Televenglish

TV is dinning a new language into the U.S. ear. It is something like English, but it has a grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation of its own. It grows out of a rich compost of dialects heard at Lindy's and the Stork Club, in the hominy-grits-and-corn-pone belt and around Hollywood and Vine. It is calculatedly lowbrow: and out of the mouths of M.C.s, comedians, interviewers, children's hosts, singers and announcers, it has become a powerful influence on American speech. Critic Clifton Fadiman calls it Televenglish.

In a primer on the new tongue in the current Holiday, Fadiman classifies the M.C.s of the top quiz and interview shows as the Noah Websters and Fowlers of the age. Writes he: "They employ certain mandatory words and phrases, now becoming part of our general vocabulary: but seriously to indicate that what follows is to be duller than what has preceded; definitely for yes; great or wunnerful to express mild approval, or often merely to show that the M.C. has heard and noted a statement by the interviewee; he's so right; I've got news for yuh; that's for me." While quiz shows are "cultural"' in content, the tone set by the M.C. strikes a contrast. Money winnings become a bundle; an elderly lady contestant is told, "You're a doll," or the M.C. begs leave to "talk to the people"--an interesting usage, observes Fadiman, "with its suggestion that 'the people' are somehow a manipulable substance."

TV's Winston cigarette pitch (they "taste good like a cigarette should'') has effectively assassinated the conjunction as. The singing commercial has popularized so many defective rhymes (gleam with sheen, time with fine, gasoline with supreme] that Fadiman fears the blunting of the simple capacity to match the sound of one word with another. Other commercials tell "how to use eyebrow pencil so it looks natural" or implore the viewer to "have a Camel. They really got it."

"Parents," says Fadiman, "no longer exist, as against folks; the language of narrative develops in the key of 'There's this ranch owner in this movie'; 'the true facts' are always presented, presumably as opposed to the untrue facts." As for pronunciation, gennelmen, twenny and akshally are excellent Televenglish. The participial g tends to disappear (smokin' L & M cigarettes) as surely as the l from awright, and one giveaway M.C., who feels badly when a contestant loses, has popularized congradulate.

Concludes Fadiman: "With authoritative teachers by the thousands daily and nightly teaching Televenglish to 170 million students, it is likely that in 50 years the Televenglish professor will be examining an obsolescent minority idiom known as English, just as today the academic linguist studies the argot of thieves or the slang of the hashhouse counterman."

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