Newspeak* // An Introduction of sorts

I am currently reading 1984 by George Orwell. When I first started reading the book, right after I finished his other book, Animal Farm, I couldn't get into. It didn't take long though, I am currently 2/3's into the book. It's a very interesting novel that gets you to thinking.

One part of the novel that really caught my attention was the new language that the totalitarian government in the novel was creating, and Orwell's description of it. The new language is called "Newspeak," which was slowly replacing "Oldspeak," the normal English language.

I want to copy this from the novel, so you can get a picture.
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"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course, the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a work like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well-- better, because it's an exact oposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an afterthought.
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"You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston," he said almost sadly. "Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translation. In your hear you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vaguness and its useless shades of meaning."
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"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exacly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need for that."
(Orwell, p. 135-136)
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And you see, this whole idea is very saddening to me. Probably to you as well, if you have a blog & you've made it to this point. Language is beautiful. Words can convey our frustrations, our ideologies, our dreams. Words can take us to a land we've never been to, into the imagination of a writer such as J.K. Rowling or C.S Lewis.

This Newspeak which Orwell imagines, which is created by the government, is a mokery of the true form of English. It wishes to strip the language of its vast meaning so that eventually people aren't able to have any of their own thoughts at all, only the rubbish that the government feeds them. Everyone will have the same thoughts and beliefs about the meaning of life.

I love languages. I've studied Spanish for a long time, and I have learned a little bit of German. I've always been fascinated by other languages and how they are formed..it even helps me better understand the structure of English. I am very fond of words and how they can have different meanings to different people. I love the different adjectives we have to describe a movie, or how good a meal was. I also believe that the way someone speaks certain words can effect how we interpret them. We can be misled by someone's persuasive skills.

**On a side note, I'm sure that Death Cab for Cutie would still manage to turn out beautiful lyrics if they were only left with Newspeak.

Anyhow, I just wish to use this blog to share daily discoverings with you here, such as things I experience, music I like, news that's intriguing, and other such things. Please do leave comments, so long as they're not spam! :)