"The day was different from the night.
The night belonged to me and my droogs and all the rest of the nadsats, and the starry bourgeois lurked indoors drinking in the gloopy worldcasts, but the day was for the starry one, and there always seemed to be more rozzes or millicents about during the day, too.
"(Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange. 36)
Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should Be Reading and this is how it works:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE
CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t
give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
If You Can Read This 
Interesting teaser. So you are reading 'A Clockwork Orange' 🙂 I read this book sometime back and found it quite difficult to read in the beginning, but after I got into it, the book flowed smoothly. Hope you are enjoying reading it. If you haven't seen the movie version directed by Stanley Kubrick, I would recommend that too, after you have finished reading the book.
I also have a quiz question for you 🙂 The question is : What is the origin of the word 'nadsat'? (Did Anthony Burgess cook the word up, or did he borrow it from somewhere?)
I´ve kind of gotten used to the language and though it´s not exactly fun reading Burgess certainly makes it an interesting read. Will definitely watch the famous Kubrick movie, thanks for the recommendation!As for the quiz ( 😀 ): I´ve heard that nadsat is a Russian morpheme used for suffixation in numbers but this might be just a rumour. Sadly I don´t know any Russian. What have you heard about it?
Congratulations! You got it right 🙂 'Nadsat' is used in Russian as a suffix to numbers. (How do you know such tough trivia? I am really impressed!)I discovered about 'nadsat' after I started learning Russian sometime back. (Wanted to read some of the Russian literature in the original. So started learning Russian). In Russian 'ajin' means 'one' and 'ajin-nadsat' means 'eleven'. Similar 'dvi' is 'two' and 'dwi-nadsat' is twelve, 'tri-nadsat' is 'thirteen'. 'Nadsat' is used for all numbers between 'eleven' and 'nineteen'. I don't know whether Burgess used 'nadsat' to indicate the language used by young people (probably teens), because in Russian 'nadsat' comes with numbers in the 'teen' range.
Oh yay, full marks!? 😉 The teen thing makes sense. I finished the book today, it was a really quick read after Alex was arrested. I´ll probably post a review soon.And you know Russian? Wow! It´s such an interesting language, I once looked at a book where the pronunciation was explained, it scared me off. So difficult!
Yes, full marks 🙂 Looking forward to reading your review on 'A Clockwork Orange'.I know a bit of Russian. I am okay at reading, my writing is not too good, and my speaking is even less good 🙂 Yes, it is an interesting language as you have said. The pronunciation does look difficult in the beginning, but once one gets used to it, it is okay. The area I am struggling with is part called cases, where the form of the noun changes based on the situation and the position of the noun doesn't determine its role in the sentence, but the case does. It is a tricky concept to grapple with 🙂 Do you have cases in German?