stress on the last syllable and a secondary stress on the first: ballet [bæ'lei], café [kæ'fei], garage [gǝ'raʒ], matinee [mæti'nei], beret [be'rei].

3. Some differences are hard to generalize: 'address, a'dult, de'tail, 'magazine, 'weekend, 'cigarette, 'research, inquiry ['iƞkwǝri], pri'marily, ordi'narily.

Intonation

The intonation group in GA starts at a lower level (like in Russian), the pitch movement is mid-level or mid-wavy-level.

The usual Medium or Low Fall in RP has its rising-falling counterpart in GA (a fall with an initial rise).

The rising tone in RP has a mid-rising contour or a level tone in GA.

These differences explain why Americans perceive British intonation as “pretentious”, “affected”, “manneristic”. At the same time American intonation sounds dull, monotonous, indifferent to a British ear.

American English has a different rhythmical structure. In RP unstressed syllables are characterized by vowel reduction; in GA vowels in unstressed syllables are lengthened, which results in the so-called “leveling” of stressed and unstressed syllables.

The proportion of stressed vs unstressed syllables is 1:1 in GA, while in RP it is 1:2. Research shows that the average stressed syllable in British women’s talk is longer than the unstressed one by 1.7, in American women’s speech the contrast drops to 1.5 (in Russian this contrast is still lower – 1.3).

As a result American speech is smoothly flowing, monotonous, while RP speech is clipped, pointed, contrastive in the length of stressed and unstressed syllables.