Changing my non-native American accent so tha it sounds Brit

Hey,

I've been learning English for quite a few years now and I've been working really hard on my pronunciation.
As a result, a teacher thought I had spent my high schools years in the US and another one asked me if I had ever lived in the US. A private tutor also thought I went to New York.
My American accent is Northern-sounding according to lots of people. I have the Northern Vowel Shift - especially the "ask" thing - and I don't have the caught-cot vowel merger. Mary, merry and merry and writer and rider sound the same to me. If someone could tell me where it would place me on a US map, it'd be great. I'd say Illinois/Chicago but I'm not too sure.

Whilst I have never visited the US and have actually only been to the UK for a weekend, I'm quite happy to see that my efforts have paid off, even though I still sound quite far from native.
However, I'd like to develop an English accent because I plan on studying in England and living there for a while. I've also fallen in love with British accents for some reason. It sounds more refined and softer I think, even though I love US accents.
My main problem is that whenever I try to pull of an English accent, it sounds American-Irish, but never English. The best I can do is actually over-the-top Irish haha.

I've been practicing pulling off a British accent for 2 months now, but I have an American assistant and thus, even though I try to keep up the good work, American intonation and stuff generally seeps through my English.

So here are my questions:
-How do you get rid of American intonation? I don't quite get how to do a British intonation so if someone could explain that to me it would be great.

-I know the main features of the American accent. However, I don't know the main features of the British accent.
How do you spot Americans who fake British accents? This is a genuine question. I got comments like "Stop faking a British accent, we all know you're American". How can that be avoided?

-Why the Irish thing?
I mean, I know that loads of Irish people sound kinda American but come on, how can you sound Irish when you're trying to sound British?!
How could I avoid getting that sort of feedbacks?

Thanks a lot for your answers

Can you show us a sample of your accent?

<<How do you spot Americans who fake British accents? This is a genuine question. I got comments like "Stop faking a British accent, we all know you're American". How can that be avoided? >>

Maybe you're putting that broad A in words that don't actually have it -- overcompensating, in other words. Or your other vowels aren't right -- their O's are also a lot different. There are telltale ways to identify a non-rhotic speaker faking an American accent, such as intrusive R's between words, so I would imagine there are also telltale markers that work in reverse.

The American assistant is going to make things hard for you. Renee Zellweger said that when she was shooting Bridget Jones, she had to wear headphones that constantly fed her the accent and also blocked out any contact with other Americans. Some people go full method: the guy who played Wormtongue in the Lord of the Rings spoke in a British accent the whole time he was shooting, both on and off camera; crew members didn't hear his real West Virginia accent until it was all over -- and they thought he was faking that one!

But I guess you're on your way -- already using "whilst". Not only do Americans not use that word, but I didn't even know how it was pronounced until I actually visited the UK! (Long I, it turns out.)

Thank you so much for your answer, Uriel!
I'll try to pay attention to the letter o.
Does anyone know about British intonation? It baffles me to hear a Briton speak because it seems to go up and down so much and when I try to reproduce that I sound totally weird.

<<But I guess you're on your way -- already using "whilst". Not only do Americans not use that word, but I didn't even know how it was pronounced until I actually visited the UK! (Long I, it turns out.)>>

It actually seemed obvious to me that it was simply while+st until I read your post! :-)

If I come to think about it, and look at the spelling, logic would dictate a short "i", like the vowel in "bit".

I say! I didn't want to create a discussion about whilst lol.

By the way, do you have advice regarding intonation?
I think I can more or less nail down the pronunciation now but my intonation is still very American.

<<If I come to think about it, and look at the spelling, logic would dictate a short "i", like the vowel in "bit". >>

My thought exactly, but then, since I had also thought "whilst" had probably died out a few centuries ago, what do I know!

