Lancashire dialect and accent

The Lancashire dialect and accent (Lanky) refers to the Northern English vernacular speech of the English county of Lancashire. Simon Elmes' book Talking for Britain said that Lancashire dialect is now much less common than it once was, but it is not quite extinct, still spoken by the older population. The British Census has never recorded regional dialects. Until 1974, the county encompassed areas that are now parts of Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cumbria, so the accents found in those areas are also covered by this article. The historic dialects have received some academic interest, most notably the two-part A grammar of the dialect of the Bolton area by Graham Shorrocks, which was said by its publisher to "constitute the fullest grammar of an English dialect published to date".

Lancashire emerged during the Industrial Revolution as a major commercial and industrial region. The county encompassed several hundred mill towns and collieries and by the 1830s, approximately 85% of all cotton manufactured worldwide was processed in Lancashire.Preston, Accrington, Blackburn, Bolton, Wigan, Chorley, Darwen, Oldham, and Burnley were major cotton mill towns during this time. Blackpool was a major centre for tourism for the inhabitants of Lancashire's mill towns, particularly during wakes week.

The county today comprises a much smaller area. It was subject to significant boundary changes in 1974, which removed Liverpool and Manchester with most of their surrounding conurbations to form part of the metropolitan counties of Merseyside and Greater Manchester. At this time, the detached Furness Peninsula and Cartmel (Lancashire over the Sands) were made part of Cumbria, and the Warrington and Widnes areas became part of Cheshire. Today the county borders Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and North and West Yorkshire.

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