'It's a beatutiful 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 isntance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like"bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, 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?'
George Orwell, in describing Newspeak.
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For all those who do not understand this seemingly random post, I have little sympathy. (I can't lie!)
It is a quote from George Orwell's 1984, where a man by the name of Syme is describing the language of that world to a lesser learned fellow. The language is based on english, and is designed to limit the amount of thinking processes that are possible to be made byt he individual of that society. The topic, in line with the themes of the whole book, is one from which can arise controversy on many levels. That is what I like about this book. Read it. Now.
"Killing is bad, and wrong, there should be a new, stronger word for killing, like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is 'badong', and from this day forward, I will stand for the opposite of killing: Gnodab!"
-The Chosen One/Chosimba, Kung Pow
EMILY! You are my hero! I LOVE that movie. I could quote it all day, but I wont, because it wouldtake less than a day to read, and that would be of low efficiency.
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