  As is well established, several gauge theories admit vortices whose mean life
time is very large. In some cases, this stability is a consequence of the
topology of the symmetry group of the underlying theory. The main focus of the
present work is, given a putative vortex, to determine if it is non abelian or
not by analysis of its physical effects. The example considered here is the
simplest one namely, a $SU(2)$ gauge model whose internal orientational space
is described by $S^2$. Axion and gravitational emission are mainly considered.
It is found that the non abelian property is basically reflected in a deviation
of gravitational loop factor $\gamma_l$ found in
\cite{vachaspati}-\cite{burden}. The axion emission instead, is not very
sensitive to non abelianity, at least for this simple model. Another important
discrepancy is that no point of the vortex reaches the speed of light when
orientational modes are excited. In addition, the total power corresponding to
each of these channels is compared, thus adapting the results of
\cite{davis}-\cite{peloso} to the non abelian context. The excitations
considered here are simple generalizations of rotating or spike string ansatz
known in the literature \cite{ruso1}-\cite{kruczenski}. It is suggested
however, that for certain type of semi-local strings whose internal moduli
space is non compact, deviations due to non abelianity may be more pronounced.
