Introduction
There are countless British English in England, let alone in the whole world.
Don’t worry too much about accents. Everyone has one (even native speakers) and it should be a badge of pride to show where you come from.
However: Reasons to want a British accent:
- To be more respected at work
- To stop being treated like an outsider
- To impress your friends!
British accents have a few things in common which we’ll look at later
General Advice
- Get the foundations right when you start so you don’t cement your mistakes, but change will come over time.
- Watch lots of British TV shows, movies, and of course podcasts
- Talk with native speakers and try to mimic their pronunciation
- Getting a teacher would be even better because they can correct your mistakes
- It takes a long time, and many people don’t begin to develop their accent fully until they reach an advanced level, don’t give up!
Specific Advice
- Shadowing – repeat words from phrases you hear. Pay attention to vowel sounds.
- Watch your mouth in a mirror
- Pay attention to your tongue position
- L – tongue touches top teeth
- R – tongue moves back in mouth, not touching
Learn Stress
I recommend forvo.com for pronunciation and merriam-webster.com for a dictionary.
PreSENT / PREsent
SUSpect / susPECT
Record yourself and listen back
Specific Sounds
T sound – Very strong
Butter, Better
R sound – Not so strong
Car, Park, Hair, Hard, Ear
American vs British
AdvertIZEment (USA) / AdverTISSment (UK)
The ILE sound is different. MoBLE (USA) / MoBILE (UK)
Words ending in “ation”. Organisation
I recommend this poem called The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité
This poem shows the irregularities in English pronunciation. Try it for fun! It’s very difficult though.
Recap: Having an imperfect accent isn’t the end of the world. We each have our own and should be proud of it. However, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve, so I hope this helped.
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