While reading A Clockwork Orange for my FSEM I noticed
something very strange. It seemed that 90% of the words that were used in the
book were Russian. Being the only SPREE’s student in my class I felt really bad
for all the other students in my class. How on Earth were they to be expected
to understand this book if half of the words they didn’t know. Come to find
out, after a long process most of them started to get what was going on based
on context. I soon realized that there was a point to most of the words being
so different. We were supposed to disconnect from the narrator and main
character.
I know wonder if, where I
thought I had an advantage I now am missing a huge part of the main story.
Because I had a higher understanding did I not get the full effect of the book?
I don’t think I will ever be able to unlearn Russian so I may never be able to
find out what exactly it is that I missed.
Upon doing some further research the author was as linguist. He created a
fictional language for the teens of the book to speak called Nadsat. Below is a little more info as to how it translates into the contrary Russian language.
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.[4] One example is the Russian word Lyudi, which is anglicized to lewdies, meaning "people".[5] Another Russian word is Bábushka which
is anglicized to baboochka, meaning
"grandmother", "old woman".[5] 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.[5][6] In this same manner many of the
Russian loanwords became an English–Russian hybrid, with Russian origins, but
English spellings and pronunciations.[7] 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".[5][6]
However, many of Burgess' loan-words, such as devotchka ("girl")
and droog ("friend")
maintained both their relative spelling and meaning over the course of
translation.[7]
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