Re: CONLANG T-Shirt: "Your yahzick could be in this mesto."

Paul Bennett writes:
 > Fabian>>>>>>
 > > Nadsat
 > > Anthony Burgess
 > > Latin alphabet
 > >
 > > "Your yahzick could be in this mesto."
 > >
 > > I'm not sure what to use for "language".  The word 'yahzick' is "tongue"
 > > (the body part).  Since Nadsat's an English relex, I think that's the best
 > > candidate, and extending it to mean "tongue, a language", is okay.

I'd tend to agree - besides, using "tongue" for "language" has a
certain Nadsatian perverse feeling to it.

> It's a mainly slavic relex of english, based in the future.  There's
> all kinds of other slang terms, backformations and borrowings
> (including Romany IIRC) in there.  My favourite is <charles> for
> <non-denominational priestly person>.
Yep. Some of the other slavic ones that haven't been mentioned
include:

rassodock - mind, as in to make up one's rassodock
tolchuk - hit or strike
gulliver - "golovo" in anglicized Russian, for head (same kind of mod
           as horror show from "xorosho"
lomtick - slice, as in lomticks of toast
britva - razor (I think - may be misremembering this one)
glazzies - eyes

Non-slavic ones are often abbreviations of long terms or repetitive
lengthening of short ones:

synthemesc - a drug, synthetic mescaline
drencrom - another drug, can't remember the abbrev
eggiwegs - eggs
welliwelliwelliwell - Well (exclamation)

Grammatically, while it is generally "correct" English (if you allow
for the relexed words), it has a tendency to longer, more roundabout
sentence structures.  E.g., Alex refers to himself as "your humble
narrator," and the first sentence (which was shortened in the film) is
a bit of a doozy:

  There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete,
  Georgie, and Dim, Dim being rather Dim, and we were sitting in the
  Korovo Milkbar making up our rassodocks what to do with the evening,
  a flim, dark, chill winter bastard but dry.

It continues on in that vein for a couple hundred pages.


[...]

> I have to take issue with <mesto> as well.  To me, it implies an expanse or
> area, rather than a place.  I don't have a better suggestion.
In the second sentence, Alex calls a bar a "mesto" - doesn't sound
like an expanse or area to me:

  The Korovo Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, where you could get milk
  plus a little something else, like synthemesc or drencrom, to
  sharpen you up for a little of the old ultraviolence.....

Don't ask me why I remember this stuff - mind like a lint trap......


Brook

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