GIVE ANSWERS - English

Hello everyone,

I started learning English at school some 10 years ago (I'm 21). Unfortunatly, I'm from Italy and here English is taught in a terrible way. That is, I haven't learnt any phonemes and therefore I pronounced English words with Italian phonemes and Italian accent (Just to give an idea, Italian has 7 vowels while English has 14 of them). The result was, of course, the classical pizza & maccheroni accent.

Two years ago, upon suggestion of a friend, I learned the "sound of english" and the English intonation's rules (British). I have to say it was a revelation, I started to be understood while speaking english and to understand better english while listening.

To be fair, I'm still practicing my pronunciation every day but a problem came up. While I (most of the time) can pronunce the phonemes correctly, I find really hard to think them. Let me give you an example. Let's say I have to pronounce "thing". I can say the word with the three english sound (/θɪŋ/) but I'm not able to think those sounds in my mind for example when I read a book or when I speak to myself. (I thing of them in "italian": something between /ting/ and  /θɪŋ/)

So, here are the questions: Has anyone faced the same problem? Is it due to the fact that I've been thinking in English with the wrong phonems for so many years? Is it because I'm learning the language as an adult? Would it be different if I had started learning the language with the right phonems from the beginning? Is anyone facing the same problem? Is it just a matter of time? If so, how much (from your experience)?

Thank you very much in advance,
Andrea
 

PS: I know Italian and I'm learning English, I don't know other languages.
PPS: If you don't know what I'm talking about and you're curious then read the following links. Long story short: it's just a way of talking about sound. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet