Last chance to see

While Stephen Fry and naturalist Mark Carwardine have been wowing UK TV audiences with their series on endangered animals, the passing of another species is going unnoticed. Each week the show tells the stories of wonderful creatures, the tremendous pressures (read influence of man) that are driving so many of them to the brink of extinction and the heroic attempts that are being made in some quarters to save them. However the species chosen for the programmes are those seen by the late author Douglas Adams and Carwardine in a 1989 radio series - and the English language wasn’t among them.

Stephen Fry’s TV commentary - by turns funny, affecting and uplifting - is proof that the English language survives in some quarters, nevertheless it is gravely under threat from politicians, media presenters and so-called communications experts and we can’t say we haven’t been warned. As long ago as 1946 George Orwell criticised "ugly and inaccurate" contemporary written English and said that political prose was formed "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

Since then corporate speak has emerged to become one of our tongue’s greatest enemies. Personally I suspect that natural selection would weed poor communicators if it weren’t for the existence of supermarkets. Having to ask a shopkeeper for a ‘holistic midday nutritional solution’ instead of a sandwich, its worst practitioners would have gone hungry and eventually died of starvation.

Wherever the terms solution, ROI and value add (to name but a few) are thoughtlessly bandied about, it is the verbal equivalent to slash and burn of the rain forests - another nail in the coffin of the poor English language. But with your help it’s not too late to save it.

Image of globe by GraphixAsset, Bristol