[Q & A] Grunt speak?

[arial_destiny]

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

[sanshaino]

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]

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]

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'.