Hudson (2021) mentioned that vowel lengths in British English are significantly different from other English variants. In general, some of the lengths of vowel sounds in British English are pronounced longer.

This could be seen from the continuous vowel lengthening in the speaker's speech. Examples are best seen in the speaker lengthening the vowel /iː/ on the word fleece in the fourth sentence. 

4. Goose Fronting

In the speaker's speech, it could be identified that the speaker's pronunciation of the lexical pair 'foot and goat' is pronounced with the Contemporary Received Pronunciation (RP) vowels which are /ɵ/ and /əʊ/.

According to Lindsey (2019), this is a phenomenon called Goose Fronting which produced central vowels rather than front vowels. This happened to not only the word 'goose' but to other words like 'goat, foot, and cure'.

The speaker was from Southeast London, so that would explain the reason why she used a contemporary received pronunciation.

Geordie is one of the most distinctive and strongest dialects in England and it is frequently found in the speeches of people from Newcastle.

The Geordie dialect is significantly different from the usual rules of Standard English. For example, in terms of pronunciation, the word button is pronounced as BOT-tdan instead of BUH-tun.

The Scouse dialect is spoken by the people living in Liverpool. Similar to the Geordie dialects, the Scouse dialect is also strong and distinctive from other existing English dialects in England.

To give an example, people from Liverpool would utter woss dtha? instead of what’s that?

The Yorkshire dialect is one of the most known dialects and it is differentiated by the pronunciation of the letter U as it is uttered as ooo instead of uh.

Rather than a dialect, General British English is regarded more as an accent. It is an accent that constitutes Received Pronunciation and Regional Variations.

General British English is used when referring to the standard pronunciation in dictionaries and is regarded as the standard model or the Standard British English (BrSE). It's also sometimes referred to as the Received Pronunciation.

In addition, it is also an international alternative to General American (Pronunciation Studio).

Source: F (2018) & Nordquist (2018)

The sample speech is titled 'Comma Gets A Cure' which is written by Jill McCollough and Barbara Somerville. The vocabulary used in the sample was mostly standard words and does not frequently use advanced English words.

Other than that, most words are spoken and used by both British and Americans in the same way such as 'veterinary', 'territory', and 'superb'.

The speaker also seemed to be at ease uttering the speech, only once stuttering, alluding that she is familiar with the lexical used in the sample speech.

According to Pyles (1993) as cited in Abu Fares (2019), vocabulary items can be utilised in a variety of ways in both British and American English. Even though most words in the sample speech are used similarly in England English and USA-South English to express the same semantics, there are other lexical used to describe the same referred item.

To give an example, the noun 'jacket' in the fourth sentence is sometimes referred to as 'anorak' in British English. But both 'jacket' and 'anorak' bear the same meaning which is outerwear commonly used during cold weather.

However, the speaker does not hint at having any issues pronouncing the words.

In the sample speech, there were no lexical variants in spelling. However, it is general knowledge that some words in British English are spelled differently than other Inner Circle Englishes variants.

For an instance, as stated by Abu Fares (2019), there are many types of spelling differences between British English and American English but one of the most common differences is the (o) and (ou). 

General British would include the letters (ou) before spelling the letters (r) and (l) while American English would only be using the letter (o). 

Examples can be seen in the spelling of words like:

5. Conclusion
6. Reflection
7. References

Source: International Dialects of English Archive (2006)

2. Dark L

Dark L or L-vocalisation occurs when a speaker pronounced the phoneme /l/ at the end of the word as a vowel or a /w/ sound (Robinson, 2007).

It is worth noting that not all British accent uses the Dark L, but it is common in the Cockney accent. However, there was one word pronounced with the Dark L by the speaker. The word 'animal' from the 5th sentence.

The speaker pronounced [ˈænɪmɫ] without the phoneme /l/ in the end and instead, her pronunciation sounded more towards the /w/ sound.

It can be assumed that the speaker picked up some of the Cockney accents while living in London as the accent is prevalent among working classes across London.

Source: Potter (2022) & GrammarBook.com 

The English language's lexical resources are littered with an abundance of French borrowed vocabulary. This is the result following the Norman Conquest that happened in 1066.

This is relevant to one of the prosodic variations in General British English whereby the first syllable of words of French origin is usually stressed (Hudson, 2021). 

The stress can be heard from the sample speech as the speaker puts more stress on the first syllable than the second syllable on french origin words in the sentences. Some of the words included are 'porridge' and 'mirror' in the third sentence and 'letter' in the fifth sentence.

According to Hudson (2021), a General British English speaker has a proclivity to speak in a high-falling intonation and then would hit the primary stress high before dropping the intonation down.

An example can be seen in the first sentence, "Sarah Perry was a veterinary nurse who had been working daily at an old zoo in a deserted district of the territory..."

The speaker's tone is mostly monotone in most of her speech but in some parts like the ones above, it can be heard that she started her sentence with a high falling intonation and then hits the primary stress high for words in the middle of sentences before dropping the intonation at the end of the sentence.

The use of prepositions in General British is different from other varieties of Native Englishes like American English.

This can be identified in the first sentence, "Sarah Perry was a veterinary nurse who had been working daily at an old zoo..."

In General British English, the preposition 'at' is often used instead of 'in' to refer to an institution or the place where the subject is doing the action, Maxwell & Clandfield (n.d.).

BrE: "Sarah Perry was a veterinary nurse who had been working daily at an old zoo..."
AmE: "Sarah Perry was a veterinary nurse who had been working daily in an old zoo..."

Since the speaker is a General British English speaker, she had no problem reading the sentences fluently without feeling awkward and rigid.

According to Fromkin et al. (2011), most American speakers produce a flap instead of a [t] or [d]. The sound is produced by a flick of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. It sounds like a very fast d. 

The feature is prominent throughout the sample speech because the speaker incorporated flaps in words like veterinary, deserted, and headed.

According to Fromkin et al. (2011), liquids and nasals may be syllabic because the sounds may function as the core of a syllable. The diacritic under ɹ in [ɹ̩] means that the r is syllabic and it is pronounced as its own syllable, as opposed to being part of a syllable preceding or following it. 

The speaker incorporated this feature in words like nurse, hurry, and letter.

Monophthongization or diphthong reduction is also known as “flattening” when diphthongs are changed to monophthongs. In the southern vowel shift, the diphthong /aɪ/ becomes monophthongized to [aː] (Dorrill, 2003).

The speakers exhibit this feature in words like private and surprising.

Diphthongization is a process where a monophthong becomes a diphthong, it is also known as vowel breaking. Southern American English has the tendency to have the vowels [æ] and [e] glide up and form a diphthong (Dorrill, 2003).

This feature can be seen in the speaker’s pronunciation of square, stressed and rare.

Speech sounds that are identical in their place or manner features may differ in length or duration. In English, vowel or consonant length cannot change a word but it is used to emphasise (Fromkin et al., 2011). 

The southern American accent often elongated vowels where the vowels are pronounced longer to emphasis. This feature is prominent in the speaker’s speech sample on words like very, surprising, and normally. 

The speaker would lengthen the vowel [e], [a], and [ɔ] and emphasis on the adjective and adverb.

Stressed syllables are certain syllables in a word that are louder, somewhat higher in pitch, and slightly longer in duration than other syllables in the word (Fromkin et al., 2011). Voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ are aspirated when they occur in a stressed syllable. 

This feature is common in American Southern accents as found in the speaker’s speech sample in words like territory, practice, and kit.

Standard English does not distinguish between singular and plural you, so the use of Southern English y’all for the plural helps to relieve some of the confusion between these two meanings. (Charity-Hudley and Mallinson, 2014)