Suprasegmental features

Stress-position

Where RP has ascribed stress-position in disyllabic and polysyllabic words that have only single stress, MalE differs where such stress-position is concerned:

In the same vein, the MalE speaker often tends not to produce differential stress on pairs of words derived from the same root like RP ^Iimport (n) versus im^Iport (v). Such noun-verb derivatives are homophonous in MalE, as can be seen in an example like Malaysia produces a lot of rubber which is the import of many industrialized countries. In MalE the realizations of produces and import are ['prɔdjusiz] and [im'pɔ:t] respectively.