Nadsat is a fictional register or argot used by the teenagers in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange. In addition to being a novelist, Burgess was a linguist and he used this background to depict his characters as speaking a form of Russian-influenced English. The name itself comes from the Russian suffix equivalent of "-teen" as in "thirteen" (-надцать, -nad·tsat'). Nadsat was also used in Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of the book.
Contents
Description
Nadsat is a mode of speech used by the nadsat, members of the teen subculture in the novel A Clockwork Orange. The antihero and narrator of the book, Alex, uses it in first-person style to relate the story to the reader. He also uses it to communicate with other characters in the novel, such as his droogs, parents, victims, and any authority-figures with whom he comes in contact. As with many speakers of non-standard varieties of English, Alex is capable of speaking standard English when he wants to. It is not a written language: the sense that readers get is of a transcription of vernacular speech.
Nadsat is basically English with some borrowed words from Russian. It also contains influences from Cockney rhyming slang, the King James Bible, the German language, some words of unclear origin, and some that Burgess invented. The word nadsat is the suffix of Russian numerals from 11 to 19 (-надцать). The suffix is an almost exact linguistic parallel to the English '-teen,' and is derived from "на", meaning "on" and a shortened form of "десять", the number ten. "Droog" is Russian друг "close friend". Some of the words are also almost childish English such as eggiweg ("egg") and appy polly loggy ("apology"), as well as regular English slang sod and snuff it. The word like and the expression the old are often used as fillers or discourse markers.
At least one translation of Burgess' book into Russian solved the problem of how to illustrate the Nadsat words, by using transliterated, slang English words in places where Burgess used Russian ones. However, this solution was imperfect as it lacked the original abstractness. Borrowed English words with Russian inflection were widely used in Russian slang, especially among Russian hippies. Another translation used the original English spelling of Nadsat terms.
Function
Burgess, a polyglot who loved language in all its forms, was aware that linguistic slang was of a constantly changing nature. Burgess knew that if he used modes of speech that were contemporarily in use, the novel would very quickly become dated. His use of Nadsat was essentially pragmatic; he needed his narrator to have a unique voice that would remain ageless while reinforcing Alex's indifference to his society's norms, and to suggest that youth subculture existed independently of the rest of society. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex's interrogators describe the source of his argot as "subliminal penetration".
Russian influences
Russian influences play the biggest role in Nadsat. Most of those Russian-influenced words are slightly anglicized loan-words, often maintaining the original Russian pronunciation. One example is the Russian word Lyudi, which is anglicized to lewdies, meaning "people". Another Russian word is Bábushka which is anglicized to baboochka, meaning "grandmother", "old woman". Some of the anglicised words are truncated, for example "pony" from ponimát’, "to understand", or otherwise shortened, for example "veck" from čelovék, "person", "man" (though the anglicized word "chelloveck" is also used in the book).
A further means of constructing Nadsat words is the employment of homophones (known as folk etymology). For example, one Nadsat term which may seem like an English composition, horrorshow, actually stems from the Russian word for "good"; khorosho, which sounds similar to horrorshow. In this same manner many of the Russian loanwords become an English–Russian hybrid, with Russian origins, but English spellings and pronunciations. A further example is the Russian word for "head", golová, which sounds similar to Gulliver known from Gulliver’s Travels. Consequently Gulliver becomes the Nadsat expression for the concept "head".
However, many of Burgess' loan-words, such as devotchka ("girl") and droog ("friend") maintain both their relative spelling and meaning over the course of translation.
Word derivation by common techniques
In addition, Nadsat's English slang is constructed with common language-formation techniques. Some words are blended, others clipped or compounded. In Nadsat-language a "fit of laughter" becomes a guff (shortened version of guffawing); a "skeleton key" becomes a polyclef ("many keys"); and the "state jail" is blended to the staja. Many common English slang terms are simply shortened. A cancer stick which is (or was) a common English-slang expression for a "cigarette" is shortened to a cancer.