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 containing newly created words, would be barely intelligible to an
English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak words were divided into three distinct classes,
known as the A vocabulary, the B vocabulary, and the C vocabulary. It would be simpler to
discuss each class separately, but the grammatical peculiarities of the language can be
dealt with in the section devoted to the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for
all three categories.
**The following passage is just extra information for those who would like to be able to
write in Newspeak.
The A vocabulary. The A vocabulary consisted of words needed for the business of everyday
life --- For such things as eating, drinking, working, putting on one's clothes, going up
and down stairs, riding in vehicles, gardening, cooking, and the like. It was composed
almost entirely of words that we already possess -- words like hit, run, dog, tree, sugar,
house, field -- but in comparison with the present-day English vocabulary, their number
was extremely small, while their meanings were far more rigidly defined. All ambiguities
and shades of meaning had ben purged out of them. So far as it could be achieved, a
Newspeak word of this class was simply a staccato sound expressing one clearly understood
concept.it would have ben quite impossible to use the A vocabulary for literary purposes
or for political or philosophical discussion. It was intended only to express simple,
purposive thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.
The grammar of Newspeak has two outstanding peculiarities. The first of these was an almost complete interchangeability between different parts of speech. Any word in the language (in principle this applied even to very abstract words such as if or when) could be used either as verb, noun, adjective, or adverb. Between the verb and noun form, when of the same root, there was never any variation, this rule of itself involving the destruction of many archaic forms. The word thought, for example, did not exist in Newspeak. Its place was taken by think, which did duty for both noun and verb. No etymological principle was involved here; in some cases it was the original noun that was chosen for retention, in other cases the verb. Even where a noun and a verb of kindred meanings were not etymologicaly connected, one or other of them was frequently suppressed. There was, for example, no such word as cut, its meaning being sufficiently covered by the noun-verb knife. Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix -ful to the noun verb, and adverbs by adding -wise. Thus, for example, speedful meant "rapid" and speedwise meant "quickly." Certain of our present-day adjectives, such as good, strong, big, black, soft, were retained, but their total number was very small. There was little need for them, since almost any adjectival meaning could be arrived at by adding -ful to a noun-verb. None of the now-existing adverbs was retained, except for a few already ending in -wise; the -wise termination was invariable. the word well, for example, was replaced by goodwise. In addition, any word -- this again applied in principle to every word in the language -- could be negative by adding the affix un-, or could be strengthened by the affix plus-, or, for still greater emphasis doubleplus-. Thus, for example, uncold meant "warm" while pluscold and doublepluscold meant, respectively, "very cold" and "superlatively cold". It was also possible, as in present-day English, to modify the meaning of almost any word by prepositional affixes such as ante-, post-, up-, down-, etc. By such methods it was possible to bring about an enormous diminution of vocabulary. Given, for instance, the word good, there was no need for such a word as bad, since the required meaning was equally well --indeed better-- expressed by ungood. All that was necessary, in any case where two words formed a natural pair of opposites, was to decide which of them to suppress. Dark, for example, could be replaced by Unlight, or light by undark, according to preference.
The second distinguishing mark of Newspeak grammar was its regularity. Subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned below, all inflections followed the same rules. Thus in all verbs the preterite and the past participle were the same and ended in -ed. The preterite of steal was stealed, the preterite of think was thinked, and so on throughout the language, all such forms as swam, gave, brought, spoke, taken, etc., being abolished. All plurals were made by adding -s or -es as the case might be. The plurals of man, ox, life, were mans, oxes, lifes. Comparison of adjectives was invariably made by adding -er, -est (good, gooder, goodest), irregular forms and the more, most formation being suppressed.