Dialectal variation

Affricates do not present any variation among AE dialects. However, there are some notable differences between AE and BE with respect to the pronunciation of certain words. In AE words such as statue and virtue are always pronounced with /tʃ/; however, they may have either /tʃ/ or /tj/ in BE. A similar thing is found with the voiced counterpart: individual and education are pronounced with /dƷ/ in AE, but may be either with /dƷ/ or /dj/ in BE. Also, in BE, we note a tendency to use /ʃ/ for /tʃ/ after a /n/, as in pinched , lunch , wrench.