What's It Going To Be Then, Eh?

     Ittying along with “International Week” I’d thought I would govereet a malanky bit about the odd pieces of culture in my vocabulary.  Oh my brothers, if you have trouble ponying what I govereet now, then I hope you can last through my bolnoy display of verbal brilliance. The language, of course, is not actually a language, but a slang eemyad “Nadsat”. It comes from a real horrorshow book, and later a Stanley Kubrick sinny, A Clockwork Orange. The author, Anthony Burgess,  thought any slang would drift from the height-of-literary-fashion and thought up a doby new one, a mix of cockney(“Appy Polly Loggies” for apologies), Russian (“Droog” for friend) and Gypsy-speak (“Oh my brothers”, for example). This combination privodeeted him into one of the most iconic slangs ever created, right along with Newspeak from 1984. Anyways, after viddying/reading A Clockwork Orange too many times t, I noticed that a choodesney thing had started to happen to my speech, it started changing. The most used slovos of Nadsat crept into your humble narrator’s rasoodock and stayed there.

     I started unknowingly peppering my speech with slovos like “horrorshow”, “viddy”, and “droog” and only until some lewdies brought it to my attention did I actively slooshy and govoreet in Nadsat. I continued to add slovos to my vocabulary until I reached a precipice where my droogs pulled me aside and told me I spoke so much it sounded like chepooka (nonsense, that is). I do admit, I sounded a bit gloopy, and was even unintelligible at times when I govoreeted  with a full vocabulary, so I toned it down a malanky bit, only govoreeting  at polezny times, when I wanted to show off to my droogs who had not had the pleasure of slooshying it for the first time. 

Eventually, like all dialects that you cannot share with others, my Nadsat skills dropped really skarry-like. I smeck at the fact now, but before I got quite upset. I still ended up retaining some of my vocabulary though. I still hold on to droog and horrorshow, though many do not comment on it anymore, it moved from a weird slang I would govoreet in to a small section of my vocabulary, made up of thousands of other slovos. I just needed to find a balance between the overboard, "Oh my word, can anyone understand him?", and nothing at all.

      The main thing I want to skazat you, O my brothers and only friends, is that a dark sinny does not have to give off dark messages. Sure, A Clockwork Orange focuses on thugs, ultra-violence, and the oobivating (killing, that is), but I discovered a whole new way of govoreeting. No sinny can be truly baddiwad. A Clockwork Orange contains some of the most Bugatty literary material and social commentary out there, why condemn it to its current infamous existence? The protagonist may act like an oozhasny moodge, but Burgess never wanted people to try and emulate him. He focused on the language, on Nadsat, and created something beautiful.

     I went out and learned Nadsat, I'm not skazating you all to go out and do the same me, your humble narrator; replicating my actions would actually work against the messel I made up in my rasoodock  for you, O my brothers. Find something new, something strange, something interesting. All I want you, O my brothers, to do lies right in front of you; take something from your sinnys, your books, your warbles, and make it your own. Change yourself, add some flair, have fun. Farewell my little droogies, until we meet again.

A malenky bit of the sinny

A dictionary for the gloopy ones