Nadsat (was: Re: CONLANG T-Shirt: "Your yahzick...")

Brook Conner wrote:

>> It's a mainly slavic relex of english, based in the future.  There's
>> all kinds of other slang terms, backformations and borrowings
>> (including Romany IIRC) in there.  My favourite is <charles> for
>> <non-denominational priestly person>.
>
>Yep. Some of the other slavic ones that haven't been mentioned
>include:
>
>rassodock - mind, as in to make up one's rassodock
>tolchuk - hit or strike
>gulliver - "golovo" in anglicized Russian, for head (same kind of mod
>           as horror show from "xorosho"
>lomtick - slice, as in lomticks of toast
>britva - razor (I think - may be misremembering this one)
You got it right.  But "tolchuk" should be "tolchock", a wonderful
word.  Along with folk etymologies like "horrorshow" (< "xorosho")
and "gulliver" (< "golovo"), there's also "millicents" = "police, pigs"
(< "militsija").

Oh, and  "charles" should be "charlie", meaning, of course,
"chaplain".

Somebody already mentioned the wordplay element to Nadsat -
using "eggiweg" for "egg" and so on.  My favourite is when wordplay
is applied to the slavicisms.  So alongside "malchick" (= boy, guy),
we occasionally get the emphatic form "malchickiwick".

In addition to these elements, there's also acronyms and other
abbreviations, such as "staja" for "state jail" (= penitentiary),
and "pee and em" for "pop and mum" (= parents).

Matt.