Syllable-timed rhythm

The most striking feature of African Englishes is the tendency towards a syllable-timed rather than a stress-timed rhythm. Thus an EAfE speaker tends to give all syllables more or less equal stress and does not “cram” up to three unstressed syllables together into one stress unit to form so-called “weak” forms as speakers of British English do. This underlying pattern accounts for most suprasegmental patterns in EAfE mentioned above (e.g. to give too much weight to unstressed syllables), and its sometimes unfamiliar rhythm. It may also cause misunderstandings in intercultural communication, when EAfE may be misjudged as “unfriendly machine-gun fire” or “childish song-song”. The interesting question is whether this helps communication with francophone Africans, whose speech is also syllable-timed.