APPENDIX

This is a mock-scholarly article about the official language of Oceania, which was expected to supersede standard English around 2050. It is designed to express the proper thoughts necessary for Party members, and also to make all other modes of thought impossible by depriving the language of certain words. The new language has three vocabularies.

1. The A vocabulary includes words for everyday activities such as eating, drinking, working. It contains simple nouns and verbs with unequivocal meanings, like tree and hit. Any shades of meaning have been purged. The grammar is designed so that any word can be used as a verb, noun, adjective or adverb. By adding prefixes and suffixes, users can change a word's meaning. Uncold is warm; doubleplus cold means extremely cold. Anything difficult to pronounce has been eliminated.

2. The B vocabulary includes words deliberately constructed for political purposes. They're designed to promote "right" thoughts. Words such as justice, democracy and religion have been abolished, or reduced to either crimethink or oldthink. Names of government organizations and arms of the state like thinkpol (Thought Police) fall into this grouping. Words such as Communist International, Orwell felt, called up thoughts of human brotherhood, and images of thinker Karl Marx, whereas the then current word Comintern suggested a tightly knit organization with a precise doctrine. The intention of Newspeak, he says, is to make speech, especially on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly automatic and thoughtless as possible.

3. The C vocabulary includes scientific and technical terms, purged of any ideological meaning. The aim was to keep knowledge specialized and compartmentalized so nobody would know too much.

Once Oldspeak is altogether superseded, the last link with the history and literature of the past will be broken. The Declaration of Independence, for instance, would be untranslatable. The closest translation would be one word: crimethink.

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