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

Brook Conner <nellardo@...> comunu:

> 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.....
Alex uses mesto to mean "place".  It's one of the few mistakes I think
Burgess made with Clockwork Orange, which is an excellent book, especially
for artlangers.  When 'mesto' is introduced in this second sentence, you
automatically grok that it means "bar", but you've grokked wrong -- he's
uses it more generally than that later.

Paul Benson pase comunu:

>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 Russian, IIRC, /mesto/ means "place".

OK, I just checked two different web sites using Google.com and they agreed
with me.

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/3272/nadsat.htm
http://www.sudval.org/users/spamfire/essays/nadsat/nadsat.htm

So I still stand by 'mesto'.


Fabian comunu:

>> Basic English [instead of English]
>> C.K. Ogden
>> Latin alphabet
>>
>> "Your language here."  :-)
>
>Isn't "go" part of basic English?
Yep.  That was just an error of omission on my part.

Best regards,

Jeffrey Henning
http://www.LangMaker.com/ - Invent Your Own Language
http://www.Jeffrey.Henning.com/ - Santa Paravia & Fiumaccio for Windows

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