When you’re born and raised in a certain area, you might not think much about having an accent. After all, if everyone around you sounds the same – what’s to even think about?
It’s when you travel elsewhere that an accent can become really apparent – especially when everyone’s asking you where you’re from, or giggling over how you say different words. But on the other hand, they’re the ones who sound funny, right?
People from the South are well-known for having thick accents that others pick up on from a mile away. One woman decided to put her husband to the test and see if he could put aside his “Southern twang.” Fortunately, she had the camera rolling while he tried to do so – because the results are side-splitting!
Brandon’s from Georgia so has a rich Southern accent. But what would he sound like without it?
The woman recording is named Stephanie and she gives her husband a notebook that has a simple sentence on it. It goes, “The dog licked the oil and everyone laughed.”
The first thing Brandon does is read off the sentence how he normally would – accent and all. He flies through it and looks up at his wife with big eyes. See, that wasn’t hard.
Okay, but here comes the tough part. Stephanie then asks Brandon to read the sentence again, only this time without sounding like a Southerner.
Brandon is no longer able to spit out the words. Instead, he has to work harder to pronounciate each one, which is evident in the way he raises his eyebrows. But he gets only four words in before he has to stop…
How the heck would you say “oil?”
Stephanie tries to help her husband by giving a little lesson in the right way to say “oil.” She tells him,
“Oy-ul. Not awl … Stop, do-over!”
Brandon goes in for another try and neither one of them can keep a straight face.
While it seems like a somewhat simple test, it’s probably a lot harder than some might think! Brandon whips through reading it again in his Southern accent. Then when he reads it again in “English” (like Stephanie calls it) he goes slowly and does the best he can.
Stephanie wants some improvement. She asks her husband if he can say it “smoothly.”
Here we go again! Brandon reads off, “The dog licked the oil and everyone laughed,” sounding very proper and possibly like he could be the voice of movie ads.
But it’s not good enough. After Stephanie calls it “choppy,” he jokingly replies,
“It’s about as smooth as you’re going to get from my a$$ at this point…”
The test goes on with the word “oil” being Brandon’s biggest nemesis. But finally, he passes it to his wife’s satisfaction!
It’s a laugh-out-loud video that’s been viewed more than 14 million times online. One person thought he did a pretty good job, commenting:
“I love his southern accent – and I think he does a fabulous job trying to remove it. Better than I could do. I’m sure my southern accent would sound much more forced if the situation were reversed.”
Someone else simply wrote:
“This was funny. He’s a good sport!”
Watch the video below to see Brandon try and ditch his Southern accent!
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