Submitted by chinawcswing t3_yevose in books
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owensum t1_iu05otk wrote
Burgess invents a new language, Nadsat, based on Russian. Read the wikipedia page for more info, Burgess was a smart dude with a background in linguistics among other things. It's like reading Shakespeare or something, stimulates the imagination to figure out what theyre saying.
WarderWannabe t1_iu066u2 wrote
There’s also a slang dictionary that helps with all these made up terms.
AlunWeaver t1_iu06e07 wrote
>Does it perhaps start to make sense as I continue to read the book?
Yes.
It's an invented lingo that Burgess created for the characters and not something that is all that much easier for a British reader to understand. The expectation is that you will eventually come to understand more and more of it as you read.
Burgess was a strange guy, completely obsessed with language, with etymologies, with slang. He was slightly resentful, I think, of what people made of him and his education, and so he made a point (way too big of one, if you ask me) of showing off his erudition when it came to words.
macroscian t1_iu06eh5 wrote
This - and turn your spell-checker off, u/chinawcswing
progfiewjrgu938u938 t1_iu06kd6 wrote
It’s a made up language. You get the hang of it after a few chapters.
jonfaw t1_iu06kzr wrote
It's not a dialect, it's an artistic choice by the author to create a language landscape to reflect what he thinks the future might sound like, or rather, read like. He is blending slang and grammar from at least cockney English and Russian, with probably a slathering of whatever other interesting linguistic tidbits he might find in other languages. And just wholesale making up words. Try re-reading it as you might look at a piece of modern art, where you just kinda slide over any word that you don't know or just assume it means something suggested by context. Like singing a song you only know a few of the words to, but love the melody and sing along with gusto. He's not following rules of grammar, he's conducting an orchestra of noun and verbs.
SaltySteveD87 t1_iu06t6r wrote
I watched the movie before I read the book and having Malcolm McDowell’s performance in mind really helped contextualize the language of the novel. It’s similar to how Shakespeare can be difficult to understand without seeing it performed.
Maybe not the whole movie but try watching a clip or two to see how they read it; the movie is very faithful to the book.
MrsSnailhouse t1_iu07035 wrote
Most of these words are anglizised Russian. Its as if English youth language got tons of Russian loanwords.
brideofgibbs t1_iu074f9 wrote
Lots of Yiddish loan words in there too
Daigoro0734 t1_iu09wpt wrote
Definitely a kick in the bloody yarbles
vibraltu t1_iu0aehc wrote
He's an interesting cat, and definitely a big-show-off of his vocabulary in his many books. It's true that English intellectuals from not-posh backgrounds can sometimes be pretty touchy about it (Orwell is another example).
His memoirs are worth a look.
mrgrieeves t1_iu0aj97 wrote
What’s it going to be then, eh?
I_Frunksteen-Blucher t1_iu0alzz wrote
Try Riddley Walker next.
TheZigRat t1_iu0ax4f wrote
I say lets go to town and show a few Billy Boys what's chop
SmittyFjordmanjensen t1_iu0bma8 wrote
....exactly
mrgrieeves t1_iu0c7dx wrote
You naughty old veck, you.
csulasiris t1_iu0ccqc wrote
>I guess the dialect is some kind of Irish subculture
As an Irishman, I don't know whether to be pleased or offended by this.
CrazyCatLady108 t1_iu0cho1 wrote
Please post 'Should I read X book''What do I need to know before I read X' questions, in our Weekly Recommendation Thread.
HunterRoze t1_iu0cou0 wrote
No, because I am used to reading books where I as the reader am dropped into the depend and have to work things out based on context.
AlunWeaver t1_iu0muwd wrote
Yes, agreed on his memoirs.
chinawcswing OP t1_iu0n5or wrote
While I found Dune difficult to read, it was mostly due to how much information was packed into each paragraph and how Herbert would drop major concepts without any context. I re-read all the dune books twice and on the second re-read it was simple to understand.
A Clockwork Orange is a bit different to me because I can't understand most of the words so far.
chinawcswing OP t1_iu6cu49 wrote
I'm 3 chapters in. I suppose it is getting somewhat easier to read. I know "viddy" means to see for example.
But is the entire book just going to be about these kids committing violence? Is there any sort of character development, climax, plot twist?
Erebus172 t1_iu05ote wrote
I haven't read it, but I've heard that the dialect is part of the point of the book. They're made up words and you're meant to learn their meanings as the story goes on.
Edit: it's called Nadsat.