YouTube Video ID: y0hYq_ABFXc
Episode Post Date: February 26, 2026
GMM Episode Number: 2989
Transcript
Are we all speaking with secret accents? Let's talk about that. Good Mythical Morning. The world is a very big place filled with millions of people who all talk a little bit different, even just in the US whether you're from the south, the Midwest, the west coast, or somewhere in between. Chances are you have a distinct accent you may not even know about. Except for us, our accents are as undetectable as a couple of crickets hidin' in a bucket of grits, y'all. Yeah, I didn't notice anything. That's why we brought in TikTok or an accent detecting superstar Zay Dupree. We're gonna do a little Mythical experimentation with you. You've probably seen Zach, uh, Zach, well, who I don't know who Zach is. Link's, uh, accent is so strong that he calls. I say Zach instead of Zay. You've probably seen Zay on TikTok where he has racked up millions of views and likes guessing complete strangers regional accents. I'm not talking about state. I'm talk, I'm talking about regions. Some, I mean, like with Hank Green, he guessed down to the exact hometown with a detailed analysis. Here's how he does his thing. Where's my accent from? Like if I heard someone who spoke exactly like me and didn't know where they were from, how would I go about breaking down their accent? Well, the first thing I'd listen for would obviously be the cot-caught merger, which I don't display. Listen to how I say saw instead of saw in this video. The other day I saw this video. This means we can rule out the Western US, Texas, Appalachia, and New England. The next thing to note that it must be from an area on or below the on line. The on line is the line that marks the separation between the two pronunciations of the word on in American English. On, below the line and on, above the line. Straightforward. I mean. All stuff. I'm a little lost, but. I already knew. I love it. I already knew. Oh, you knew all that? Yeah. Yeah. It's good to see it confirmed from someone who's officially, uh, studying linguistics. Okay. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna find out how well we can do this actually against Zay as we analyze some actual Mythical Crew accents. Who's better? Welcome to the show, Zay. Hello, thank you for having me. Give us one of these. Yep. Yes, yep. Yes. That right there. Official GMM handshake. Zay is a sophomore in college. He's just a child doing linguistics, blowing everybody else out of the water. And I love the fact that you started even before you got to college. Mm-hmm. Like, a man who knows what he wants to do with his life. You're putting the pressure on people like my kids who are like. Oh, my fault. I have no clue what to do. I'm sorry. Yeah, you should, you should be. I'm so proud of you. Will you be my son? Okay. Okay. He looked at. Right. He looked at you like, well, is there, is it a competition? If he could be the mom, I, I dunno. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be your mom. I don't care. Let's jump into it. Of course, Rhett and Link, you know your employees really well, so this should easy for you. Yeah. Our first crew member up is the showrunner of this very show who you've worked with for years, and Zay has only just met right now. Come on. Matt Carney. Hello. Oh, you're the showrunner. I, yeah, I set that up with an applause, but then I realized, yeah, yeah, um. There's a little bit of a bit, an ongoing bit about us never remembering where you're from. Mm-hmm. And I just think that that's, it's a beautiful thing. Mm-hmm. Can you guess where I used to work Zay? Hot dog on a stick. Hot, what? Hot. Hot what. On a stick. Hot dog, hot dog on a stick. