- Start with the Rs. Understand that in most British accents speakers don't roll their Rs (except for those from Scotland, Northumbria, Northern Ireland, and parts of Lancashire), but not all British accents are the same. For example, a Scottish accent varies greatly from an English accent.
- Pronounce U in stupid and in duty with the ew sound. Avoid the oo as in an American accent; thus it is pronounced stewpid, not stoopid, etc. In the standard English accent, theA (for example, in father) is pronounced at the back of the mouth with an open throat—it sounds like "Arh". This is the case in pretty much all British accents, but it's exaggerated in RP. In southern England and in RP, words such as "bath", "path", "glass", "grass" also use this vowel. However, in other parts of Britain "bath", "path", etc. sound like "ah".
- Enunciate on heavy consonant words. Pronounce that T in "duty" as T: not as the American D as doody so that duty is pronounced dewty or a softer jooty. Pronounce the suffix -ing with a strong G. This way it sounds like -ing rather than -een. But sometimes it is shortened to in as in lookin.
- Drop the Ts. With some accents, Ts aren't pronounced at all, especially in words with twoTs grouped together. So battle might be pronounced Ba-ill, catching the air behind the back of the tongue at the end of the first syllable before expelling it on pronunciation of the second syllable. This is known as the glottal stop.- People with Estuary English, RP, Scottish, Irish and Welsh accents do consider it lazy and rude to drop the Ts, and this feature doesn't exist, but in almost all accents it's accepted to do it in the middle of words in casual contexts and almost universal to put a glottal stop at the end of a word
- Addition from an American theatre specialist: Americans do glottal stops all the time,"bu-on" for button, "mou--ian" for mountain). However, it is considered by Brits that people with chav or Cockney accents do glottal stops. - Observe that H is always pronounced. The "H" is pronounced in the word "herb," in contrast to American erb
- Say "bean," not "bin." Realize that some words require the ee sound to be pronounced as in the word been. In an American accent, this is often pronounced bin. In an English accent, been is the more common pronunciation, but "bin" is sometimes heard in casual speech where the word isn't particularly stressed.
- Listen to the "music" of the language. All accents and dialects have their own musicality. Pay attention to the tones and emphasis of British speakers. Do sentences generally end on a higher note, the same, or lower? How much variation is there in tone throughout a typical sentence? There is a huge variation between regions with tonality. British speech, especially RP, usually varies much less within a sentence than American English, and the general tendency is to go down slightly towards the end of a phrase. However, Liverpool and north-east England are notable exceptions!
- Get a British person to say well known sentences: "How now brown cow" and "The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain" and pay close attention. Rounded mouth vowels in words such as "about" in London, are usually flattened in Northern Ireland.
- Notice that two or more vowels together may prompt an extra syllable. For example, the word "road" would usually be pronounced rohd, but in Wales and with some people in Northern Ireland it might be pronounced ro.ord
*that's all the tips i've got, hopefully could help you to master the british accent,, if you have another tips, you can write it below..
