Diphthongs

RP closing diphthongs

GhE tends to monophthongize most of the RP closing diphthongs. This is not categorical, however: one and the same speaker may vary between a monophthong, slight diphthongization (marked by a superscript ⁱ or ^u in the table below), or may retain the RP diphthong. In the case of diphthongization, the RP offglides /-ɪ/ and /-ʊ/ are usually replaced by /-i/ and /-u/.

As the table shows, all RP closing diphthongs except /ɔɪ/ can be monophthongized in GhE, /eɪ/ and /aɪ/ more frequently than /aɪ/ and /aʊ/. The realization of the first segment of RP /eɪ/ and /əʊ/ varies between /e ~ ε/ and /o ~ ɔ/, respectively. The RP diphthong+ monophthong /aəɪ/ (e.g. desire) and /aʊɪ/ (our) are often smoothed to [a] in acrolectal GhE, often with a falling tone, . Smoothing can often be observed in Ghanaian news speakers (the news on the hour ) but is not restricted to this group. Since this phenomenon is also observable in advanced RP, including the spoken media, it is not unlikely that British news language serves as a model here.