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. He is so good. He's fast. Good, okay. Previously, Zay gave us a list of words that when spoken aloud can reveal a lot about a person's background. So we took those words and turned them into sentences that you will ask the crew members to read, and after you've heard those sentences repeated back to you, you can speak to the crew member a little bit more before you must guess where they're from. The sentences are on the cards whenever you're ready. Right. Okay, I'll go first here. Uh, can I hear you say, I put milk in my eggs and oranges in my coffee. I put milk in my eggs and oranges in my coffee. Did you learn something? A little bit. I didn't. You did. I lo, I mean a little bit. Okay. You're not from where I'm from. No. I can do a really good North Carolina accent. Yeah, you can. It's great. Especially with a helmet on. Don't. What? Okay. Okay, go ahead. All right. Can you say, my mom mailed me a bag of old crayons she bought on eBay. My mom mailed me an old bag of crowns. I always have a hard time with that word. Yeah, you do. Maybe that's a tell. My mom mailed me an old bag of crayons. It's not a tongue twister. It's just a sentence. It's a memory thing. She bought on eBay. Okay. I don't know what. You learned something from that. Uh, yeah. He can't say crayons. I never have been able to say crowns. People, people like to say crowns. Is that from a, is that a tell? Not really. Crown, like mispronunciation of words. But bought. Bought is a tell. On is a tell. On. Not crayons. Okay. All right, Link. Last time I went to Nobu, I ate so many scallops I threw up on my shoes. Last time I went to Nobu, I ate so many scallops I threw up on my shoes. Okay. Okay. You can, you can ask any, uh, follow ups, clarifications. You do have, Rhett's already had pulled out his, this is, uh, your map whiteboard. So you're gonna make your guess as to where Carney's accent is from and some, since some people, you know, move around a bit, you can circle up to three different areas of the map. How big can the circles be? I brought this up so many times in producing this episode. Nobody thought it mattered, so circle away. No. Yeah. You wanna, yeah, you wanna be proven right at this point. The circle can't be bigger than a state. Okay, that sounds good. Okay, all right. Okay. So we're basically outlining a state. Up to three. Okay. So you're just going for it, you don't have any. Wait, I can, wait, I can ask him a question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Can you say blueberry. Blueberry. Okay. Hey, screw you, man. Ooh. And can you say Harry? Like, like Harry Potter, like the name. Harry Potter. Okay. I, I think I got it. You think you got it? I think. I mean there's 50 choices. I'm gonna see if I get this wrong. Harry Styles. Okay, I think. Rhett and Link, any words you want Carney to say? No. Oh, aw. I've heard, I've heard him talk enough. 'cause you could say, you could get him to say anything. Oh, okay. Can you say wine cooler? Wine cooler. Oh. Wine cooler. Yeah. Say Boones Farm. Boones Farm. Boones Farm. Okay. Say let's get sloshed on Boone's Farm wine cooler. Let's get sloshed on Wine's Farm, boone. I would make fun of your short term memory, but I'm not the one to do that. Wines farm boon cooler. Can you say bother? Bother. That's what I was, I was thinking bother too. That's a good one. Link, don't look at anyone else's. I ain't looking at. I've already circled my. I was talking to man, I was looking at his face. I just circled two. I'll go with three. I'm, I'm ready to give my answer. My three circles are Ohio, Illinois, and Southern California because, uh, I'm guessing where Hot Dog on a Sticks are. Yeah, well, I did only two guesses. I said Pennsylvania and Southern California, because I the Southern California, I know you did that, yeah. You did some, some, uh, a little bit of growing up maybe in the San Diego area. Yeah, I, I feel like we're cheating a little bit. But the, I know it's somewhere up here and I just narrowed it down to Pennsylvania because of the way you said blueberry. Hmm. Okay. Interesting. I can do mine now? Yes. Okay, do you want like the explanation behind it? Yes. Alright, so I circled like the New York Long Island area, Boston, and Philly, because the, the main thing was the way you said blueberry. You said blueberry and Harry with different vowel sounds. Hmm. So you said like, like, I do this too 'cause I'm from New Jersey. I say Harry and blueberry. So it's like a slightly higher vowel sound for blueberry. There was a difference. Very, very, very slight difference. Mm. But it's only found it the, it's called the Marry, Merry, Mary Distinction and found in New York City and Boston. So I think you're from like the, like New York or Philly, maybe Boston. Okay. Carney, where is that accent from? All right. So I was born in the suburbs, just outside Baltimore, Maryland. Spent the first part of my life growing up