Peter Terpstra
December 25th 07, 07:49 PM
of necessity nameless. Quite
apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of
vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be
dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend
but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly
assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.
Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though
many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly-created words,
would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak
words were divided into three distinct classes, known as the A vocabulary,
the B vocabulary (also called compound words), and the C vocabulary. It
will be simpler to discuss each class separately, but the grammatical
peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in the section devoted to
the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for all three categories.
The A vocabulary. The A vocabulary consisted of the words needed for
the business of everyday life -- for such things as eating, drinking,
working, putting on one's clothes, going up and down stairs, riding in
vehicles, gardening, cooking, and the like. It was composed almost entirely
of words that we already possess words like hit, run, dog, tree, sugar,
house, field -- but in comparison with the present-day English vocabulary
their number was extremely small, while their meanings were far more
rigidly defined. All ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out
of them. So far as it could be achieved, a Newspeak word of this class was
simply a staccato sound expressing one clearly understood concept. It would
have been quite impossible to use the A vocabulary for literary purposes or
for political or philosophical d
apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of
vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be
dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend
but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly
assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.
Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it, though
many Newspeak sentences, even when not containing newly-created words,
would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak
words were divided into three distinct classes, known as the A vocabulary,
the B vocabulary (also called compound words), and the C vocabulary. It
will be simpler to discuss each class separately, but the grammatical
peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in the section devoted to
the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for all three categories.
The A vocabulary. The A vocabulary consisted of the words needed for
the business of everyday life -- for such things as eating, drinking,
working, putting on one's clothes, going up and down stairs, riding in
vehicles, gardening, cooking, and the like. It was composed almost entirely
of words that we already possess words like hit, run, dog, tree, sugar,
house, field -- but in comparison with the present-day English vocabulary
their number was extremely small, while their meanings were far more
rigidly defined. All ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out
of them. So far as it could be achieved, a Newspeak word of this class was
simply a staccato sound expressing one clearly understood concept. It would
have been quite impossible to use the A vocabulary for literary purposes or
for political or philosophical d