Talk Dialect White Paper

Posted On 01/11/2025
By Nikki Wordsmith
hello@nikkiwordsmith.com 
WhatsApp: 07905 456704

Talk Dialect White Paper
9am 1st November 2025
Nikki Wordsmith

The Vision

To record, preserve, and revitalise England’s dialect languages that are used in every front room, classroom and pub of this country’s 39 historic counties.

Executive Summary

Talk Dialect is a national initiative to collect, preserve, and revitalise the 39 historic county dialects of England for the benefit of the public and future generations to come.

For the first time, England will have m a central resource in one time and place created by us.

The method for collecting all these words, phrases, slang and nicknames etc will be multi-channel and multi-sensory, in real life and online.

Talk Dialect got its blueprint from the Nikki Wordsmith Alphabetical Compilation blogs, existing dialect glossaries, community encounters, kind conversations with generous individuals and collective goodwill.

Talk Dialect is an open, collaborative, real life and Internet community — anchored at talkdialect.co.uk

Everyday people will power this project at local, regional and national level, with the support and help of the Nikki Wordsmith Team.

All together we will collect, contribute and collate an initial figure of 1,000 words, phrases, pronunciations and family sayings used in real life in real time per historic county.

And that’s just for starters. Today the historic counties. Tomorrow the world.

We look forward to talking with you and building this unique living language resource for everybody for all generations to come.

The Backstory

Back in 2022, I began working as a carer for a couple who came from Cumberland — definitely not Cumbria!

As I had done my GCSEs at Trinity School in Carlisle we had a lot of good chats about the local Cumberland dialect words and phrases.

Such as, often when I would come into the house the wife would laugh and say, ‘It can‘t be much fun for you to come here and listen to two auld fogies twining on.’

And from out of many more comments like this, first Alphabetical Compilation blog emerged…

Another Backstory

We live life forwards but we understand it backwards.

At 0608 in Gisbourne the Millennium Dawn was clouded out by the weather.

Me and around 25 friends had travelled 13,000 miles from the UK with some of our Kiwi friends to see.

The Kiwis Mike and Michelle, a vibrant couple, had family in Gisbourne.

And Mike’s family had a beach batch right on the coast.

Nestling next to the sea was a small hump of a hill. Sort of like an old wonky top hat.

This is where me and my friend Dreadjead Jez lay at 0608. Me in some “borrowed” aqua blue thick cord trousers from one of my oldest friends Bigger.

Ahead of me on the crest of the stood a young group of natives — Maoris.

The young man at the front of the group, literally spitting distance from me, was hammering his chest and spearing out words.

It was of course the Haka.

Even now, 25 years later I am get the rush of warm feelings thinking back about that magical moment in time.

Me and my friends The Badgers were poised for the 21st century, about to step into the third millennium, and here we were witnessing a wild dance and powerful song that is least 4 thousand years old. (As far as we know…)

It is Talk Dialect’s belief that the way we speak is equally as important as what we say.

Haka

The Evidence For Our Dialects Disappearing

In 2005, the BBC discovered with their Voices Project, England’s dialects are vanishing.

England’s rich tapestry of regional dialects — such as Geordie in the Northeast, Brummie in the Midlands, Scouse in Liverpool, or West Country burrs — has been eroding for years.

Everyday speech — rich with local history, humour, and identity — is being lost to standardisation and the younger generations adopting a more neutral accent.

There has been a long rich line of excelling historical studies already that have paved the way to our current level of understanding such as:

  • English Dialect Society (1873–1896) whose work fed into Wright’s below.
  • Joseph Wright – The English Dialect Dictionary (1898–1905)
  • Survey of English Dialects (SED, Orton 1950-1961).
  • John C. Wells Accents of the English (1982).
  • Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937-1984).
  • BBC Voices Project 2005
  • Towards An Updated Dialect Atlas of British English by Mackenzie, Bailey and Turton (2022).
  • Our Dialects by Mackenzie, Bailey and Turton (2025).

The beating heart of Talk Dialect is to be a clarion call to all to save and resuscitate our closest communications – our own personal way of talking to each other.

Key ways include:

  • Dialects.
  • Phrases.
  • Sayings.
  • Slang.
  • Nicknames.

We must act now and act quickly because lots of evidence suggests many traditional dialects are fading, particularly among younger generations.

This isn’t total extinction — yet — but a shift toward a more standardized “Estuary English” or Received Pronunciation (RP)-influenced speech, driven by urbanization, media, education, and migration.

British National Corpus (BNC) and its 2010s extension, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (adapted for UK data), quantify dialect markers.

A 2020 study in Journal of Sociolinguistics analyzed BNC data: traditional dialect grammar e.g. “I were” instead of “I was” in Yorkshire dropped from 15% prevalence in 1960s recordings to under 3% in 2010s youth speech.

Urbanization: The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports 83% of England’s population urban in 2021 (up from 70% in 1961), means more mixing of dialects.

A 2017 UCL study on London speech found “Multicultural London English” blending Scouse, Brummie, and immigrant influences, diluting pure forms — e.g. glottal stops (t-dropping) now universal among 18–24-year-olds, per ONS accent surveys.

Population mobility: Post-Brexit migration and remote work have spread “neutral” speech. The 2023 English Dialects App (University of Essex) crowdsourced data from 10,000 users, showing 55% of responses from under-35s lacking region-specific vocabulary, compared to 20% from over-55s.

What’s Causing The Dialect Decrease?

On the one hand, some drivers of this dialect decrease is connected to negative social mobility.