in Maryland. So I was about 12 surrounded by people from those states that you mentioned, 'cause my family, just a lot like East Coast Jews, like they came and they gathered in Baltimore. Okay. They came and they gathered. Um, then we moved and I was about 11 years old to San Diego and spent, um, a lot of time there. I did move back to New York for three months for work, so I could have picked up who knows what. And then I moved to Los Angeles, uh, after college, and I've lived here ever since. So that was six years ago. Wow. So what's wrong with him? Those three months really took a toll on him, I don't know. Yeah. The three months. You, I mean, look how close you, you are to Maryland though. Like you, you literally circled Philadelphia, which is like a 30 minute drive from Maryland. Well, you're definitely closer than us, and your, your reasons certainly seemed better. And he hasn't worked with me for eight years either, so. Yeah. Yeah. I think Zay takes the point this round. Next up we have Mythical Crew member, Bethany. Hello, Bethany. Oh. And that is mostly Carney clapping on that one. Um, Bethany, when you're ready, go ahead and read the sentences on those cards please. Because we found out that since Carney couldn't remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What we were saying. Right, we don't know how your short-term memory is. We switched it out. We don't wanna find out. Okay, great. Will you marry me in the milk shoe I caught at the New Jersey Caramels game. Please, mom. There were actually a couple words in there I didn't understand. I think I know. Oh, what? Maybe. I don't know. You know. Maybe. I think. Did you say milk shoe? I did. What. I think the more concerning part is the please mom part. Will you marry me in the milk shoe I caught at the New Jersey Caramels game, please mom. Did she say caramels? Yeah, wait, what's the New Jersey Caramel, I'm from New Jersey. I, I think it's a made up team for the purposes of this game. Yeah. Ain't nobody pulling for caramels. All right, let's hear another one. Who bought the bag of milk? We're not Canadian. Huh? It's, it is weirder when you, when we don't tell her to say it. I like this better. So there's a lot to be learned from milk, I guess. In more ways than one. I mean, when you hear it. Okay, next one. If I could steal the Mona Lisa without getting caught, I'd sell it and buy a hundred pairs of shoes. You said something about cot-caught. Yes. But I don't know what you said, and don't say it now because I don't wanna cheat. Okay. But there's a cot-caught line. Yes, vaguely. There's a vague cot-caught line. Cault, is what we said growing up. Cault. But then we heard ourselves on video and then we started saying, caught. Does that sound different to you? Cault. Cault and caught. Caught. Sounds totally different. Caught. Like, caught all, if it has a alt. Or caught, but not caught. So like in, hold on. Oh, now we're he's going from this? Yeah. Okay. So like in this area of the south, you'll sometimes hear an what's called, I think it's called an intrusive L. Like an L sound will get inserted into words. Why does that gotta be intrusive? It's a very welcome. That's what we call Link sometimes, the intrusive L. The intrusive L. But, but that's where the, the call the cault thing comes from. And I whenever you say like we're, so, hold on. So this vowel sound is like the I vowel sound. I. But say the word right real quick. Right. So you kind of drop the second vowel sound and you just say it like this. Which is another trait of Southern English. What did I say? You said like right. Right. Versus what? Right. What did what, what's the other way to say it? Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. You're getting it, see. Right. You're getting it. Okay. Maybe at the end of this you can zero in on us. I, we didn't, it's easy to find out where we're from, so we didn't wanna make it too easy, but okay. You can, you're, you're narrowing it down. You did circle where we're from on that first circle. And we distracted you from Bethany. Yeah. But I, we'll get back to Bethany. More information, the main thing I know about Bethany is the only time she ever ate a burger is when we made her. Yep. Mm-hmm. We didn't make her. We, we offered her the chance. Yeah. But she did call it a buhgeh. So you remember that? So, I