Discussion Groups / British English / January 2005

I've just heard about a forthcoming series on BBC Radio 4 called
Word4Word, which "sets out to capture the way the local ways we speak
are changing" -- how's that for a clumsy start?

Here's some further description about it:
There's evidence that in our now intricately connected world, where
mobiles and internet and textspeak allow all sorts of hookups that
weren't even dreamed of fifteen years ago, we're changing the
word-choices we make.

Word 4 Word is part of a major pan-BBC project called 'Voices' that is
developing an online dialect map of Britain, in conjunction with Leeds
University's Survey of Regional English. BBC Local Radio are taking part
later in the year, and dozens of fieldworkers are even now gathering
recordings of local language in use, from Brixton to Belfast, from
Aberdeen to Aberystwyth. These recordings - of people using dialect,
slang, trade terms with their mates - will provide for Word 4 Word the
audio soundscapes of the way we're changing the speech we use from day
to day.

If you don't think change is happening, go out and cop an earful of
Northumbrian teenagers, say. They've probably lost the old 'Pitmatic'
talk of the coalfields but have adopted a slangy voguish speech that's
everything to do with being cool in the city; they'll perhaps be
exhibiting some aspects of Hindi or Bengali too if they've got
connections with the sub-continent - yet all expressed in the broadest
Geordie.
<ends>

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/word4word_20050119.shtml

Matti