Re: Gathering of the Gargoyles convention moves to Chicago in 2008

commoner in the B vocabulary than in the A
vocabulary. For example, the adjective forms of Minitrue, Minipax, and
Miniluv were, respectively, Minitruthful, Minipeaceful, and Minilovely,
simply because -trueful, -paxful, and -loveful were sliightly awkward to
pronounce. In principle, however, all B words could inflect, and all
inflected in exactly the same way.
Some of the B words had highly subtilized meanings, barely
intelligible to anyone who had not mastered the language as a whole.
Consider, for example, such a typical sentence from a Times leading article
as Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc. The shortest rendering that one could
make of this in Oldspeak would be: 'Those whose ideas were formed before
the Revolution cannot have a full emotional understanding of the principles
of English Socialism.' But this is not an adequate translation. To begin
with, in order to grasp the full meaning of the Newspeak sentence quoted
above, one would have to have a clear idea of what is meant by Ingsoc. And
in addition, only a person thoroughly grounded in Ingsoc could appreciate
the full force of the word bellyfeel, which implied a blind, enthusiastic
acceptance difficult to imagine today; or of the word oldthink, which was
inextricably mixed up with the idea of wickedness and decadence. But the
special function of certain Newspeak words, of which oldthink was one, was
not so much to express meanings as to destroy them. These words,
necessa