Re: Conspiracy Theory #457.....

one might
remember their original meanings. In practice it was not difficult for
any person well grounded in doublethink to avoid doing this, but within
a couple of generations even the possibility of such a lapse would have
vaished. A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no
more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of ?politically
equal?, or that free had once meant ?intellectually free?, than for
instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the
secondary meanings attaching to queen and rook. There would be many
crimes and errors which it would be beyond his power to commit, simply
because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable. And it was to be
foreseen that with the passage of time the distinguishing
characteristics of Newspeak would become more and more pronounced -- its
words growing fewer and fewer, their meanings more and more rigid, and
the chance of putting them to improper uses always diminishing.

When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the last link with
the past would have been severed. History had already been rew