British English developed from a local language in England in the early15th century, while American English developed from the early17th century.
British English brought to North America by British colonists evolved. Countries and regions that use British English as their mother tongue now include the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the West Indies. American English-speaking countries mainly include the United States and Canada. British English and American English are the same language. There is almost no grammatical difference between them, but there are some differences in pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary and sentence expression, but this difference is not too big and will not affect the communication between British English speakers and American English speakers. Because they were and are the same language after all, and will not develop into two languages in the future.
Although American accent is very popular in China now, most people in China who study English learn British English textbooks at first, and later some people go abroad to learn American English under the influence of American education, foreign teachers and audio-visual materials. However, few people can speak authentic American English, and most people speak British English with some beautiful voices.
There are still many people who learn American accent without thinking. But you should know that there is no certain standard for American accent. Sometimes you will find that the phonetic symbols of British English are marked in the textbook, but the listening materials you listen to are American pronunciation, so sometimes beginners
I don't know what the correct pronunciation is, and I want to find the correct American phonetic alphabet textbook, but I can't find it. This is because American English has a variety of pronunciations, and there is no national unified Putonghua as a standard like Chinese, and there is no international phonetic symbol to regulate it like British English.
Since American society also respects British accent, there is no reason not to pay attention to American accent. If you speak English well, America will worship you. If you take IELTS or BEC, you must learn English pronunciation. Of course, if you are going to take TOFEL and GRE, you'd better consider the American accent. Because the listening test section focuses more on American pronunciation. But in either case, you have to learn the standard.
Ask yourself according to the announcer's standards. When English majors are freshmen, they don't need to correct their pronunciation for a month, so don't go astray in English learning from the beginning. Before the standards are clear, listen to those that are not clear and easy to make mistakes.
Therefore, no matter what kind of learning method, the first step to learn English well is to correct the pronunciation of international phonetic symbols. Only when the phonetic symbols are accurate can the pronunciation of words be correct, so that you will not pronounce a certain word when you say a sentence in the future.
Hesitation will not affect the fluency of spoken English. Correcting these wrong habits requires your relevant teaching materials and supporting tapes to correct them, and many listening and speaking teaching materials on the market will also correct these problems.
The "British accent" and "American accent" mentioned here must mainly refer to the educated university accent, that is, the so-called "RP" accent in Britain and the "INE" accent in the United States. As far as British "RP" and American "INE" are concerned, their accent differences are not the same as the differences between dialects that Chinese mainland cannot communicate with each other. In my opinion, the difference between the two is at best equivalent to the difference between Shandong people speaking Mandarin and Beijing people speaking Mandarin, so don't care too much. As long as you don't imitate an uncivilized accent, no matter whether you bring "beauty" or "English", people will know that your English accent is "closed", so it can be concluded that you are an educated and civilized person.
Therefore, as a beginner, try to practice basic language skills. As for American accent, you can practice how to "listen" American English after correcting British English pronunciation. It wasn't too late then. If you don't know the standard, you may not know what you are talking about in the end.