I am a qualified elocution teacher and I've been teaching people how to speak clearly and confidently since 1994. Over the years I have taught children and adults who have English as their first or only language to speak more slowly and more clearly. More recently I have taught adults who come from Brazil, Spain, China, Russia, Portugal, USA, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, Kenya, Italy, South Africa, The Netherlands, India, Australia, Singapore, Croatia, South Korea (to name a few) to soften their accent. I've taught them to pronounce the 'th' sound, explained the diphthongs used in English and encouraged them to put final consonants on the words but I have always told them that even if they find these sounds difficult and can't manage them they are still easy to understand.
Most of these people were professionals who could read, write and speak English better than a lot of my English students and so I often wondered why they were so intent on losing their accent when they spoke English. They were easy to understand but had an accent and almost everyone said to me when I asked them why they wanted to lose their accent that they were just fed up of people saying, 'oh, you're from.....' I said if was them I would just be so proud of myself for being able to speak another language I wouldn't worry about the accent.
Fast forward and I now live in Portugal and I am struggling to learn Portuguese. I find some of the sounds almost impossible to pronounce and I stress the wrong part of words. As soon as I open my mouth I sound English! How I would love to sound Portuguese...... I wonder if there are Portuguese elocution teachers in central Portugal?