BY ECK! IT’S A PODCAST!

Dialects given online boost

ENDANGERED regional dialect words will be saved from extinction by podcasters.

Presenters will use the likes of Lancashire’s “paddocked” – meaning thirsty – more in their episodes.

Podcast platform Steady has challenged them to weave in 25 words and phrases, also including Essex lingo for snails, “hoddy-dods”, and Devon’s “scrammed-up”, meaning very cold.

Managing editor Tina Dingel said: “We wanted to see if we could game the system to provoke a discussion about an older form of popular spoken word.”

She added: “Language changes naturally but there is value to variety and a real pleasure to the phonetics. Our experiment is fuelled by the playfulness of words.”

Jonnie Robinson from the British Library helped pick the listed terms.

He said Sheffield rockers Arctic Monkeys’ hit, Mardy Bum, was proof older dialects could bounce back into fashion.

He added: “Surveys of word usage were done in the 20th Century because people were worried that dialect terms and regional grammar were in decline. In faceto-face conversation we use a different language to our more formal vocabulary.”