I’m a fan of Anthony Burgess, not only because he spoke 14 languages, but because he wrote A Clockwork Orange. If you’ve ever read A Clockwork Orange, you may have noticed that Alex DeLarge and his friends speak a dialect called Nadsat (-надцать, an ending on many of the numbers from 11-19 in Russian, I suppose this was implying that this language was an adolescent language) with many made-up sounding words. Burgess based Alex’s street slang off of Russian. Here are some of my favorite examples:
Horrorshow, from Russian хорошо (horosho), which means “good.”
“Long time is right, I don’t remember them days too horrorshow. Don’t call me Dim no more either, Officer call me.”
Droog, from Russian друг (droog) which just means “friend.”
“There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim.”
Viddy, from Russian видеть (videt’), which means “to see.”
“Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.”
Soomka, from Russian сумка (soomka), which actually means “bag.” The slang is from English when referring to an old woman as a bag.
“Naughty, naughty, naughty! You filthy old soomka!”
