# Dickens: What accent? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 8, 2019, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dickens-what-accent/827421 "2019-01-08T19:17:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dickens-what-accent/827421/1 "2019-01-08T19:17:36Z")
I’ve been working my way through a compilation of all of Charles Dickens’ novels (I \*thought \*I was familiar with Dickens, but then I realized it was just a case of being bombarded with _A Christmas Carol_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_ throughout my lifetime, and that gave me a false sense of “knowing” Dickens). Anyway, I’m currently reading through _Martin Chuzzlewit_, and this novel has a character that has a rather over-the-top caricature of a particular accent I’ve seen pop up in other characters in other Dickens novels: Mrs. Gamp. Her manner of speaking (shared with a number of other characters in other novels) features near-constant using a “w” sound in place of “v” sounds. This isn’t always consistent, but I can’t say if that’s an inconsistency of the character or simple author oversight. Mrs. Gamp goes even further in mispronouncing whole barrels full of words. Does Mrs. Gamp’s manner of speech represent a particular English accent? I notice that all or most of the characters who speak similarly are from somewhere in London, but I don’t know enough of London geography to pick up on precisely what part of London these characters come from. The characters other than Mrs. Gamp seem more or less uneducated, but Mrs. Gamp is a nurse (though how much education that entailed in 18th- 19th-century London is unknown to me). ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dickens-what-accent/827421/2 "2019-01-08T19:27:14Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > I’ve been working my way through a compilation of all of Charles Dickens’ novels (I \*thought \*I was familiar with Dickens, but then I realized it was just a case of being bombarded with _A Christmas Carol_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_ throughout my lifetime, and that gave me a false sense of “knowing” Dickens). > > Anyway, I’m currently reading through _Martin Chuzzlewit_, and this novel has a character that has a rather over-the-top caricature of a particular accent I’ve seen pop up in other characters in other Dickens novels: Mrs. Gamp. Her manner of speaking (shared with a number of other characters in other novels) features near-constant using a “w” sound in place of “v” sounds. This isn’t always consistent, but I can’t say if that’s an inconsistency of the character or simple author oversight. Mrs. Gamp goes even further in mispronouncing whole barrels full of words. > > Does Mrs. Gamp’s manner of speech represent a particular English accent? I notice that all or most of the characters who speak similarly are from somewhere in London, but I don’t know enough of London geography to pick up on precisely what part of London these characters come from. The characters other than Mrs. Gamp seem more or less uneducated, but Mrs. Gamp is a nurse (though how much education that entailed in 18th- 19th-century London is unknown to me). My very brief research would indicate…very drunk cockney? ---
**Author:** ![Treppenwitz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treppenwitz/32/3445_2.png) [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dickens-what-accent/827421/3 "2019-01-08T19:32:38Z")
Not an expert on Dickens; someone who knows him better will point out that Samuel Weller is referred to as Samivel Veller throughout the Pickwick Papers. But on the matter of accents, Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, which you can find as an ebook on line (and which predates Dickens writing career by a couple of decades), has some of the speech of the poor spelled out phonetically. If you google eg \ there seems to be a body of feeling that Mayhew is a source work, FWIW. > **[Henry Mayhew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mayhew)** > > Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine Punch in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in its early days. He is also known for his work as a social researcher, publishing an extensive series of newspaper articles in the Morning Chronicle that was later compiled into the book series London Labour and the London Poor (1851), a groundbreaking and infl... j ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dickens-what-accent/827421/4 "2019-01-08T19:33:47Z")
Page 333 of John C. Wells’ _Accents of English_ says: “As long ago as 1836 Smart, the author of a work entitled _Walker Remodelled_, calls the interchange of _w_ and _v_ ‘the habit of a more distant generation of Cockneys’. On the other hand Wylf (1936:292) remembers the substitution of [w] for [v] as a jocular pronunciation among middle-class adults in 1870-80, the inference being that this was, or had until recently been, a characteristic of lower-class London speech of the day. . . . At the present time it is utterly obsolete.” [Source](https://books.google.com/books?id=a3-ElL71fikC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false) ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dickens-what-accent/827421/5 "2019-08-07T23:01:23Z")
Thanks. Yes, the references were to dialog. So, people did pronounce the words that way. But not everyone. It was clearly a lower class way of speaking and Dickens had some of his characters speak that way in order to make explicit the nature of his subjects. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2019, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dickens-what-accent/827421/6 "2019-08-08T01:50:38Z")
I love Sairey Gamp — AND Seth Pecksniff — from _Martin Chuzzlewit,_ and have no idea how either of them talk. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2019, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dickens-what-accent/827421/7 "2019-08-08T03:19:42Z")
Since the current discussion is [in GQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=880031), I’ll just close this one.