ARE you desperate for a stotty? Can you simply not find the right barm cakes anywhere?

Geordies and people in Yorkshire searching for that special something can now turn to what is thought to be the first telephone directory in their native dialects.

Online directory yell.com has introduced a number of slang terms and examples of regional dialect to its website to help customers.

To begin with, the site introduced a number of common names for traders, such as brickies for bricklayers, sparkies for electricians and even Old Bill for the police.

However, the site has now introduced regional dialect, including Geordie, Yorkshire, Cockney and Scouse terms to help regional customers find local goods and services.

Yesterday, The Northern Echo put the site to the test -and, initially, the Geordie directory coped fairly well.

When asked for stotties in Stanley, it suggested four bakeries. Tabs in Durham located a tobacconist in the Indoor Market.

A query about blocked netties in Easington found a mobile plumber, and the quest for Broon in Newcastle produced 103 pubs stocking the region's traditional tipple, Newcastle Brown Ale.

The directory even coped with more specialist terms.

Bairns produced a succession of helpful suggestions, from maternity wear to family planning clinics, although the choice of ganzies was a little more limited, with only the Edinburgh Woollen Shop, in Durham, providing jumpers.

However, the website came up short when asked to try more complicated phrases. It had no record of any hyem improvement outlets (DIY centres) anywhere in the region, failed to offer any real assistance in the search for places selling boody (ornaments) or snadgers (turnips), and when asked to locate a store selling blerks or wiffies claes (men's and women's clothes), it whirred a bit, showed an egg-timer symbol and then asked if we were certain we had spelled the term correctly.

Yorkshire words that the directory can recognise include axels (teeth), sough (drains), bottomin (spring cleaning) and barm cakes (bread rolls).

Yell.com president Eddie Cheng said the directory had, at present, a rather limited vocabulary of about 50 regional words and phrases, but that the database would be expanded in coming months.

He said: "As the UK's leading local search engine, yell.com now recognises and understands not only local geography, but also the diversity of language in the UK.

"Adding local words to yell.com will enable our users to search using words they know and understand, making it easier to find shops and services."