It's not only TV and film that have dragged themselves into the nineties. In the past month new editions of the New Oxford, Chambers and Collins dictionaries have been published. The shelf life of new words is often remarkably short. Language is fluid. Anyone can make up a word.
Words also disappear.
Under the influence of the National Lottery, most punters would rather place their bet with a machine than a human being. Not everyone, however, is happy at the way language is evolving. Take estuary English, which seems to cause increasing offence as it overwhelms the indigenous accents of London and south-east England. Professor Wells also reckons that estuary English is leaving its London base and starting to colonise the rest of the country. While admitting that Diana, Princess of Wales spoke in an upper-class accent, he claimed that she used a much less conservative form of pronunciation than Prince Charles, who, in turn, was less conservative than the Queen.