Re: Merry Christmas To All

that
when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten,
a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles
of Ingsoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought
is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give
exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party
member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other
meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect
methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly
by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained
of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings
whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in
Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ?This dog is
free from lice? or ?This field is free from weeds?. It could not be used
in its old sense of ?politically free? or ?intellectually free? since
political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts,
and were therefore 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 contai