What you can do to get a British accent.

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How to Learn British Pronunciation

Introduction

There are countless British accents 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 https://forvo.com/ for pronunciation and https://www.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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#1 How to Get a British Accent