User blog comment:Berwaldludwig/How to speak "Berwald"/@comment-74.107.91.116-20100721025524

I just want to be clear on something: You say you want to write the fanfiction to practice English, and personally I understand that to mean you're not actually going to show it to a teacher, right? You're just planning to maybe post it on the internet or something? My advice differs based on whether or not you're turning this in to, say, a teacher or examiner.

If you ARE turning it in somewhere, I suggest just having Sweden speak normally. Whoever is reading/grading probably won't know the characters, so it wouldn't really matter if Sweden spoke the way fans are used to.

However, if it's just for practice and you plan on posting it somewhere for fans to read but not a professor or something, then I say go ahead and try Sweden's speaking style. As long as you know proper English vs Berwald-English, it's not a problem :D

So to get to your REAL question, when I write Sweden's speech I just try to make it as brief and grunt-like as possible. If you look at the examples you wrote in your question, the only letters that were omitted were vowels. I suggest writing what you want him to say the normal way (remember to keep it short, though, because Sweden's speech isn't only about the shortening of words but also the shortening of everything he says) then take out the vowels of some of the longer words.

For example, if you wanted to say that you liked something, i.e. a performance or a meal, you might say, "I liked it" whereas Sweden would probably cut out the subject all together and just say, "'liked it." (Sorry if that's a bad example D:)

I guess my main point is try to get in the character's head and look for the shortest way to express something. The way you show his 'accent' through the dialogue doesn't only rely on the actual things he says, but the speaker tags and descriptions you give for how he says them.

That was long a quite ramble-y, I apologize.

But good luck, and would you maybe post a link when you finish? ;D