just remember thinking, where. You did call it buhgeh. I think I, I know what state, I'm just trying to remember where it is. Alright. Rhett, you go first. Okay, um. Bethany, you have what I call the newscaster accent. Right, so to me it's like, I always thought that was from Colorado. Oh really? Yeah, and. Colorado. I know that you sometimes go to Arizona, so I circled that too. And maybe there's information there. And, I just did Ohio 'cause there's so many people that live there. Right. I also did Ohio, 'cause I'm determined for somebody to be from there. Yeah, right. And, um, Illinois, because I'm gonna keep guessing those. Okay, good. And uh, I also threw in, uh, Nebraska. Oh no. Out of Nebraska. Nebraska is like really obvious. I dunno, either. I think. Is it? Yeah. Now that I've heard. Okay, I don't know. Now that I've, okay. Now that you've told me that. You can tell us what's the deal. I guessed Chicago, uh, Indianapolis and Detroit. But the biggest thing for me with the cot-caught merger, which is what you're, uh, talking about. Oh, it's a merger, not a line. A merger, not quite a line, um. Okay, all right. So I think it's one of those three cities. Okay, Bethany, where's that accent from? Arizona. She, so what is, what is her problem? I'm washed. Bethany, have you had any newscaster broadcast journalism training? My brother is a broadcast journalist, so I might have, yeah, picked up a little something from him. Mm-hmm. Have you intentionally changed the way that you talk? No, but I did, growing up, have to go to speech class and I supposedly put my tongue in the wrong areas when I was saying certain words, and I don't think I corrected it. You put your tongue in Indianapolis apparently. Yeah. It's way outside of Arizona, yeah. Um, so that, that might've had something to do with it. I am so impressed that Rhett knows that you go to Arizona. I was shocked. My mouth was agape. Like that is impressive. Well, she once shared her location with me and I've ne she's never un, she's never unshared it. So, uh. It does, it does it, what's, what's your defense here? Uh. Is this something to do with her, her tongue going to the wrong places? No one lives in Arizona, so I don't really know what their accent sounds like. That's the biggest issue. I was gonna say this, like what is the Arizona accent? Like, it feels like there, it doesn't have an accent. Great question. Let's ask the 11 people who live there. Yeah, right. Okay. Point goes to Rhett. All right, I'll take it. Next up we have Jenna. Who's, who's that? Um. Oh. Our assistant. Oh, wait, hold on. Yes, our assistant. Jenna. Thank you. She knows us very well. And we know her very well too. I think so. In fact, yeah. There's no, there's no, you gotta, you have to answer now, Rhett and Link. Yeah, that. You cannot listen to Jenna talk, you need to put your answers down. And I'm not just circling the state. I'm circling, circling the city. Please. I've done it. Okay. Jenna, there's some sentences on some cards there. Um, because Zay needs to hear you talk. I've been giving a lot of thought, oh, I've been giving it a lot of thought, and a hotdog bun is basically just a sausage shoe. Really shouldn't have, I really should have looked at this before I just started speaking. I'm like trying to narrow it down. Now, while you're circling many places on your map, uh, let me just say I have a theory here. I think that, you're dealing with Los Angeles people. And I think that people who have been in Los Angeles for a while. I think that, they have been influenced in ways that are unpredictable. This might be like a whole new course that you could teach in linguistics, because. Yeah, I know what you're saying. You know what I'm saying? Like everyone talks differently than they did when they got here. Yeah. And also a lot of us have been in the entertainment industry. You might not know this, but Jenna was the voice of the orb in Independence Day. What was it, Resurrection? Uh, uh, Resurgence. Resurgence. Resurgence. You seen it? Yeah. And so when, when you have be there, when you have to be the voice of the orb in a blockbuster like that. You, you have to talk like an orb. Mm. And so she's, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. She's got orb talk that has definitely influenced the way that she talks. And so she like, you, I don't hear her accent unless she has had a couple of drinks. Yeah. I, well, I didn't learn about the orb accent in college yet. Yeah. Give us the next one. You, y'all should get me a couple drinks. Uh, all right. Uh, my Aunt Mary prays to God every night that her parakeet will lay an egg. Oh yeah. He learned something. I've never been more excited to have men analyze me. Y'all. Men analyze me. Last one. Okay. I tried to steal a box of caramel delights from the Girl Scouts, but they caught me. Mm. You get three circles. I do get three circles. Lemme think. Any other words Zay, that you wanna hear? Um, can you say mirror? Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. We going way over there. Mirror. Oh, okay. Okay. You first this time. Me first? Okay. Yep. I did Pittsburgh, the part of North Carolina that's like on the border with Tennessee and El Paso, Texas. Wow. You got incredibly close. What did you hear? So the main thing I, so when I asked her to say mirror, it's 'cause it the English and like this area of Appalachia, they tend to, they do what's called allision with the R sound. So like if the R sound is in between two vowels, they just won't pronounce it, the. Mirror. Yeah. They'll say like mirror, like one syllable instead. Mirror. Mirror. Mirror. And then she also has what's called the southern battleship, which is what I was talking about earlier where like the I sound become the ah sound. Right. So that's what made me lean kind of towards El Paso and North Carolina, but I think it's probably closer to the Pittsburgh area. You know what I just realized, you're like a weatherman for talking. Yes. I'd watch that. Gesturing on a map. True. You know? Okay, well. You're a, you're a talking weatherman. Well, wait, Rhett, let's, uh, Link can vocally tell us what city? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You start. Um. Knoxville, Tennessee, right on the border. Rhett. Knoxville, Tennessee. Oh, okay. Wait, so I was like, basically right. You got right. You, you, you were over the border. Yeah. Yeah. I mean that part. We beat you, man. People on that border. We beat you fair and square, dude. On both sides of it talk that same way. Decimated you. Just the fact that when you heard a certain thing you circled that I was like, oh yeah, okay. You heard something in there. Yeah. And I didn't say Nashville, so. I'm so proud of you. Yep. Because I've, I've done that before. Okay. It's a two pointer, two pointer round. Yep. Next up we have Nicole. Hello, Nicole. Hello. Okay, let's hear you say some stuff. Um, mom penned a will and only left me a bag of hot dog buns. Ouch. Okay. Alright, okay. Wait, say that one more time. I'm doing your technique. Mom penned a will and only left me a bag of hot dog buns. Okay, um hmm. You ready for the next one? Yeah. I think. Water me down and call me coffee, mom bought some orange pecans for egg harvest. She didn't say water. I know that there's a water. There's a water water line. There is. I know about that. I don't know where it is, but I know that it exists. And interesting about the water is that people in North Carolina say water. But also people in, uh, Pennsylvania say water. Yep. Okay, last sentence. I bought hot dog water after talking to my mom about God. Okay. Got a lot of mom and God happening in these things. And hot dogs. I don't know where these cities are. Okay. I, uh, I just, I circled three states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. I did Michigan. I didn't even circle anything else. And so you know what? But I'm showing my work. So I agree with you that Michigan is my first guess because we have a friend from Michigan who says all of the words exactly the same way. I wrote a lot of the same areas. I did Chicago and then I wrote Milwaukee and Minneapolis, 'cause I dunno where the cities are, but the bag thing, they like Great Lakes area and like the Great Plains area tend to raise the vowel sound and bag, so it sounded like bag, which is what she was doing. Okay. Okay. Nicole, where's that accent from? It's from just outside Detroit, Michigan. I, and I don't know if we were cheating a little bit, but that's always on the table with us. I wasn't cheating. Subconsciously, maybe we know where Nicole's from, but like the fact that I got it right tells me that something else is going on. Well, I'm just saying that we have a friend who has held onto her Michigan accent pretty hard. That's true. But I forgot about her. And you have the same tone of voice and so literally, as you were talking, I heard her and I was like, she's from, she's from Michigan. See, that's the advantage we have on you. Age. We've met more people. That's right. Probably. I think this is a a three pointer though, no? 