My sibling in Christ, just relax and be yourself. You’ll pick up the accent more and more over time, that’s how it works. Forcing it is disingenuous. Imagine if my goofy midwestern ass moved to the UK and started to try to speak with Brits forcing their accent.

Pretend to fall and hit your head some night out with friends. Not enough for them to force you to stay up and get a cat scan, but just enough. Just enough to leave some doubt. Then start talking American the next day

Your approach is defeating your purpose. Muricans would be loud and outspoken so everyone around knows

Life is too short, just do it and when people notice say you’re trying it out for fun for a bit.

This is probably something you’ll think was really silly in a few years but who cares, live a little.

There is not a slow enough change for that to unnoticed. People will notice.

Also … just why? Why American? There are so many nice accents to choose.

We sound stupid though…

I won’t go into the reasons why you’re doing that. Instead, I’ll just focus on your plans, because I don’t think a gradual change of accent will go unnoticed. Just do it. Embrace the American accent you love so much and live it to the fullest. And if anyone asks you what happened, just say you’re tired of your own accent and are trying something new. Explain it clearly to others and own up to it. This will make you feel good because you’re being honest by telling others why you have decided to change.

However, you should bear in mind that a language is much more than just an accent. It also includes people’s choice of words and idioms and expresses the way they see the world. It would be strange if I decided to speak Brazilian Portuguese with a Portuguese accent (from Portugal). Those who know me would be confused because this “Portuguese character” in me speaks the local language perfectly with the wrong accent. How come?

Disconnect yourself from absolutely everyone you know and everywhere you usually go; take a long vacation somewhere relatively close but isolated enough from where you live.

Then, pretend this is actually a trip to America. You can fake photos online, AI makes this very easy for you today. Return to your normal life and carry on with the American accent. Continue taking fake (or if you can, real) holidays to America to justify the accent.

You are never going to be able to do it so gradually that no one notices. There will always come a point at which they think “weird, @PlogLod sort of sounds American”.

For that reason I think you may as well just fully commit straight away and get it over with.

Singing lessons. I’m honestly not even kidding.

I’m an American who grew up in a part of the country called Appalachia. My native accent is often associated with being uneducated and stupid, so I learned how to change it when I was a young adult.

The thing that helped me most was voice lessons that taught me how to control the muscles in the nasopharynx, throat, tongue. The reason that’s difficult is because you can’t see the way those muscles move when someone else speaks or sings, so you can’t just mimic what they’re doing. It takes a little bit more effort to learn.

Learning how to sing classical western music (opera type stuff) allowed me to learn how to speak in that kind of just generic Midwestern American accent that has less negative social associations.

Now, that being said, I also have Indian friends who grew up in the United States who still speak with a similar Indian accent as their immigrant parents, and it’s really no big deal. So you could just roll with your native accent.

(And also, I still code switch back into my native accent when I’m talking to my family or I visit my home region. Your native accent never goes away even when you learn a different way of speaking.)

As an American myself, I encourage you to keep your natural accent. We’re a nation of immigrants built from people who originated all over the world. So there’s not just one recognizable accent here. Nobody’s accent is superior to others. I’ve known people from other countries who are self conscious about their accents. In response, I tell them honestly that I appreciate the way they sound. Variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes.

When I was a kid, I had a friend who was trying to do different accents, and he wasn’t joking when he said “it’s not fair that I have to practice all these different accents, but if anyone wanted to copy mine, all they have to do is just talk normal.”

He honestly thought that EVERYONE had a Northwest PA accent by default and that everyone else just chooses to talk in an accent.

So, I guess, just talk normal. 🤷🏻‍♂️😂

Step 1: Buy a gun

Don’t ease into it at all. Wait for a moment where it would be funny, then go whole hog with it. Treat it like a joke… but then just keep going. Never go back. Don’t even acknowledge there is a back. Pretend this is how you’ve always talked and they’re insane if they think otherwise.

So first of all, which American accent? There’s no single accent.

Secondly, if you try to transition slowly, odds are you’re going to get made fun of a whole lot along the way for nearly every single American pronunciation you make, because each individual change will stick out more in context. so we’re talking about months or years of people thinking you’re weird, stupid, or have some kind of speech impediment instead of getting it all out of the way in one go. I have a fairly strong Philadelphian accent, and even here in my home turf I’ve had the odd person try to make fun of my pronunciation of things like “water” (wooder,) generally it’s pretty good-natured fun, but once in a while you get some asshole with a stick up their ass about proper pronunciation. You’re setting yourself up for a long time of that, and it will only get worse up until you’re actually able to pass as an American.

Third, don’t try to be cool, it never works. The coolest thing out there really is just having the right amount of confidence. Trying to change your accent because it sounds cooler kind reeks of trying too hard, like weebs sprinkling way too much Japanese into their conversations for no good reason, or people using big words to sound smarter, or whatever the fuck Elizabeth Holmes does with her voice. It’s basically the verbal of equivalent of a neckbeard wearing a fedora (is that still a thing or am I dating myself?)

If you’re actually dead-set on changing your accent, the best way is to just live in America and immerse yourself in it and come into it naturally, and you’ll pick it up, and then it gives you a solid reason to say how/why you picked it up. You’re going to need to spend some significant time here though, months at a minimum, probably years, otherwise at best people will just think you’re an obnoxious, maybe naive weirdo who’s huffing their own farts about how well-traveled they are, or at worse think you’re some sort of weeaboo type obsessive nutjob about America (Google “Rawhide Kobayashi” and you’d get a pretty good sense of how people might think of you)

Last thoughts on the matter, if there’s American slang you like, go ahead and use it, but do it naturally, don’t force it. I sprinkle all kinds of weird shit into my speech that I’ve picked up from all over the place, things I’ve read, heard others say, movies, tv, the internet, but it’s never been a conscious choice, it just happens naturally, trying to force it never makes it feel natural. “Stop trying to make fetch happen.”