Papers from organizations like The Sutton Trust discuss how accents and dialects can lead to prejudice and hinder opportunities, advocating for greater acceptance of accent diversity.

Also other white papers in this area suggest automatic speech recognition technology is more limited with dialects. These systems often operate on a “default” accent assumption, making other dialects less visible or less accurate.

On the other hand however, there are also education and cognitive benefits to communicating in dialect.

Research, such as that highlighted by The Conversation, suggests that being bi-dialectal (speaking two dialects) can have cognitive advantages similar to bilingualism.

In conclusion: The mechanisms driving the downward trajectory of dialect use are clearly complex.

The Talk Dialect Project Risks

One thing is blindingly obvious with a project of this nature —time is against us.

The evidence demonstrates this.

And if you listen around in your own local community, the older people who speak in dialect are the last of a kind who talk like this each other and in everyday use.

Talk Dialect respectfully acknowledges this last and ultimate limitation of the project.

We urge everyone to talk to their grandparents and ask them for their favourite dialect words, family sayings and local phrases today.

Other risk considerations include:

  • Dialect Erosion — ongoing loss due to urbanization, standardization, and generational change
  • Scope complexity — covering all 39 historic counties with 1,000+ terms each
  • Resource intensity — requiring AI, interns, public input, and a mobile recording bus.
  • Technical challenges — specifically visual and audio file size issues that are still to be worked out.

For now though, please send dialect words, family sayings and any phrases or slang from yourself, children and family and friends and communities before they are lost forever to: hello@nikkiwordsmith.com

What The Talk Dialect Project Does

While evidence points to decline, dialects aren’t vanishing entirely — they’re hybridising and live in places where time has, if not quite stood still, maybe just fallen asleep for a while.

Places like Devon farms, rural Cumbrian villages and other wonderful old couples who chat with their carers and share exquisite old terms and phrases that resonate through the years.

On top of these time capsule people and pocket places of well-preserved dialect, there are also revitalisation efforts, like my neighbouring Euxton Dialect Society.

Tony, from Euxton Dialect Society kindly donated their glossary to me for the Alphabetical Compilation of Lancashire Dialect, Words and Slang. Many of these dialect organisations exist across the country.

Also close to home was Manchester Voices a 2021 research project led by Professor Rob Drummond of MMU. This project explored accents, dialects and identities that make up Greater Manchester.

Going further back, there are also the BBC’s dialect archives which preserve recordings.

Global interest via YouTube also sustains some awareness.

If urban dominance suggests further erosion we must at least try to counter this.

Good policy, funding streams and proactive people like us pulling together on the Talk Dialect project should help.

With creativity, determination and luck we will reach the dialect parts of England that have never been reached before.

What Talk Dialect Will Do

  • Preserve every type of regional voice from Carlisle to St Ives to Thanet to Clacton-on-Sea to Marshall Meadows.
  • Keep dialects alive through public participation and digital permanence
  • Build a global model for linguistic heritage, starting in England

How It Works

  1. Central Platform
    A single landing page at talkdialect.co.uk links to 39 dedicated wiki pages—one per historic county.
  2. Community Wiki
    Users upload:
    • Dialect words, slang, catchphrases.
    • Audio pronunciations (still to be worked out due to file size).
    • Attributed entries (e.g., “Mi gran said ‘gradely’ – Keith, Hesketh Bank”).
  3. Onchain & Online
    Entries are stored digitally and on blockchain for immutability and transparency.
  4. 2026: Mass Upload
    With AI, interns, and public input, we seed each county with thousands of terms.
  5. 2027: Talk Dialect Bus
    A mobile recording studio tours all 39 counties, collecting stories from speakers in pubs, markets, and homes.

The Counties of England Map

A detailed map of England showing its counties and regions, highlighted in various pastel colours.
Map from the wonderful Wikipedia

Dialect Examples

Real Life Lancashire Entries:

Gradely (proper/great) – “Mi fathers gett’n a gradely tractor.” – Keith Sutton, Hesketh Bank 

Blackpool Illuminations (too many lights/traffic) – “It’s like Blackpool Illuminations in ‘ere!” – Ann Smith, Adlington 

Put wood inth’ole (shut the door) – “Put wood inth’ole, it’s cowd!” – John Thorpe, Adlington

Sample Yorkshire Dialect Entries:

Nowt (nothing) – “There’s nowt so queer as folk.” 

Laikin’ (playing) – “Them bairns are laikin’ in t’beck.” 

Tarra (goodbye) – “Tarra, love—mind how tha goes.” 

Sample Cornish Dialect Entries:

  • Dreckly (soon, eventually) – “I’ll do it dreckly, my ‘ansum.” 
  • Emmet (tourist) – “The emmets are swarmin’ the harbour again.” 
  • Proper job (well done) – “That’s a proper job, me lover—pasty’s perfect.”

Future Goals

  • Link each wiki to Wikipedia for global access. (Pitch to be confirmed.)
  • Expand to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the 200+ other countries around the world.
  • Thus, create the world’s first open, living atlas of dialect language heritage.

Why It Matters

Dialects are not relics—they are identity, memory, and connection.

Talk Dialect ensures the languages of our ancestors don’t just survive in books, but live in voices, online and onchain.

And most importantly as a reference for people to talk dialect in real life for next generations forever.

Join us. Add your family’s words and sayings.

Let’s give our country the option to keep talking to each other in the way we always have.

For if we carefully and creatively preserve our past, we will have a stronger more grounded future.

talkdialect.co.uk | Launching 2026

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