Whats best?

By bad habits I mean things like speaking too quickly, softening t's to d's, using double negatives or redundancies (ie: unthaw) Overusing words such as "like'

As for British Accents, i find the ones that are hardest to understand are the ones that are rife with glottal stops.

I'm not sure exactly what you're refering to about the softening t's to d's part, bit if you mean changing the t's to a d sound in words like butter, then you are refering to a phenomenon that is very standard, at least in American English. If someone actually said 'butter' instead of 'budder', they would not be speaking correctly. Just so you are aware.

Well, one cannot simply say that /t/ is being "softened" to [d], as what is happening is that both /t/ and /d/ are being neutralized intervocalically (in many cases when such intervocalicness is across word boundaries) to [4] (for those who can't read X-SAMPA here, that'd be an alveolar flap, similar to a Spanish "r"). And yes, as american nic said, this is practically ubiquitous in North American English (and is regarded as "standard" within it), with probably the only counterexamples within such being when speaking with *very* strong emphasis. That said, in some cases in some dialects, such as my own, said [4] may be very weakly or may be elided altogether, such as in /t@`/, /tl=/, /d@`/, and /dl=/ when those are following vowels, but those are special cases, and are probably not representative of North American English as a whole.

guys guys I believe that you are way over what the subject is about.. it is clearly about what is best not whether or not you substitute you t's into d's........so let me refresh your minds WHAT IS BEST American accents or British, however in my point of view i believe that American accents are better because us British people can understand Americans better than vice versa.

not that i'm American, but i prefer American accents better. come on guys admit if you speak to an American person with your British accent they usually do not know what the hell you are saying...... they just find it more difficult to understand you. i know that you guys are probably thinking when or why on earth will we speak to an American person, but i am just going along with subject ok.

>>I'm tired of running into non-native English speakers (primarily foreign students) who are quite fluent in formal English, yet whose understanding drops rapidly once spoken to using the everyday English spoken here..<<

Yes, very common situation.

>>I myself wish that people learning English would actually learn to understand a wider range of forms than those that they themselves may actually end up using, because others talking to them very well may use such forms.<<

Yes, you made a good point there but from a English learner's view... being capable of using colloquialisms of many different dialects, like British, Australian and American, requires a great knowledge, it's like the ultimate game of skill for a non-native speaker. Once you get to that point, the language is not a challenge anymore, not exciting anymore. Then, you need to learn another language, hehehe.

>>not that i'm American, but i prefer American accents better. come on guys admit if you speak to an American person with your British accent they usually do not know what the hell you are saying......<<

That reminds me of one ocassion.

Once, we were taking a boat trip about some islands off the Peruvian coast, where you can find some sea lions, penguins, lots of birds and stuff. I was the guide of a group of about 30 people, half the people were Americans. when we aproached a rock I said: "Look guys, this area of the rocks... where the sea is a bit rough, there's a noticeable high tide and low tide difference which means that this part is usually wet and underwater but also dry and exposed to the air, at times. It's called the "Intertidal" area, only some micro-organisms and barnacles can survive this extreme conditions and the great salinity... when the tide gets lower, you can see some starfish..."

And an American, looking a bit puzzled, said "What the...? You can find what? where?" and some more people repeated "Starfish, in the intertidal zone.

I felt guilty and that there was some problem with my accent because that American guy didn't catch what I said.

A few days later, other people made me understand that it's not me, cuz my English is clear. It was him, possibly he's not exposed to some accents very often.

If you speak a language well, you don't have to change your accent just because one out of 1000 doesn't understand what you say, no no no.

Regards

Pete

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It's true, Pete; some people will have a better "ear" than others. And often it's a combination of factors that make words difficult to understand -- not just the accent, but ambient noise levels, being distracted, etc. Just because people say "What?" doesn't mean it's solely the quality of your speech that is throwing them off!