Global InformationMummerset information
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Mummerset is a fictional English dialect supposedly spoken in a rustic English county of the same name.[1] Mummerset is used by actors to represent a stereotypical English West Country accent while not specifically referencing any particular county.[2]
The name is a portmanteau of mummer (an archaic term for a folk actor) and Somerset, a largely rural county.[2]
Mummerset draws on a mixture of characteristics of real dialects from the West Country, such as rhoticism, forward-shifted diphthongs, lengthened vowels, and the voicing of word-initial consonants that are voiceless in other English dialects. Word-initial "S" is replaced with "Z"; "F" is replaced with "V".[1] It also uses perceived dialect grammar, replacing instances of "am", "are" and "is" with "be". The sentence "I haven't seen him, that farmer, since Friday" could be parsed in Mummerset as "Oi ain't zeen 'im that be varmer zince Vroiday".[1]
Some speakers of East Anglian English have objected to media portrayals of characters from that area speaking in "a strange kind of stage Mummerset", as in the TV adaptation of P.D. James' Adam Dalgliesh novel Devices and Desires.[3]
- ^ a b c Thomas Burns McArthur, ed. (2005). Concise Oxford companion to the English language. Roshan McArthur. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280637-6. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
- ^ a b "definition of Mummerset". oxforddictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on February 26, 2012. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
- ^ See for example "Television Diary: A broad question of a proper accent", The Stage and Television Today, 28 February 1991