Where Have They Gone To?

Allrighty kids. Settle down! Kik still lives. Sorry I was gone so long. I really wish that I had a good excuse, but Emily hit it right on the head: No more studying to avoid. I spend waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less time in front of the computer trying to get to work here at home. I'll try to pop in and say hi from time to time over the summer, but don't count on daily chitchat. Once I'm back to school I'll be here daily again though. Promise! Thanx for noticing that I wasn't around. And thank you all... or I guess thank you Faye for PMing me to make sure that I hadn't tragically died in a fiery automobile collision.

PS. Em, I love you're Avatar!

yay...good to hear that you are well...what happened to your yahoo address though?

I never had one. I was trying to set one up with Trillian, that 5 in 1 messenger program, but it was trying to shut down my AIM address, so that didn't work out.

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Originally Posted by IWilKikU

PS. Em, I love you're Avatar!

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Thanks! :D It seems to be quite popular. I got harangued when I tried to replace it with my own ugly litso. ;) But who doesn't love an Alex?

Glad to know you're still alive and kiking. See you around -- hopefully not too seldom.

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Originally Posted by emily655321

Thanks! :D It seems to be quite popular. I got harangued when I tried to replace it with my own ugly litso.

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Litso? Where's that word from? It seems an Americanly spelled version of the Russian word for 'face'. Well of course I know you meant 'face', but you got me wondering if that word is some American slang, or maybe -I realised after half second of thinking- it is the word used in the Clockwork Orange book? I know the language there is psychedelic, and I clearly remember that even in the translations I read some words were Russian (even if I wasn't aware of it at the time), like 'malchiki' for 'guys' and maybe even other ones but I'm not sure...

Btw I was back after a few days (yesterday I got the bestest(estestest ;)) mark for the first time in my life!!!In the Russian Literature exam:)) and was glad to see that Alex was back!!! The forum wasn't evil enough without him!!!

Btw wb Kik, don't let real life make you forget the world of procrastination!!!

Yes, "litso" is "face" in nadsats.
Koa you haven't read the original version of Clockwork?? You have to! It'll be the ultimate test of your language skills, especially all the British sing-song gibberish. I don't know if your knowledge of Russian will make it easier or harder, though, because a lot of it is Anglicized Russian and Slavic words spelled phonetically, as though the kids heard them spoken and adopted them as their slang (for instance, "horrorshow" for "good" comes from the Russian "khorosho.") I've always wondered how they dealt with the Nadsats in translations.

I found this a while back; it has all the Nadsat translations, as well as the language of origin and its root word: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acad...74/nadsat.html

These are funny too: :banana:
1) automatic English-Nadsat translator:
(version 1.1) http://members.tripod.com/fugilyfred/nadsat/nadsat.html
(version 1.0) http://members.tripod.com/fugilyfred...at/nadsat.html
2) The "Tower of Babel" Bible story, translated into Nadsats: http://www.langmaker.com/db/bbl_nadsat.htm
(www.langmaker.com is an awesome site, btw. Some really funny comp-slang definitions.)

BTW, have you seen the original movie, or a dubbed version, Koa? For the obsessed or very bored, this is a pretty cool essay about the language differences between Kubrick's and Burgess' ACO: http://core-relations.uchicago.edu/V.../Babinski.html

;) Yes, I'm off my rocker, what do you want? :p

Er...what's Nadsat??? :confused:

Don't worry, this is the sort of things I'd talk about for ages...I hate cinema but I can become an obsessed scholar when it's about 2001-space odissey (I once found a site about it and became a sort of expert), Shining and the Orange.

Reading the Orange in original language is one of my most important plans for the future. That 'horrorshow/khorosho' thing made me laugh but it's scary indeed, cos I'd make a mess because of my pronunciation of English which would lead me astray. Btw do you know how Russians spell foreign names? Exactly that way, like they hear them, so that Shakespeare becomes Shekspir (in cyrillic of course). It's often hard to recognise them, but lots of fun when you do!!!
Ehm, back on 'topic'...I've always wondered about the translation too, I think it worked quite well but I'm incredibly curious about how the original sounds...

I've seen the movie 3 times but never in original. To see movies in original I should grab a dvd where I can select the language, cos there's no way this lazy country lets us open our linguistic views... If I remember well, the language was quite similar to the book's (though more 'normal', I guess it makes sense to use the same translation...

Do you think there are at least bits of the book available online? I guess it's possible to put up a tiny bit even if copyrighted...

Koa you can always try a google search for `clockwork orange quotes' there are tons of sites that have them. Like

http://www.sciflicks.com/a_clockwork_orange/quotes.html

Eheheh thanks for the tip...

Now I'm being stupid, but is that link you gave a full passage, or random bits? I'm not sure...:confused: The language doesnt seem too weird, just I can't figure out much of the context...

