“I’m sorry, what did you say?” …Fed up of hearing this?

I get it. It’s frustrating, to say the least. Your accent gets in the way of you being YOU. I remember when I was on holiday in Morocco and wanted to order a drink. I asked the waiter for some Cola in my BEST Arabic.

“Can I have a Coca-Cola?” ("‏عطيني ‏كوكا كولا؟") Just a couple of words. Easy, right? …..Wrong! The waiter looked at me in utter confusion. So I tried again. ‏"عطيني ‏كوكا كولا؟"‏

Again. No success. I felt like an alien that had just landed on earth! Picture it. There was the waiter - trying to understand what I had just said - and me, on the brink of having to start miming my request.

Thankfully, at this point, my native Arabic speaking friend stepped in. "‏عطيني ‏كوكا كولا؟"

As soon as she said this, the waiter's face turned from utter confusion into that of complete understanding and he instantly started pouring a glass of Cola.

I. was. shocked.

That’s EXACTLY what I’d said! My friend had said EXACTLY the same words. What was the difference?! Although I certainly couldn’t hear any difference at the time, this incident was clearly enough proof to show that there was an issue with my pronunciation. So I got to work on it!

Thankfully, the next year I went back, I was able to speak the dialect naturally without any more embarrassing situations!

And I’m going to show you how you can do this too, with the British RP (Received Pronunciation) accent…