I’m the co-director of the Ponying the Slovos project which looks at invented languages in translation, predominantly focusing on Nadsat, the teen slang of Alex in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.
But Burgess didn’t just invent one language for his fiction. In fact, like Tolkien before him, he invented quite a few. So we thought late last year it was time to take a look at the others, and try to explain how they function and what they’re made of.
It was only intend to be a quick overview, but about 10,000 words or so later, we realised we’d have to split this work up into smaller chunks so as to be more easily digestible on a blog format. As a result, the first part of a series of eight posts on Anthony Burgess’s other invented languages can now be found on Ponying the Slovos.
There will, as you might have surmised, be seven more to follow. If the languages of aliens, stone age man, Jesus Christ, William Shakespeare, the streets of 19th century Rome, Australia, Sicily or Medieval Latin blasphemers is of interest, it’s a series which may intrigue you.