Word stress

1. The differences in stress are also lexically determined, and, therefore, are hard to generalize:

RP a'ddress, 'adult, prin'cess, 'detail, maga'zine, ,week'end;

GA 'address, a'dult, 'princess, detail, 'magazine, 'weekend.

2. Tertiary stress in American En­glish: dictionary , ceremony [

3. French borrowings are assimilated in RP and have one primary stress on the initial syllable. In GA they are still stressed as in French, on the final syllable, or have two stresses, one primary on the last syllable and one secondary on the first:

ballet, cafe, garage.

Rhythm

American rhythm is due to a great amount of secondary (or/and ter­tiary) stresses, compared with RP, which, together with a narrowed pitch range, produce the effect of smoothly flowing, monotonous, slurred speech: the proportion of accented vs. unaccented syllables is 1:1, while in British English it is estimated at 1:2. RP speech is described as clipped, pointed, contrastive in the length of accented and unaccented syllables.