One of the most salient differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese is their prosody. European Portuguese is a stress-timed language, with reduction, devoicing or even deletion of unstressed vowels and a general tolerance of syllable-final consonants. Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, is of mixed characteristics, and varies according to speech rate, dialect, and the gender of the speaker, but generally possessing a lighter reduction of unstressed vowels, less raising of pre-stress vowels, less devoicing and fewer deletions. At fast speech rates, Brazilian Portuguese is more stress-timed, while in slow speech rates, it can be more syllable-timed. The accents of rural, southern Rio Grande do Sul and the Northeast (especially Bahia) are considered to sound more syllable-timed than the others, while the southeastern dialects such as the "mineiro", in central Minas Gerais, the "paulistano", of the northern coast and eastern regions of São Paulo, and the "fluminense", along Rio de Janeiro, Espírito Santo and eastern Minas Gerais as well the Federal District, are most frequently essentially stress-timed. Also, male speakers of Brazilian Portuguese speak faster than female speakers and speak in a more stress-timed manner.