[Q & A] Grunt speak?

[arial-destiny.livejournal.com]

In the scanlations I hear people say Sweden's accent is translated into 'grunt speak.' What exactly is grunt speak? The translations seem like gangster speech mixed with a Texas accent...

So, does grunt speak = gangster speech? o_o

Comments

[tufails.livejournal.com]

I think they mean it like the sound of grunting. Real brash, forward... Berwald kind of seems like he would answer by grunting or making some weird guttural sound for a confirmation.

"You want breakfast?"
"Rmmm."

Think... Your gandpa, or any seemingly grumpy old dude.

[dark-nitexx.livejournal.com]

LMAO
this totally made my day :D

[purplewolfstar.livejournal.com]

He leaves out a lot of vowels, so generally people type an apostrophe where the vowels would be. He also replies with kinda like, "mm", "nn," those kind of affirmative/negative noises. ... if you know what I mean? o_o;;

[lovelylurker.livejournal.com]

Su-San is so gangsta.

[epicfail1211.livejournal.com]

When I googled it this came up.



Yeah.

[cappuholic.livejournal.com]

t-that scared me ;A;
(then again... su-san is kinda scary, too XD)

[arial-destiny.livejournal.com]

Oh god, my grandpa is the ultimate grunter xD

Now I have an image of grandpa!Sweden in my head LOL

[arial-destiny.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking xD

[tufails.livejournal.com]

... Now I Have an image of Grampa!Berwald. PFFFFFFFT.

[nisha-phi.livejournal.com]

I always thought he sounded sort of like like Hagrid from Harry Potter.

[arial-destiny.livejournal.com]

I love the faces he makes xD

[arial-destiny.livejournal.com]

That makes more sense than the 50 Cent image I had in my head. xD

[lovelylurker.livejournal.com]

I was being sarcastic. ;D

Cannot unsee

[underagedboys.livejournal.com]

Well I thought it was more like loud mumbling but..

I wouldn't be surprised if he was secretly pimping out the Baltics at one point or Ikea being a black market for furniture...

[arial-destiny.livejournal.com]

I was too xD

[chibitalia-chan.livejournal.com]

NEW HEADCANON.

[zeenzazada.livejournal.com]

oh geez... I don't think Russia is the scariest man in Hetalia anymore if this is what Su-san sounds like....

Re: Cannot unsee

[bigfangirl.livejournal.com]

Pimping out the baltics is a very, very funny image XD (as if they're not molested enough by russia lol)
I can totally see him messing with Estonia though <3

Re: HAHA MY ACCENT IS GRUNTY

[meomnimi.livejournal.com]

that sounds like a cool accent though!

I like a lot of English accents XD;

Re: HAHA MY ACCENT IS GRUNTY

[shantari.livejournal.com]

That to me seems a lot more like what Sweden should talk. (Shortening your Swedish tends to drop more consonants than vowels.)

[shantari.livejournal.com]

This Swede can confess to sometimes carrying her end of a conversation with "Mmm", "Hmm" and "'m". But mostly when I'm being shy or don't really know how to converse with that person/in that situation.

[kanelros.livejournal.com]

I always thought the grunty part came from the fact that Swedes have a tendency to be a bit 'lazy' when pronouncing words, and that being one reason to why people find it hard to learn swedish; it's hard to interpret what we're saying.
Like shantari above, this Swede is also guilty of "Hmm-ing" and "Mmm-ing" at times.

Here's a fandub of what Sweden's dialect sounds like to japanese. Tohoku-accent I think it was called?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JE1iQfNj6A
(Would someone be so kind to tell me how you post the video in the comments like epicfail1211 did?)

It's basically silent and a bit mumbly, and skipping one or two letters of a word, NOT cutting out all the vowels alltogether.

[sanshaino.livejournal.com]

I've always found Su-san's accent pretty odd. As shantari mentions just a few comments above, Swedish tends to exclude consonants rather than vowles when shortening words. Not to forget that the three national characters Swedish has besides the "normal" alphabet are all vowels (more means better, right?).

My Finnish mom always compares the Stockholm accent to porridge of all things. A porridge "without a clear beginning or end".
For your educational entertainment: an example.
"Vad är det med det då?" 6 words, 6 vowels. 10 consonants.
Now, how I would say it:
"Va'ere'me de'rå?"...(and all the r's are almost silent)...(vowels galore!).

So...Kitayume was wrong in a way...but hit the bull's-eye in another. I think of Su-san of being shy or introvert rather than...*shudders*...gangsta.

Sorry for being wordy and off-topic...I like talking about language, and before APH I never really had any opportunity to... orz

[arial-destiny.livejournal.com]

Actually it kind of reminds me of when I lived in Quebec for a while. I was in a small town and I couldn't understand any of their French at first because they randomly took out so many sounds and stuck in 'rrrs' and was a lot 'rougher' when France's French. I'm always interested in linguistics so I love your explanation. ^_^

I think the translation is what screwed me up, since usually, taking out letters in words usually translates into slang, not to mention that a lot of Sweden's speech was translated into "ya" which is...gangster slang for 'yeah' and "'n" which is also used in gangster slang (like R 'n B)

[kanelros.livejournal.com]

With your comment I realised that it's probably the binding words that are most often truncated. Sure it depends a lot on accent but no matter where in Sweden you hear someone talk it mostly is the binding words (med(with, är(is/are), det(that) etc.) that is shortened down, and the occational words whichs' spelling takes a lot of turns for the toungue to pronounce ex; 'någonsin' turns into 'nånsing'.