Tips for practicing a British accent

Here are some easy tips and tricks to speak with a convincing British accent:

• Don't pronounce "r" if the next syllable in the word is a consonant. For example, instead of "hardly," you'd say "hah-dly."
• Pronounce "u" as "ew" instead of "oo," like "stew-pid" instead of "stoo-pid."
• Say "t" clearly, like "dat-ed" instead of "dad-ed" and "pet-al" instead of "ped-al."
• In general, it's more common to pronounce "a" as "ah," like "pah-th" instead of "path" and "cah-r" instead of "car."

If you're doing a British accent, figure out what class you’re trying to mimic, then try to find a recording and listen and try to understand how they're substituting. Learning dialects often starts with speech and voice work where you're learning a phonetic alphabet. It's like if you go to the dictionary and you see the upside-down E, that's an Ah sound. So, very often, if people are trying to learn it by sight and substitution, they can say, “Ah, so I don't say the Ah sound. That sounds more like Eh in this accent.” That can be helpful for people who like to learn it a bit more technically.