I'm confused with certain homphones from RP English... Help!

Hi there everybody!

I've just got back to language forums after about a year of being inactive.

I remember a couple of years ago, I was really eager to learn as much as possible from all the knowledgeable users here at antimoon. I was really working hard on getting a decent sounding English accent. I wanted an RP-like accent that didn't sound so posh.

I was reading some articles here and found this article about "Choosing between American English and British English" and this part caught my attention:

"The following pairs sound exactly the same in RP: or/awe, court/caught, sore/saw, farther/father, formerly/formally. In General American, they all sound different."

I pronounce all those pairs the same except by the second pair; court and caught. I pronounce both words with the same vowel sound, but I've noticed the first to be longer.

Is that a problem of consistency in my accent? Or it's just an acceptable feature?

I want my accent to be consistent so please any suggestions or corrections are really welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Paul,
I would imagine that being from South America, you probably have a more Gen Am standard of speaking English and possibly still use the rhotic R (pronounced /r/ in such words as part, bird, formal etc. which would be silent in RP.
Yes these homophones of /):/ (or) and /a:/ (ah) do sound the same in RP but would differ in Gen Am.
Start by taking out the /R/ and thinking of the /or/ sound with more lip rounding and space in the mouth(drop the jaw), the back of the tongue moves up.
For the /a:/ (ah) sound, again dropping the jaw to allow space in the mouth and thinking the tongue relaxed and low in the mouth. The sound will sound 'darker' than in RP.
Practice listening to native RP speakers, watching their mouths and the way they speak. Listen, repeat and compare sounds.
I hope this was helpful to you.

Hi Paul,
I would imagine that being from South America, you probably have a more Gen Am standard of speaking English and possibly still use the rhotic R (pronounced /r/ in such words as part, bird, formal etc. which would be silent in RP.
Yes these homophones of /):/ (or) and /a:/ (ah) do sound the same in RP but would differ in Gen Am.
Start by taking out the /R/ and thinking of the /or/ sound with more lip rounding and space in the mouth(drop the jaw), the back of the tongue moves up.
For the /a:/ (ah) sound, again dropping the jaw to allow space in the mouth and thinking the tongue relaxed and low in the mouth. The sound will sound 'darker' than in RP.
Practice listening to native RP speakers, watching their mouths and the way they speak. Listen, repeat and compare sounds.
I hope this was helpful to you.

My name's Pedro and my nickname's Pete, not Paul haha It's funny... Foreigners coming to Peru used to call me Pablo instead of Pedro often, the same thing happened here, only you used the English version of the name.

Well, my accent is non-rhotic, and I mostly try to follow RP standard pronunciation, and I want to make it a bit more real by adopting some London English or Estuary English features.

Still, I pronounce court and caught differently. court with a longer vowel sound and caught with the same vowel but a bit shorter.

Here's a recording so you have a better idea.

http://www.upload-mp3.com/files/151621_ox5yx/My%20recording.mp3]My recording.mp3