Nadsat artificial language or even slang, used by teenager gangs in the novel by Anthony Burgess «Clockwork Orange»

Nadsat – artificial language or even slang, used by teenager gangs in the novel by Anthony Burgess «Clockwork Orange».
Anthony Burgess is an English writer and literary critic (he was engaged in literary studies, especially the work of Shakespeare and Joyce), also earlier composing music (symphony, ballet and opera), literary translation and journalism. Burgess' most famous work is the psychological dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange.
A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him.

Speaking about Nadsat, it is vital to mention the origin of the word. It comes from Russian suffix “-надцать”, that is common for Russian numerals. Nadsat itself consists of transliterated Russian words, for example “malltshipalltshik”, “shustritt”, “rvat kogti”, “veck”, “litso” etc. Characters use this vocabulary as slang. For example, “rvat kogti” means “to run away”

Burgess even changed some phrasal verbs. Instead of “to go” he uses “to itty”. In that case “to go off” transforms into “to itty off”, or “to go by” into “to itty by”.
Also, some Russian words were transformed. For example, “good” was changed to “horrorshow” instead of “khorosho”.
The quotation from the novel:
And so it would itty on to like the end of the world, round and round and round, like some bolshy gigantic like chelloveck, like old Bog Himself (by courtesy of Korova Milkbar) turning and turning and turning a vonnny grahzny orange in his gigantic rookers

Speaking about the way Russian words were presented for English readers, we can see some differences. For example, some words were simplified to be readable for English speakers (malltshipalltshik instead of malltshikspaltshik).

Reasons for Nadsat:
Within this patchwork of languages, Burgess is careful to allow the context of a word to signal its meaning. When Alex talks about his intention to ‘tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his blood,’ the meaning is clear enough. Nadsat is also used as a language of resistance, which establishes the droogs as a counter-cultural group: it allows them to communicate in a way that is clearly demarcated from the standard English of policemen, prison warders, scientists and probation officers.
One other effect of Nadsat is to remove the action of the novel from any precise geographical location: the city where it is set could be anywhere from Manchester to Leningrad, London to Los Angeles. The decision to blend English and Russian adds an element of ambiguity to the setting, and the book suggests a possible future in which Russian words have been absorbed into English for some political reason which is never stated.
© The International Anthony Burgess Foundation