{"id":393875,"date":"2026-04-15T18:53:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/393875\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T18:53:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T18:53:09","slug":"from-divvy-to-dinlo-index-of-insults-aims-to-record-britains-diverse-dialects-british-identity-and-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/393875\/","title":{"rendered":"From divvy to dinlo: index of insults aims to record Britain\u2019s diverse dialects | British identity and society"},"content":{"rendered":"

An idiot wandering the British Isles is sure to be greeted with a colourful volley of insults, each a signifier of the place in which he finds himself: \u201cdivvy\u201d in Merseyside, \u201cpillock\u201d in Leeds or \u201cdinlo\u201d in Portsmouth.<\/p>\n

But with parochial phrases increasingly being lost to the homogenisation of the English language, experts are worried that soon, the wandering idiot may just be called an \u201cidiot\u201d wherever he goes.<\/p>\n

For this reason, researchers at the University of Sheffield are hoping to preserve regional insults and curses that are localised to towns and cities across the UK. To do so, they\u2019re running the first national census of swearwords.<\/p>\n

The project came about after Dr Chris Montgomery was approached by the art project Modern Toss, which wanted to enlist a university to help create a map of British swearwords.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got quite a lot of large corpus-based data that allows you to track general swearwords over time from the 1990s to the 2010s,\u201d said Montgomery, a senior lecturer in dialectology and the project lead. \u201cBut actually, we don\u2019t know very much about regional swearing at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t ever had a survey of regional swearing before, we sort of don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on,\u201d he added. \u201cWhat we know is swearing is really quite productive, it\u2019s useful, it has got a good social function. It serves to indicate when we might be frustrated, but also show social solidarity.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we don\u2019t know what is being lost, we don\u2019t know what is disappearing.\u201d<\/p>\n

People in towns and cities in Britain are invited to submit their regional swearwords so researchers can preserve a \u201cvivid, honest record\u201d of contemporary speech at a time when regional words and phrases are at risk of vanishing.<\/p>\n

The academics are particularly keen to find words specific to particular towns, cities or areas of the UK, which are recognised locally but largely unknown elsewhere, and which often reflect the history and identity of the communities that use them.<\/p>\n

Swearwords submitted so far include \u201carl arse\u201d, an insult common in Liverpool, \u201cbampot\u201d, heard often in Glasgow; and \u201cradgie bastard\u201d, from a contributor in north-east England<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The data will inspire exhibitions across the country, showcasing the reality of how people speak, perhaps even with an interactive map of swearing, where visitors will be able to press a button and hear a swearword from a particular area spoken in the local accent.<\/p>\n

Research led by the University of Sheffield found that AI often struggled to understand regional accents and non-standard English. Researchers said there was a need to capture data on regional variations in language to aid the development of technology and ensure regional language was not excluded.<\/p>\n

They stressed the project was not about promoting offensive language but, rather, providing an insight into the English language as it was spoken in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome traditional regional dialects might be disappearing, and this project is about celebrating the regional language that people actually use and preserving a record of it, so future generations can get a real insight into people\u2019s lives in 2026 and how people communicated in towns and cities across the country,\u201d Montgomery said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLanguage is changing all the time, and having an insight into taboo language and treating it as a serious research subject, as well as something that obviously brings some humour and some interest more widely, is really important,\u201d he added. \u201cIt helps us to understand how language changes, how language evolves and how it\u2019s used for its social function.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fellow linguistics academics welcomed the project. Dr Robbie Love, a lecturer in English language at Aston University in Birmingham, said: \u201cTo be honest, there\u2019s a lot that we don\u2019t really know about the more localised and regionalised swearing practices, which is why I think this survey or census or map, whatever you want to call it, is really, really welcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will undoubtedly be a lot of really unique and interesting words that people use across the country that probably don\u2019t get very much attention,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an awful lot of variation across society in the way that we use language that directly reflects and reinforces our identity, and of course, regional identity is a really important part of that,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is an inherent value in recording and preserving these sorts of practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Love said it was important to destigmatise the non-abusive functions of swearing, adding: \u201cThis is not about encouraging rudeness or bad behaviour, but rather celebrating diversity and just acknowledging that swearing is, for a lot of people, a day-to-day part of life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An idiot wandering the British Isles is sure to be greeted with a colourful volley of insults, each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-393875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}