The Bizarre Language of "Nadsat"

From the very first page of "A Clockwork Orange," the reader is greeted with a barrage of unfamiliar terminology, often difficult to pronounce and understand. This makes the book nearly incomprehensible at first glance, but as one reads on and repeatedly encounters the strange words, the brain learns to automatically translate them; for instance, it becomes almost second nature to take a word such as "chelloveck" and understand it to mean "man, person, or fellow." For the words that one sees less often and forgets the meaning of, luckily there is an online dictionary that has a listing of every slang, non-English word in the book. Although difficult to deal with, these words make the story unique and Anthony Burgess (the author) succeeded in his intentions of making the book more interesting with this crazy lingo.


However, the uniqueness wasn't his only reason for using the alien jargon; Burgess wrote this story during the 1960s, a time when the United States and the U.S.S.R. were becoming superpowers. A majority of the bizarre words are taken from the Russian language and slightly tweaked to create a fictional language called "Nadsat." Russia's influence on the world during the time this book was written is shown clearly in the language spoken by characters.