FORGET the bland uniformity of estuary English. Britain has seen a flowering of dialects over the past 50 years. Research has found that linguistic variation has survived and flourished despite the onslaught of mass media, Americanisation and rapid communications.

Whereas similar work in the 1950s found that there were 84 different regional expressions meaning left-handed, the new study found there are now 240. There are 480 different expressions for cold.

“Before I came to this project I had the idea that dialect words were dying out,” said Mick Ord, director of the BBC’s Voices project. “Nothing could be further from the truth. There are far more accents than there used to be. Although some rural dialects are dying out, not all dialect words disappear.”

Questionnaires were sent to 32,000 people around the country, asking them about the words they use, to produce a word map of Britain. Although the study confirmed that many rural dialects have died out, other variants have survived and new ones have emerged.

This has been caused in part by internal migration. Many more people are leaving their homes in one part of the country to go to another. On top of that there has been an influx from abroad that has led to even more variations in language, words and accents.

Among the words used by respondents to describe cold were “foonert”, found only in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, and “clemmed”, mainly used in Sheffield. “Shrammed” is a common variant in the West Country, while “taters” is widespread in East Anglia.

“In some parts of the north, ‘nithering’ is quite common,” said Clive Upton, reader in English language at Leeds University, who worked on the BBC study. “Paul Hudson, the BBC North weatherman, talks of it being ‘nithering’ on his forecasts.”

Expressions for left-handed include “cuddy-wifter” from Northumbria, “molly-dukered” in central Scotland, “gammy” in Cumbria and “keggy” in the east Midlands.

Such regional differences can also be heard in the many different names for children’s shoes worn for gym at school. “Daps”, a mainly West Country word, was the most common found in the study. “Penny blacks” was widespread around Glasgow, “pumps” in much of the Midlands and the north.

Even in the largely suburban southeast England, local dialects are far from extinct. Daps are known as “tackies” in Southend, Essex, and in Bromley, south London, while “twitten” is commonly used in parts of Sussex for an alley.

“There are more than 350 different languages spoken in London alone,” said David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor.

“That’s because London and much of Britain, particularly the cities, are now very diverse. For example there’s not just Scouse in Liverpool, there’s Caribbean Scouse, Chinese Scouse, Hindi Scouse and so on.”

Liverpool is one of the areas where dialects survive in the greatest variety. Ord said: “In Merseyside, where I’m from, you can go just a couple of miles or in some cases a few streets away and there’s quite a significant change to the accent.” Manchester, home of television’s Royle family, is not far behind.

Despite the survival of local words and accents, linguists have also observed that such dialects are less obviously distinct than used to be the case. They are frequently little more than variations on broader regional accents — estuary English with its glottal stops and dropped ts, as sometimes used by Tony Blair, is one example.

The situation is the same in northern England. Upton said: “The Geordie voice seems to be fading and a more generalised northern accent taking over.” The long “o” in a word like “home”, which has been common in the Geordie accent, is being replaced by “err” — as in “herrm” — which originates in Hull.

Nobody is quite sure why except that maybe enough people have felt the need to leave the Yorkshire city. Last week it was singled out as the worst place to live in Britain.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Postmen: We bind the nation together
• Tewkesbury: when the memories flood back
• Cast Offs actress: I’m happy that my face fits