The Language of "Nadsat"

One of the most memorable aspects of this novel is the linguistic inventiveness of the language "Nadsat." It is a kind of Russian-English dialect with a humorous amount of fictional words thrown in. The language uses "rhyming slang (both real and invented), Russian words, thieves' slang, and a few Romany words and phrases" (The International Anthony Burgess Foundation). According to Burgess, the importance of this dialect was "meant to turn A Clockwork Orange into a brainwashing primer. You should read the book and at the end, you should find yourself in possession of a minimal Russian vocabulary - without effort, with surprise."

Burgess is careful to allow the context of the word to signal the meaning. Take the following quotes for example:

• "Our pockets were full of Deng, so there was no real need from the point of view of my crasting any more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his blood" (Burgess 4).
• "Now as I got up from the floor among all the crarking kots and koshkas what should I slooshy but the shoom of the old police-auto siren in the distance, and it dawned on me skorry that the old forella of the pussycats had been on the phone to the millicents when I thought she'd been govoreeting to the mewlers and mowlers" (69). 

While it seems nonsensical and otherworldly, the meaning is clear enough. We understand in the first quote that Alex has enough cash so he doesn't need to rob anyone else, and in the second, we grasp that he heard police sirens coming and realized that the old woman he'd just murdered was talking to the police on the phone, not her cats. In a way, this foolish way of speaking only makes the violence more disturbing as it creates a deeper sense of the uncanny and forces alienation, causing the reader to have to work for it a bit to reach a full comprehension and come to a realization filled with horror and shock.

Not only does Nadsat foster an unusual and unsettling sense, but it also allows the story to be locationless. Being a fictional and unplaceable language, it removes the action of the novel from any specific geographic location. It creates an immense sense of ambiguity in this dystopian setting, allowing the reader to imagine anything from England to Los Angeles to a weird terrifying world in which Russia has taken over. Additionally, it makes it perfect for adaptions because the adapter has significant power in determining a new place and space, which is something to keep in mind as you work on your adaption.