ANOTHER year, another 1 April to negotiate the traditional festival of clever tricks and jokes played on the unsuspecting, the eagle-eyed and gullible.

By coincidence, on the last day of March, I found myself sifting through the list of job titles submitted by listeners to a survey conducted by my ‘old firm’, the BBC.

They certainly would have qualified for inclusion on the following day’s menu. We’ve lived for quite some time with ‘rodent extermination officer’ and ‘waste disposal technicians’ masquerading respectively as rat catchers and bin-men, but lift attendant elevated to ‘vertical transport engineer’ and receptionist reclassified as ‘welcoming agent and telephone intermediary’ take some beating.

All, however, reflect the increasing tendency to twist our long-suffering language into incomprehensible knots in pursuit of spin and stylistic make-over. The sad thing is, very often, such Topsy-like manipulation simply over-blows itself in a deflation of ridicule.

Recently, the Guardian newspaper unearthed an article from its archive written in 1934 about language used on the wireless – a term which perished with valves and announcers’ dinner jackets. ‘Words,’ it related, ‘were given us in order that we might conceal our thoughts. There are those who have suspected that it was one aim of the broadcasting system to run a sort of conversational steam-roller over the speech of this island.’

Seventy-five years later, the corporation hasn’t lost its touch. A newly appointed BBC executive, who ought to know better, recently described his mission thus: ‘I want Media Trust to become the centre of the radar for big technology vendors who can prototype products through Media Trust’s multiplatform channels . . .’ Stanley Unwin would have been very proud.

There’s no doubt that what we say and how we say it is a highly emotive subject, and felt strongly both personally and nationally. There are social, regional and cultural implications. Language is used for identification and to ‘get on’. It can be a powerful weapon both for bonding and exclusion. It is also extremely sensitive.

We’re used to comedians lapsing into regional accents to portray boring, mean or comic stereotypes. But are we justified in believing the use of ‘standard English’ is vital for comprehending our tongue by the world’s largest group of English speakers, namely, those with English as second language?

Language also has an amazing elasticity, as speakers in any former colonial country will attest. Canada copes with it; Czechoslovakia split up over it; Belgium remains somewhat ambivalent – which probably accounts for its current political paralysis.

We are not immune, either. In this little island which already had its French ancestry widely displayed in place and family names, we’ve assimilated Portuguese and Polish into the island mix, with – one has to admit – remarkable ease. Maybe that’s because they’ve been kind enough to learn our lingo, rather than expect any reciprocation.

As populations intermingle, our vocabulary has been swelling with the speed of the internet – which, along with phone texting, has introduced a lexicon all of its own. Generally it’s a positive process, despite the need for pedants to keep up.

The ‘noughties’, an appropriate label for a decade of in-your-face extravagance and selfish consumerism, donated such everyday extras as celeb, WAG, twitter and blogging. There was also the opportunity to slip in a couple of ‘nasties’. Top two on the ‘most hated’ list have to be ‘redacted’ – that is, blanking out the details of MPs’ worst excesses, and ‘rendition’, a sanitised expression to mask the practice of illegally spiriting individuals half way round the world to face torture with impunity.

Not surprisingly, we all have our own personal bugbears. I cringe when I hear professional media folk arbitrarily using the adjective ‘heavy’. Rain and traffic I can accept, but wind, even fog! That’s followed by the habit – beloved of several fresh local TV reporters – to breath an intrusive ‘h’ into titles.

At least the departure of ‘Haich Dee’ ferries reduced my suffering. For a generation brought up to learn rules of grammar and pronunciation by rote, irritating modern usage jars painfully. Why is ‘refute’ commonly confused with ‘deny’, or a simple ‘wrong’ embellished to ‘fundamentally flawed’? ‘Meet’ has acquired an obligatory ‘up with’ and the future is ‘any time soon’.

But there’s a lighter side to the end of prescription. Eye-catching brevity can add a level of charm that passeth all understanding. Allow me to take you on a short tour of linguistic gems on display last summer around our island. Starting in St Helier, if you avoided the ‘family butcher’ in the Market, you could find ‘self-drive cars for hire’ and ‘parking for disabled buses only’.

Stray past the Harbour, and you were offered ‘half cooked lobsters’, while you might be wary of ‘slip on boat shoes’. Once in the Trinity countryside you’d be reminded ‘young hens drive slowly’ and if you were seeking employment, you might have been tempted to seek a position as a ‘sterile service assistant’ with Health and Social Services.

Our language is constantly being cut up, repackaged, embellished and, yes, adulterated. We have a dynamic vocabulary – which accounts for why English is the world’s greatest linguistic survivor.

Where India, or China has a myriad of different tongues within their own national borders, English is universal. Prescriptive French, on the other hand, is declining.

Which brings me back to those elusive ‘poissons d’avril’. If any are currently swimming in the clear waters off Corbière, I reckon, they’d better be careful lest those Guernsey seagulls driven here by the decision to ditch the Suez plant and so scupper any immediate clean-up of that island’s sewage emissions choose to make a meal out of such slippery ‘faux amis’.