As an English major, here’s a hot take. Everybody has an accent. Nobody speaks an accent-free English, which exists as Received Pronunciation (RP). Hardly anyone speaks it. Not the British, not the Americans, not even the colonizer Queen.

We change our accents depending who we speak to, either consciously or unconsciously. Accents are associated with prestige, and prestige is rooted in stereotypes. i.e. ‘British’ accents sound “educated” and Malaysian accents sound “uneducated”.

There is no homogeneous British accent. In 2010, Geordie was voted as the sexiest accent in Britain. Here’s a clip:

Do you associate it with prestige? Do you associate it with “educated”? Do you want to speak the same way? Would you listen to tutorials?

Accents are hierarchical because we allow them to be. Qualities are associated with accents because we allow them to be. No accent should be inherently better than the other. Language should be simple, stop making it difficult.

Pronounce words the way you feel comfortable pronouncing them. As long as the utterance is intelligible and your message is conveyed and understood, there is nothing wrong with how you’re speaking.