Sunday, June 14, 2009

Storybook Patois

So I'm reading A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, and I'm viddying a lot of odd words. Truth be told, it's taking malenky tolchocks at my brain, this nadsat jargon. First of all, it was already mighty bezoomny of Burgess to write this, since it's all horrorshow dratsing with shaikas and screaming devotchkas and ptitsas. Some of my droogs reckon it's a nice book, but I wouldn't use that slovo. Well-written. Imaginative. Engaging. Nice? No. By Bog, Burgess makes Vonnegut viddy relatively tame. So much krovvy and flying zoobies in this book! And what is scary about Alex, that’s the bezoomny malchick’s eemya, is that he’s not the least bit poogly of ultraviolence. He actually lives for horrorshow, no remorse whatsoever, and I know that’s what Burgess wants to show, but it pooglies me somehow. Knives in the moloko and dratsing-oobivating every night? More sensitive souls would be bolnoy by the thirtieth page. It vreds my brain, really, like a bolshy britva of verbosity.

Speaking of jargon, all this nadsatting reminds me of another invented language: Newspeak. ( From George Orwell's 1984. ) Now there's a double-plus-ungood language because it limits the words people are allowed to think and say. They phased out Oldspeak, and you had to be always goodthinking, otherwise the thinkpol would get you. It’s not easy to grasp the ramifications unless you read the novel itself. So many of my favorite words they turned into crimethink, really. It's double-unsane. I don't even know why those proles didn't take to the streets and quash Ingsoc. Not goodwise for the mind, although it didn't really matter, comrades, since if you were caught by the thinkpol you would become an unperson anyway. I unbellyfeel Ingsoc and Big Brother, of course, and like Oldthink better. But I have to stop now, since I am also afraid of being sent to joycamp, just in case Big Brother is reading.

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