The Ugly American’s Guide to Obtaining a Bri-ish Accent

1. Resolve not to get a Bri-ish accent. Use a full American accent (from the Midwest, from the South, from the East Coast, etc.) with everything you say.

2. Sit in on a lunch at work, preferably on your first day. A lunch that involves buying food from the local grocery and bringing it back to the office works best.

3. Pay attention to the brand names. You’ve likely never seen them before, and you’ll wonder how to pronounce them. Think of the way you, as an American stubbornly keeping his/her accent, would pronounce it.

4. Listen to a co-worker asking someone to pass the Lurpak. It’s a sort-of-like-butter spread that many Britons put on their bagels and bread slices.

5. Compare how the co-worker said “Lurpak” to the way you imagined yourself saying it. Likely, you would have said, “LOOOR-pak,” whilst—no, while—your colleague said, “Could you pass me the LURR-pahk?”

6. Think of how embarrassing it would be to pronounce a popular British food product the wrong way. Compare the feeling to that of a Brit saying, “Could I have some Ski-uhls?” at an American candy shop.

7. Listen to another co-worker asking to pass the same pack of LURR-pahk. Pay extra attention to the “a” in pak, as it will sound higher and more distinguished than your hick-ish “a”. (See difference between the Spanish colour—color—“amarillo” and the Texas town of Amarillo.

8. Ask a co-worker to pass the LURR-pahk. They’ll act like it’s no big deal, but you will forever be grateful for not sounding like an ignoramus.

9. Realize that you had to use a British accent to pronounce the name correctly. Curse your pledge to remain American.

10. Listen to your co-workers as they talk amongst themselves. You will hear words like “bollocks,” “quid,” and “aubergine” that do not appear in American English. Realise—realize!—that you cannot by any means use your American accent to say these words without risk of being called a berk—buffoon, loosely—, and accept the fact that you’ll have to be British, at least a little.

11. Answer the phone at work. It will be a Brit on the other line (guaranteed!), and even if you can understand everything your co-workers say, the phone receiver makes things seventeen times harder to comprehend. You will get maybe seven words out of the conversation. Come to grips with the fact that you have to practice speaking Brit-like yourself before those phone calls become more than blabber to you.

12. After two weeks at work, read things “out loud” in your head. Notice the fact that you’re reading them with a British accent, even if it’s written by someone with a well-known American voice (Obama, Jim Gaffigan, Bill Nye, etc.). Come to grips with your own impending Bri-ish accent.

13. Resolve to get rid of the accent before you get home. If you don’t return to the American style early enough, you might get people mad enough at you to throw you under a bus and tattoo your face with tyre—tire!—tracks.