to consider taking accent reduction classes?

[Lilylo]

Hi everyone! I would love to hear impartial opinions on this.

I am originally from Italy, hence Italian is my mother tongue. I moved to the UK a couple of years ago and I have been working FT in a high-skilled job ever since. DH and I plan to settle and start a family in the UK (he is British). Prior to moving to the UK I lived abroad for several years in English speaking environments/ workplaces (US, Hong Kong, Beijing, Copenhagen), therefore I am pretty fluent in English.

I am often told by British colleagues and friends that my English is really good, but I still feel very conscious about my accent. I admit it is probably not terribly strong and most native English speakers understand virtually 99.9% of what I say, but you can still tell I am not a native English speaker.

For some reason lately I have been feeling more and more conscious about this "flaw", up to the point that I am thinking about paying £££ for accent reduction classes, in order to get rid of my foreign accent for good and possible sound a bit more native.

AIBU to spend £££ on getting rid of my foreign accent? If you are British, do you mind foreigners who are fluent in English but with an accent? If English was not your mother tongue and you have an accent too, how do you feel about it?

Many thanks for your comments!

OP, it's a national pastime in this country to work out your background by your accent, more so among and towards native speakers than towards foreigners! One of my good friends moved to East Midlands from Glasgow when he was 10 and went to a public school where they made every effort to eradicate his accent, and new people still ask him within two minutes of conversation how long he's visiting for/whether he's living round here, etc, and he is 50 now!

The longer you live here, the more you'll lose your accent anyway, but definitely a bad idea to try and replicate a regional accent, imagine a Brit settling in Rome and spending loads of money on learning to speak precisely with some distinct regional Italian accent - their foreign-ness would still come at least occasionally through the regional accent, and it would just be a bizarre concoction! You could aim to sound neutral, but there is really no such thing as completely neutral, RP is not neutral any more - my DH sounds "neutral" to me, he is from Berkshire, but to the people up North he sounds like an obvious Southerner (posh. so still has slightly negative associations).

The only way you are not gonna be asked where you are from etc in UK if you are born here and then live all your life within 5 miles of your birthplace ;). But then you'll go through life saying hello to everyone on the street and everyone would know everything about your business, would that be a better life? Swings and roundabouts!