PROSPECTIVE STARLETS who want to make it big in local show business would do well to try to “blend in” by learning the latest “biz talk,” which is different from the way other people speak—well, at least at the start.
After a while, however, “biz talk” is so fun and trendy that other folks pick it up and insert it into their pa-kwela vocabulary.
—Which is why even macho men sometimes dish and diss like gay stand-up comics and swishy makeup artists!
Trouble is, “biz talk” changes so fast that last month’s trendy patutsada is ho-hum and old-hat today.
Happily, some show biz lingo has proven to be so catchy, fun and popular that it’s spoken to this day. For instance, the all-encompassing word, “peg!”
In show biz, it’s used to mean a number of different things, like “type,” “style,” “inspiration,” “essential quality”—etc.
Used in a sentence: “Ang peg ng performance niya, Bella Flores na may halong Redford White—nakakaloka ‘di ba?”
Insertion
Another durable show biz way of putting it is the insertion of the word “agad” in reaction to an exaggerated statement or action—like “break agad?,” “sabunutan agad?,” “Patay agad? ‘Di ba pwedeng naghihingalo muna?!”
Of more recent vintage but now gone the way of all flash due to excessive repetition is the altered meaning given last year to the word “achieve.”
For about an entire month, everybody on TV, including Marian Rivera and Korina Sanchez, kept using it all the time, to refer to anything from being able to cook a new dish, to throwing a successful party, and, OK, achieving a longtime dream or goal.
As a result of its overly intense popularity, the “in” word quickly went “out” of vogue, and is now seldom dropped.
It’s been replaced by other newly popular words or phrases, the latest of which is—“respeto naman!”
Last month, we watched “Eat Bulaga,” and we lost count of how many times the show’s cohosts kept using the suddenly “in” phrase—which, as a result, could be “out” by the time you read this!
In any case, the newly trendy meanings of “respeto naman” include its being uttered as a joking complaint against a TV colleague’s shoddy work, a supposedly humorous skit that falls flat, an inattentive and loud studio audience, somebody who arrives late—etc.!