Rhythm and intonation

East Anglian English has a distinctive rhythm. This is due to the fact that stressed syllables tend to be longer than in RP, and unstressed syllables correspondingly shorter. The reduction of unstressed vowels to schwa appears to be part of this same pattern. Indeed, unstressed syllables consisting of schwa may disappear altogether in non-utterance final position, e.g. forty two  ; what are you on holiday? ; half past eight ; have you got any coats? ; shall I? [ʃælə].

Intonation in yes-no questions is also distinctive. Such questions begin on a low level tone followed by high-level tone on the stressed syllable and subsequent syllables:

What are you on holiday?