That's just random quotes from the movie. (BTW, if you haven't deduced by now, "nadsat" is the slang spoken by Alex and his gang, and other malenky baddiwads of the nochy. ;)) Okay, sorry, I love being silly. Here's a bit of Burgess' version of the Surprise Visit scene:

The devotchka sort of hesitated and then said: 'Wait.' Then she went off, and my three droogs had got out of the auto quiet and crept up horrorshow stealthy, putting their maskies on now, then I put mine on, then it was only a matter of me putting in the old rooker and undoing the chain, me having softened up this devotchka with my gent's goloss, so that she hadn't shut the door like she should have done, us being strangers of the night. The four of us then went roaring in, old Dim playing the shoot as usual with his jumping up and down and singing out dirty slovos, and it was a nice malenky cottage, I'll say that. We all went smecking into the room with a light on, and there was this devotchka sort of cowering, a young pretty bit of sharp with real horrorshow groodies on her, and with her was this chelloveck who was her moodge, youngish too with horn-rimmed otchkies on him, and on a table was a typewriter and all papers scattered everywhere, but there was one little pile of paper like that must have been what he'd already typed, so here was another intelligent type bookman type like that we'd fillied with some hours back, but this one was a writer not a reader. Anyway, he said:

'What is this? Who are you? How dare you enter my house without permission.' And all this time his goloss was trembling and his rookers too. So I said:

'Never fear. If fear thou hast in thy heart, O brother, pray banish it forthwith.' Then Georgie and Pete went out to find the kitchen, while old Dim waited for orders, standing next to me with his rot wide open. 'What is this, then?' I said, picking up the pile like of typing from off of the table, and the horn-rimmed moodge said, dithering:

'That's just what I want to know. What is this? What do you want? Get out at once before I throw you out.' So poor old Dim, masked like Peebee Shelley, had a good loud smeck at that, roaring like some animal.

'It's a book,' I said. 'It's a book what you're writing.' I made the old goloss very coarse. 'I have always had the strongest admiration for them as can write books.' Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name - A CLOCKWORK ORANGE - and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?'

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Originally Posted by emily655321

(BTW, if you haven't deduced by now, "nadsat" is the slang spoken by Alex and his gang, and other malenky baddiwads of the nochy. ;))

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Yeah, but why Nadsat? I thought by the way you mentioned it that it was something pre-existing... Argh no time to read the quote now :( Laters!

Edit: Found the time :) It's strange, I think I'd hate it cos if I read it and didn't understand something I'd never know if it's because of his language or because of my English :D

I have always had the strongest admiration for them as can write books

Is this trying to sound old-fashioned? Sounds strange, not standard. It even seemed worng at first look, but seeing the oldfashioned speech Alex uses in this case, I guess it might be cos of that.

"For them as can write books" is very bad English. ;) It's more of a C.ockney way of speaking. Alex jumps from one way of speech to another -- the Middle English is usually used when he's angry at a friend or insulting them.

Burgess made up the term "nadsat." In the introduction in my book, he says he chose the word "nadsat" because it's the Russian ending to numbers 11-19; it's a play on "teenager," more specifically "teen" (eg. fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, etc). So in Clockwork, "nadsat" is primarily the slang spoken by teens, and it's also the word for "teenager." Sorry, I'm just in the habit of referring to it in an offhanded way. :)

Cool...I've been trying to think if it was Russian, but it didn't ring a bell...though now it makes perfectly sense. (and again my mispronunciation of it took me further from the solution, cos I'd say that as nad-sat, not 'nadzat' as the Russian ;)) So Burgess practically invented a whole slang? I thought it was just some words here and there...

Oh wow good job I asked about that sentence, otherwise I might have taken it as good English ;)

By the way, a question struck me last night: why is this language based on Russian??? Did Burgess have any relations to Russia???

I'm having a Kubrick-phase as his movie Barry Lynon is involved in the exam I'm studying for...So I browsed some sites pretending that it'll be useful and I found here
http://www.indelibleinc.com/kubrick/films/clockwork/
the script of the Clockwork Orange's film! :)

Oh, that site's awesome! :D I watched the movie trailer and was laughing and laughing.

I can't remember if/how Burgess had connections with Russia. Obviously he knew the language, but I think it was chosen primarily because he wrote Clockwork in 1960, during the Cold War, and I got the impression that in this hypothetical future world there has been actual warfare between Russia and England -- the British soldiers would have picked up Russian phrases while they were there, and adopted them into their own vernacular, creating Nadsat. They continued to use it when they returned to Britain, one could even speculate as a kind of code to identify fellow members of their "lost generation," who had a new and separate way of looking at the world than those who had not been to war. Of course I'm getting entirely into the realm of the hypothetical now. But I think at that time in history, if one was to imagine a sort of post-apocolyptic future, the USSR would definitely be involved somehow. It was their number one fear.

There was also a code of slang used among gay men in the late 50's/early 60's that sounds remarkably similar to Nadsat. Since people back then could have horrible things done to them if they were discovered to be gay, nevermind what would happen if they hit on someone who turned out to be straight -- this slang was developed so that kind of confusion wouldn't occur. I've been wracking my brain trying to remember what it was called, ever since your first post on this subject, but I can't for the life of me remember. :(

P.S. I think it starts with a P. Or maybe an F?