[stifa]

I think the accent foreigners refer to as a "British accent" is the "BBC-English".

That's at least what I associate with "British English" even though I know there are different accents all over the British Isle. As a Norwegian, I am used to places having very distinct dialects; there are about half a dozen distinct dialects in Norway, and perhaps tenfolds of variations of each. Heck, Trondheim has like four-five different dialects alone.

I understand what you want TS; I want to rid myself of my horrid accent too... Hopefully, three years in England will help me with that...

[POWCATTY]

yeah...just watch british tv, such as bbc news. they speak pretty posh, but youll learn the pronunciation alright from them
the easiest place to find it would probably be youtube

[MagicNMedicine]

(Original post by SillyEddy)
Whasshat, Mish Muneh-penneh?

Thats more like Sean Connery than Roger Moore.

[Snagprophet]

There is a series of professional videos on youtube for various English accents. The guy is a legit voice coach.

My tip for learning an English accent is to try and shorten words such as 'shire' to something like 'shuh' if you're talking about counties. I say shorten, I mean try saying 'shire' quickly until it sounds like 'shuh'.

[Plushie]

(Original post by Blackshadow)
Say 'is it?' after every sentence and you'll be fine.

Who does that? D: Never heard that personally.

[tamimi]

(Original post by NapoleonDynamite)
We southerners love you really!

"We"? I most certainly do not. I went up there for one night and got mugged twice.

[SillyEddy]

(Original post by MagicNMedicine)
Thats more like Sean Connery than Roger Moore.

Precisely!

The world would be a far better place if everyone spoke that way.

[River85]

(Original post by SillyEddy)
Precisely!

The world would be a far better place if everyone spoke that way.

Damn boring more like.

(Original post by Jarred)
What accent do you have currently?
I guess the first thing to learn is that there's no such thing as a British accent. There are so many dialects in Britain and everyone says things differently. Everything from northern accents like Yorkshire, Mancunian, to Midlands accents such as East Midlands, West Midlands, to Southern accents such as Cockney, Estuary English, West Country, and much more. And then you have the mixes, mine's a mixture of Kentish, Cockney and Leicester, it's an odd mix but it comes from growing up in Leicester with a Southern family.

Some say you can't learn an accent, but I suspect that you can. I've changed small aspects of mine in the past for experimental purposes (accents are kind of a hobby of mine) so I assume you could change a whole one but it'd be a lot of work.

But I guess the accent you're thinking of is RP, Received Pronunciation. Which is the kind of posh British that we're all stereotyped with.

I recommend you trawl through the Wikipedia page on Received Pronunciation, and then some of the accents of South East England, London particularly.

Surely a northern British accent would be a Scottish one, from the Highlands say?

[Plushie]

(Original post by River85)
Surely a northern British accent would be a Scottish one, from the Highlands say?

There is the north of England which has very distinct accents and it's still classed as the 'north' generally.

[River85]

(Original post by Plushie)
There is the north of England which has very distinct accents and it's still classed as the 'north' generally.

I know. I'm from the north (near Newcastle). Check my flag.

I was just wondering why the member used English regions only, despite talking of a British accent.

[Plushie]

Some of the world thinks that UK = England. :/ And I'm also in Newcastle at the moment, wahay.