From the Guardian: Yorshire dialect in decline? It’s not as simple as that.

Yorkshire is an idea, not a place — a notion that is too metaphysical for social scientists employed by the Heritage Lottery Fund to understand. So when — after months of research — they announce that, due to the internet and texting, Yorkshire dialect is dying out, the only appropriate response is: "Tha’ what?" That means: "I recognise the message that you wish to convey, but it is so improbable that I find it hard to accept." There has certainly not been a single Yorkshire dialect for a hundred years. Perhaps there never was one.

Take the word "blashy", cited by the research. It is just possible that, up in the Dales, they used it to mean bad weather as recently as a dozen years ago. But I doubt it. I am certain that the word is, and always has been, unknown in Hull, Sheffield, Bradford and most of the agricultural broad acres. The county is united by common values — the most noticeable of which is a feeling of superiority — not a common language. [continue]