Nadsat

One of the most unique things that I’ve found in my reading of A Clockwork Orange, right off the bat, is nadsat, the language that the Alex and his droogs use. At first, I was nothing short of intimidated. On the first page, I read:

“They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencron or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg.”

Needless to say, I was concerned that the entire book would make as little sense as this sentence. However, as I continued to read the book, I found the exact opposite. Rather than inhibiting my ability to understand the story and slow me down, the language made me read the book at a normal pace, perhaps even slightly faster. The reason, in my opinion, is that, in order to understand what words mean, I need to see them in various contexts. In combination with finding words that I did know, quicker reading produced a more thorough understanding of the content.

For example, the word “veshches” in this sense could mean any number of things, but when considering the two instances of “veshches” in this sentence that the fact that Alex says “some vesche” later on in the book, I was able to deduce that “veshche” means “thing.”

Another aspect of nadsat that I found fascinating was Alex’s use of onomatopoeia. I didn’t appreciate the simple fact that he used it, but the words that he used to represent sounds. One of my favorite examples was when Alex and his droogs drive a car into a lake, Alex describes the noise as “’a nice heavy loud plesk.” I love to use of the word “plesk” instead lf “splash.” While “splash” may be easier for the human mouth to imitate, when I imagine something heavy falling into a body of water, Alex’s choice of the word “plesk” seems spot on. In that sense, nadsat is both better at describing things and more confusing. Every word makes sense, either by knowing slang or Russian, but to a common reader, it may just seem troublesome.