'cause they also had Michigan. Yeah, I have the whole Great Lakes area. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yes. Three points. Yes. Everyone gets a point. Nice. Last but not least, we have Sierra. Sierra, the hot dog god herself. This is the final round and it is worth two points, so it is anybody's game. Sierra, you have some sentences, if you could, please. Say, say your catchphrase. I'm the hot dog god. I'm the hot dog god, I'm a vegetarian. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're, you're getting her mixed up with somebody. Okay. I love the fresh Prince of Bel Air because I love Will Smith and I love Aunt Viv. Say Will Smith again. Will Smith. Will Smith. Will Smith. You ready for the next sentence? Yeah. Yes. Oh my God, I'm so gonna tell mom that I caught you stealing my milky coffee. So, say Mom again. Mom. So it's not "mom." Say milky coffee again. Milky coffee. Isn't that quite? I might be dialed, hold on. Oh really? Maybe. He might be dialed. I forgot I was playing. I got like two areas on completely opposite ends of the country. So we'll see. One more sentence, Mary and Will got caught stealing oranges from the shoe closet. Oranges. Any other words we want to hear Sierra say? Clammy. Clammy. Can you say the name Aaron? Aaron. Hmm. Learn anything? I'm kind of going off vibes for this one, I can't lie. Yeah, I'm, I'm having. That circle is weird. All right, so this is my answer. Okay. That circle is a lot of states. That's my answer. It's somewhere in there. That that's five states. Can he do that? Is that allowed? No. Welcome to the show. Okay, all right. So I'm gonna do three smaller circles, Kansas, Iowa, and. Yes. New Mexico. New Mexico. Okay, I did, uh, nothing like that and I don't have any confidence. I did upstate New York, Western Massachusetts, and all of Illinois. Okay. I did West Virginia, the, like, this little, uh, western part of Texas and SoCal. It was based on like the cot-caught merger and vibes and not much else. I'm not confident in this one at all. Okay, well. Sierra. You're an enigma. Well, I was born in Utah, but grew up in Wisconsin and then moved here. Oh. The Utah Wisconsin merger. Mm. I should've known. Again, these states that nobody lives in. Rats. Well, um. Kind of on your own, you know? Yeah, yeah, you know. You invent, you invent your own accent. I think that the LA of it all, man, that. Well, the thing is though, that, that means that Link wins. No. Oh, no. He, no, he didn't get to Wisconsin. He didn't get, he didn't get to Wisconsin. No, he, he's close to Wisconsin. He's close to Utah. Closer than you guys. Let the entire country. You can't. No. Look, look, I almost touched Wisconsin. I agree. Okay let him win. Oh, no, no, no, because I'll get tweets about this 'cause people really care. No, he's fine. He's fine. He got close to Arizona with his giant circle. No, no. Everybody wins the prize. Everybody. That's very important, which is a strong accent. And it's flying in now. Oh, yeah. Well, you know what, you can have this. I don't want a strong axe scent. Here, you can have it, you know, you're, you're in college. Yeah, yeah. Sure, thank you. They still using this on campus? Uh, fortunately not. On campus. In the dorms. Huge thanks to Zay. Zay, thanks so much for coming in. Uh, follow him on TikTok @ZayDupree, or on YouTube, @Zay_Dupree. You had the underscore for. Yes. For YouTube. Someone stole the name before I could get to it. Okay. I, I hate that person. And thanks for commenting and sharing this video. Now you say, you know what time it is. You know what time it is. I'm Abby. I'm Dejon. We're in Central Park. It's time to spin the Wheel of Mythicality. That was a fast one. The fast one. It's brisk out there in Central Park. Hey, we're in New York, in Central Park. We gotta get through it really quickly. Uh, hey, buckle up buttercup. We got a unfun fact for you. 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