Polari: Talking Rubbish

There's a fitting irony that polari is often misrepresented as being a language; much writing about gay men in the media still reads like anthropology, describing a strange, lost tribe whose ways are quite alien.
There is a piece in the Telegraph today; 'British languages 'in danger of dying out within a generation''
"Twenty languages spoken in the UK - including Old Kentish Sign Language - have become extinct or are in danger of dying out within a generation according to academics who are attempting to halt their disappearance..."
"Also included is Polari, a language which grew from ingredients of Italian, Romany and Hebrew origin and was used by homosexual men in the mid-19th century as a secret code at a time when it was still illegal to be gay."
Once upon a time journalists would make their own mistakes, in the age of the internet they just repeat other peoples'.
Polari isn't really a language - you couldn't hold a conversation in it - it's just an umbrella term for some slang words used by some British gay men in the twentieth century.
There have been various attempts to compile polari dictionaries, but only a few words ever had anything approaching a common currency.
Saying that polari was "a secret code at a time when it was still illegal to be gay" is mendacious.
According to Wikipedia - the idiot's friend - it was used "to disguise homosexual activity from hostile outsiders and undercover policemen".
It wasn't really - it was just a bunch of words various groups of gay people used, often just small groups of friends; it wasn't subterfuge, it was more likely to be used by gay men when they felt safe, with their own kind, in private conversations, in a bar, over lunch, at parties.
And how can polari be "in danger of dying out" when it's always been in a state of flux?