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Imagine our reporter's surprise when she found that even for Ian McMillan - a true Yorkshireman - finding out more about the way language is used in these parts can be a real voyage of discovery. Ian says that researching his Yorkshire dictionary, Chelp And Chunter: How To Talk Tyke, has been a linguistic eye-opener: "There are some strange words in that dictionary that I didn't know myself. Attercop – meaning a spider – is a word I've never come across before!"

'An unusual man from Barnsley'?

It turns out 'attercop' is from North Yorkshire, Ian explains: "I mentioned it to a lot of people who do gigs up there and they'd not heard of it, but then someone from Keighley wrote in and said, 'We've heard of that one," so it does exist. Now  the 'attercop' definitely has a place in the English language. Ian's written a poem about it!

Ian says: "The nice thing about asking to do a dictionary is that you realise how powerful you are, you can put anything you want in. Between you, me and the website there's a couple of made-up words in there. I did some things for Mark Radcliffe on his radio show and people kept sending made-up words in. One of the made-up words in the book is 'griddle' which is the act of weeing down the grate when you've had one pint too many. You realise you've got huge powers and now the word 'griddle' appears in the language which is fantastic!

"There's a huge power in words. The idea still pervades that regional accents aren't as important, aren't as intellectual, aren't as emotionally charged as what people call the King's English. We forget that Wordsworth would have had a broad Cumbrian accent, Shakespeare would have had a West Midlands accent and Keats would have talked like somebody off EastEnders. We should always remember these things because they are the beating and throbbing heart of language."

Of course, you need to make a sacrifice or two to put a dictionary like this together: "You sit in a pub and go, 'It's changed round here, hasn't it?' and people start telling you the most amazing tales. Sometimes I will be bold and ask, 'What do you call a breadcake, or what do you call a teacake or tell me some rhymes from your childhood' and they come out with some amazing words."

Ian has been very pleased to discover that Tyke is not only still alive and kicking but it's actually changing with the times. School children have their own language and the influx of people from Eastern Europe and Africa may also have a part to play in the evolution of Yorkshire dialect. Whether some words will remain long after the world that gave rise to them has disappeared remains to be seen: "There was language that was in currency when the mines were open. 'Gob' for mouth comes from a mining term, 'frame yourself' means smarten yourself up, that's a mining term. Now the mines have gone there's bound to be changes. What will happen, I'm sure, is that there'll be call centre words which will pop in and there'll be other language we don't know about yet.

"It's a shame that teenagers will look at mining language as a kind of historical language but that just happens and we shouldn't preserve things in aspic. We should allow the language to live and breathe."

'Making words and music work together.'

The chances are that, however Tyke you believe you are, you'll learn a few new words from Chelp and Chunter but don't go away thinking it's very heavy as dictionaries go. There are cartoons from former Viz editor Alex Collier and new rhymes from Ian to aid our interpretation. Ian says: "I always try and get poems in wherever I can. I think it helps. Dictionaries are very daunting things to read but if you leaven them up with a few poems it's more exciting. It would be great if the whole dictionary rhymed. It would be very hard to do but it would be good."

But is Tyke the language of poetry? Ian is in no doubt: "We do use a lot of flat vowels, a lot of short words so that lends itself to a kind of rhythmic speech and I think we often use quite poetic images, but not just in Yorkshire. It's maybe everywhere. What's called the common speech is certainly a poetic and a descriptive thing."

And, as part of the Ian McMillan Orchestra, Ian has found a new way to present his writing: "I've always been keen on making words and music work together in certain kinds of ways...but this is a new departure because it's spoken word with music. Some are songs and then half way through I start talking so it's a great mixture of things. I want to do more of that. My next ambition is to write an opera. I've written the words for a couple of musicals but I'd love to write an opera all done in Yorkshire dialect – 'Chelp And Chunter: The Opera'".

But surely Ian McMillan – from South Yorkshire – is not a man of few words himself. He can only agree: "I make my living through talking, that's true. I'm an unusual man from Barnsley. Most of them don't speak."

[All photos, except Ian McMillan and train (C) Anthony Dawton]