Mummerset refers to a fictional rustic English county

Counties of the United Kingdom

The counties of the United Kingdom are subnational divisions of the United Kingdom, used for the purposes of administrative, geographical and political demarcation. By the Middle Ages counties had become established as a unit of local government, at least in England. By the early 17th century all...

, and more commonly, the English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

 supposedly spoken there. Mummerset is used by actors

Acting

Acting is the work of an actor or actress, which is a person in theatre, television, film, or any other storytelling medium who tells the story by portraying a character and, usually, speaking or singing the written text or play....

 to represent a stereotypical English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 West Country

West Country

The West Country is an informal term for the area of south western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. It is often defined to encompass the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset and the City of Bristol, while the counties of...

 accent while not being specific to any actual county.

The name is a play on words: it is a portmanteau of "mummer

Mummers Play

Mummers Plays are seasonal folk plays performed by troupes of actors known as mummers or guisers , originally from England , but later in other parts of the world...

", a archaic term for a folk actor, and the name of the largely rural county of Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

.

Mummerset draws on a mixture of characteristics of real dialects from the West Country, such as rhoticism

Rhotic and non-rhotic accents

English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...

, forward-shifted diphthongs, lengthened vowels, and voicing

Voice (phonetics)

Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...

 of consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

s that are voiceless in other Englishes. "S" is replaced with "Z"; "F"

Voiceless labiodental fricative

The voiceless labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .-Features:Features of the voiceless labiodental fricative:...

 is replaced with "V"

Voiced labiodental fricative

The voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is v....

 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".

In literature

In King Lear

King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

, Edgar speaks in Mummerset when he fights Oswald:

Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor volk pass. An ’chud ha’ bin

zwagger’d out of my life, ’t would not ha’bin zo long as ’tis by a vortnight. Nay, come not

near th’ old man; keep out, ’che vor ye, or Ise try whether your costard or my

ballow be the harder. ’Chill be plain with you.

In popular culture

It is commonly associated with Rambling Syd Rumpo

Rambling Syd Rumpo

Rambling Syd Rumpo was a folk singer character played by English comedian Kenneth Williams in the radio comedy series Round the Horne.The Rambling Syd sketches generally began with a short discourse on the nature of the song which would inexorably follow; these discourses in their own right would...

 a comedy folk singer on the 1950s BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 radio programme Round the Horne

Round the Horne

Round the Horne was a BBC Radio comedy programme, transmitted in four series of weekly episodes from 1965 until 1968. The series was created by Barry Took and Marty Feldman - with others contributing to later series after Feldman returned to performing — and starred Kenneth Horne, with Kenneth...

.