Intonation -- yes, it will be very different. Americans don't have the pitch range that Brits do; they think we sound very monotonous. I sympathize with your discomfort in trying to reproduce that aspect of their dialect -- it would be very unnatural for me, too. Sort of histrionic-sounding, if I tried to match it without changing my accent as well. But if you want to do it right, you're going to have to go whole hog, you know!

On the rare occasions that I have tried to mimic British speech from a movie or something auditory, I've found that you really have to alter your "normal" tongue position on almost every word. This isn't easy, because a lot of that is pure habit, but if you start to "get" what motions they are going through when they speak, I think you can't help but reproduce the same sounds. It'll be subtle, but it will really help. The guy who plays House on TV is an English actor playing an American, and he says he has yet to find any words that are pronounced identically in the two versions. Which may be a little bit of hyperbole -- think of the, an, a, is -- but I think it gives you an idea of what you're up against.

Do you have a close friend who can give you specific pointers about what you're doing wrong? Real-time criticism would be invaluable to you. Or perhaps you could try one of those on-line programs actors use for polishing their accents.

"Do you have a close friend who can give you specific pointers about what you're doing wrong? Real-time criticism would be invaluable to you. Or perhaps you could try one of those on-line programs actors use for polishing their accents."

The only foreign friends that I have are American, I'm afraid.
I used Ann Cook's book for a few hours in order to perfect my American accent and I found it very useful. I've found a couple of books for British English that I'm going to try out but as you said, real-time criticism would be more than useful in my case.

"The guy who plays House on TV is an English actor playing an American, and he says he has yet to find any words that are pronounced identically in the two versions"
I so totally agree with you! And the slightest mistake is a dead giveaway that you are mimicking an accent and not fully possessing it.
For the record, I had a lesson with the American assistant today, and I directly lapsed back into my American accent, mainly because my sorry attempt to sound British last time didn't impress anyone and sounded bad (half American and totally weird).

I'll try the books and CDs and see what I can do with them. Thanks a lot for your advice!

I'm posting something again because I really really need advice regarding this topic, guys.
I'm still stuck with my American accent because that's the only accent I can more or less do. I need to be understood by my teachers, basically.

I've found two books about British pronunciation but I'm not really
satisfied with them. The exercises aren't thorough enough. Moreover, I agree with you when it comes to live feedback: it's invaluable.

I haven't got much time to perfect my pronunciation since I have to attend courses and to learn lessons and yadda yadda but I can easily find a couple of hours a week, probably more.
I know that there's no magical method that will transform my English in 2 weeks or even 2 months. I've been working on my pronunciation for years and I know how hard it is to change your (bad) habits when they are ingrained.

However, if you don't try, you can't improve. I still struggle a lot with the American r but I've decided that it would come with time, since I have already repeated the sound of the letter r for around 10K times - using a mirror and precise instructions from different books and listening very closely. I also watched videos so I think it's only a matter of time - sometimes you can't force things.

But that's how dedicated I am. I don't mind having to work on the same mundane letter for weeks, because I know it *will* pay off on the long run.
If I could get advice from Brits who think they are aware enough of how they speak to give insight information, it'd be great.

Again, thank you for your help!

You cannot convey any message without an accent. But you can learn an accent and speak that. But for that you have to practice accent.

You can learn more from...http://www.neutralaccent.com..Thank you...

<I need to be understood by my teachers, basically.>

Are you talking about the teachers you will have in England? I very much doubt that they'll be unable to understand an American accent, or an Irish one at that.
Also, why fret over this in advance? Living in England is what will give you a more authentic-sounding English accent. I'd say you wait until you're immersed in the accent, it will come much more naturally then.

The only way you are going to do it is by hanging out with Brits - eventually you will pick it up. Even native speakers that move to other countries eventually start acquiring more local accents after so much time. It happened to my wife and to me. She is from Ireland and I am from the US. What's funny is her friends/family say that she now sounds very American, but to Americans she still sounds very Irish. I get it just the opposite. To Americans I sound Irish but to the Irish I still sound American.