Dialect researchers given a 'canny load of chink' to sort 'pikeys' from 'chavs' in regional accents
By Andy McSmithFriday, 1 June 2007


If, in this age of instant nationwide communication, you think that regional dialects have died off in the UK, you must be a bit of a noggerhead (as they say in Somerset), or perhaps or a nizgul (from the Black Country), or you're a bit cakey (Staffordshire), or batchy (Essex), mazed (Devon and Somerset), niddy-noddy (Isle of Man), or just gormless (Yorkshire).
Researchers at Leeds University are sifting through a vast collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by a project run by the BBC, in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout the country.
So much information came back that the Arts and Humanities Research Council has awarded a team led by Sally Johnson, Professor of Linguistics and Phonetics at Leeds University, £460,000 to study it. Among thousands of items turned up by the BBC Voices project is the range of words the young use to insult one another.


How, for instance, do they describe someone who goes around dressed in a lot of cheap, trendy clothes and jewellery, someone like the singer Lily Allen, for example? The best-known insult thrown at such a person is "chav", which can be heard all across the south of England and has spread north.


But in the South-east, such a person may also be called a "pikey", a corruption of 'turnpike sailor', a derogatory name that used to be directed at gypsies.


Other regional insults, all given the same meaning, include "charva", a Romany word heard in Newcastle, "scally" on Merseyside, "ned" in southern Scotland, and "kev" - short for Kevin - around Birmingham.


One of Lily Allen's offences against sartorial standards was to be photographed in a dress and trainers - trainers as the universal word for footwear known as "pumps" in Yorkshire, "gutties" in Scotland, and "daps" if you're on the south coast. "These labels are perhaps more eloquent of the people who are using them, and their attitudes, than of the people they try to stick these labels on," Clive Upton, a member of the research team, said.
"There is a study to be done as to whether when somebody calls someone else a 'pikey' or a 'scally', the word means the same to the hearer as to the person using it. Some people might think of it as a style statement, others might hear something threatening.

"But while we are in academia studying these questions, the people who really know what is going on and the people who are really driving the language forward are the people who speak it."
Mr Upton, who is Professor of English at Leeds University, said that they were "very pleased" - and indeed, "well chuffed" - at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country, or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink"


The word on the street: dialects from around Britain


Northern Ireland
Foundered: cold, chilled
Hirple: hobble or walk with a limp or unevenly
Peasewisp: untidy heap
Scrake of dawn: very early
Yam: crying sound of a cat

Glasgow
Go-carry: piggy-back
Midgie men: bin men
Oaxter: armpit
Planked: hidden

Tyneside
Canny: something or someone good
Copper wife: policewoman
Hadaway/Howay: be gone
Snotter cloot: handkerchief
Wor: our

Liverpool
Backie: riding on the back of someone's bike
Delf: cups, saucers, plates
Exey cosher: newspaper street seller
Latchlifter: having enough money to go to the pub
Spondoolicks: money

Yorkshire
Ay oop/Ey oop: hello
Baht: without
Clarty: muddy
Happen, or 'appen: perhaps
Owt: anything
Black Country
Mardy: moody
Nizgul: stupid person
Ronk: horrible
Toy: a gentleman's neck tie

London
Russell Harty: party
North and South: mouth
Pete Tong: wrong
Leo Sayer: all dayer
Tom Cruise: booze
Boracic lint: skint
Lord Mayor: swear

Southern Counties
Allus: always
Bodger: careless worker
Swimey: sick, or faint
Twitten: narrow path or lane

Edinburgh
Gie's a schifter: let me have a go/look
Mawkit: dirty
Pure: solid, really difficult
Top gadgie: great guy
Somerset
Acker: friend
Lart: wooden flooring
Noggerhead: idiot
Pixie-led: simple minded or crazed
Scollared: taught

Mid-Wales
Chimook: chimney
Glat: hole in the hedge
Her's in a cank!: she is in a bad mood
Unty tump: mole hill

Wiltshire
Fuckling: tiresome
Galley-bagger: scarecrow
Loppity: to feel weak or out of sorts
Mucker a miser: Teg sheep

Norfolk
Bishy-barney-bee: ladybird
Dodman snail: Mawkin scarecrow