Do You Know How to Speak English?

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.

Have a question? Send me a text

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