Would you be mithered if someone told you were talking bobbins? Or would you not have a clue what they were on about?
New research has revealed parts of traditional Lancashire dialect is dying out with each new generation.
While many Red Rose residents retain strong local accents, some traditional words, phrases and sentence structures are fading from everyday speech in Central Lancashire.
"We are losing it because of our world as it is," says Mike Connah who researched dialect as part of his masters degree in linguistics at Lancaster University.
"English has become a world language. There is more communication and movement among people. There's the Internet, there's television.
"A hundred years ago, people didn't move out of their own area for work as they often do now.
"Dialect is traditionally recognised as spoken by non-mobile rural males.
"When you move to mixing in urban areas, traditional dialect gets lost."
By quizzing almost 100 people living within 20 miles of Preston, Mike, 64, found that Lancastrians are losing elements of both active and passive dialect – that is, words we know and words we actually use in ordinary conversation.
Younger people are no longer familiar words such as "gansies" (cardigans) or "tattie pots" (meals made with leftovers), Mike's study shows.
For more of this feature, see Wednesday's Lancashire Evening Post.
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