I’m losing my Dutch accent, but I still have quite a bit of it. I especially have trouble with the ‘th’ sound, as in ‘thirty’. But to be honest, I’m not trying too hard either. Sometimes, this leads to funny situations.
Last year, my wife and I went to see a movie with a friend of ours. While one was buying tickets and the other went to the bathroom, I was at the concession stand buying drinks and popcorn.
“I’ll have a Pepsi, a Diet Pepsi, a Mountain Dew and three popcorns, I said. The girl behind the stand was looking at me kind of funny, like I insulted her and she didn’t know how to respond. She proceeded filling the cups and then asked “and what else did you want again?”
“Ehm…three popcorn”, I said. After another weird look and 2 seconds of silence she answered “I’m sorry sir, but you’ll have to pay for the popcorn”.
Ever since that day I started holding up three fingers in situations where I had to specify “3” “)
Is very simple really…forget the whole idea of pronouncing it differently from ‘tree’ and your all set :-) You will still have a funny accent, but I think people will have less problems with that than when you pronounce th as an f. Asking for t(h)ree popcorn would give em laughs…it’s like asking for wooden popcorn :-)