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Mummerset refers to a fictional rustic English county, and more commonly, the English dialect supposedly spoken there.[1] Mummerset is used by actors to represent a stereotypical English West Country accent while not being specific to any actual county.[2]

The name is a play on words: it is a portmanteau of "mummer", an archaic term for a folk actor, and the name of the largely rural county of Somerset.[2]

Mummerset draws on a mixture of characteristics of real dialects from the West Country, such as rhoticism, forward-shifted diphthongs, lengthened vowels, and voicing of consonants that are voiceless in other English dialects. "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 since Vroiday".[1]

In literature[edit]




See also[edit]


  4. ^ Ulrike Altendorf and Dominic Watt (2004). Kortmann and Schneider et al, ed. A Handbook of Varieties of English. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110175325. Retrieved 13 November 2012. 
  5. ^ "William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Tragedy of King Lear. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.". Retrieved 6 November 2011.