The United States is a big country; when traveling, you will undoubtedly meet someone who sounds different from you.

There are six different regional accents in the United States. Some are more distinct than others, such as the Southern accent. In this video, a man attempts to speak without his Southern accent.

His wife, Stephanie Shadrick, films him while he reads from a notebook.

The sentence reads:

“The dog licked the oil, and everyone laughed.”

He reads the sentence with ease the first go around, but when he attempts to do it without an accent, he struggles to say ‘oil.’ He stops himself, knowing it’s a difficult word for him to speak without his accent.

Stephanie and her husband laugh as he goes back and forth between speaking with and without an accent. And people in the comments join in, finding the exchange hilarious.

Since it was posted, the video has amassed almost 21 million views and 36,000 comments!

We can see why the video has gotten so much attention; it is fun to hear how other people talk, especially when it is very different than ourselves.

She prompts him to speak normally and although he and the viewers understand what she means, there is no “normal” way of speaking.

Everyone speaks differently; within the six different regional accents, there are 24 dialects.

Although the terms are commonly used interchangeably, they have different meanings.

Dialectblog.com explains:

“An accent is the way that particular person or group of people sound. It’s the way somebody pronounces words, the musicality of their speech, etc. A dialect describes both a person’s accent and the grammatical features of the way that person talks.”

A typical example of different dialects is the name for a carbonated drink. Some will say ‘soda,’ others will say ‘pop,’ and others ‘coke.’ What do you say?

Chances are if you are from the Northeast or California, you say ‘soda.’

While people from the Midwest say ‘pop’ and Southerners call it ‘coke.’

Another example is the name of the night before Halloween.

This night has no word for most of the country, but part of Michigan calls it ‘devil’s night,’ and New Jersey knows it as ‘mischief night.’

For many New Jersey teens, mischief night is a time to pull harmless pranks such as covering a home or yard in toilet paper.

We know what you’re thinking: after the great toilet paper shortage of 2020, who would waste any?

When it comes to accents, the word ‘bagel’ provides a good example.

Midwesterners say it as “bah-gull,” which is almost offensive to people from the Mid-Atlantic, specifically New York and New Jersey, who take pride in their “bay-gulls.”

Have you been told you have a regional accent, or do you know someone that sounds different than you? This can be a fun challenge to try with your friends!

This video is all in good fun and was upload to YouTube by the participants to give others a good laugh. Even so, these two are married—don’t try to make fun of just anybody’s accent on the streets or you might get in serious trouble!

If you are going to challenge people as this woman did, it’s a good idea to make sure they are comfortable doing so first!

Be sure to check out the hilarious video below: