Based on George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984". You can read more about Newspeak on
Wikipedia.
To give you the rundown, Newspeak's grammar is much simpler than standard English. Any word can function as a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. Also, irregular nouns and verbs are made regular:
- men becomes mans,
- feet becomes foots,
- mice becomes mouses,
- sang/sung becomes singed,
- took/taken becomes taked, and
- found becomes finded.
Auxiliary verbs (e.g., be, do, have), pronouns (e.g., he, she, they), demonstratives (e.g., this, that, those), and words derived from them still have irregular forms.
Also, whom is replaced by who, and shall and should become will and would.
Here are some common Newspeak prefixes:
- Un- forms the opposite (negative) of a word. For example, bad becomes ungood and warm and hot become uncold. It can also come before verbs: unwalk means do not walk.
- Plus- is a substitute for very. For example, plusgood means very good or great.
- Doubleplus- replaces extremely and superlative adjectives. For example, doubleplusgood means extremely good, fantastic, or excellent.
- Ante- means before, so antespeaking replaces before speaking.
- Post- means after, so postwork replaces after work.
Among these are common suffixes, which remove irregular conjugations:
- -ful turns any word into an adjective. For example, fast, quick, and rapid become speedful, while slow becomes unspeedful.
- -d and -ed form the past tense/participle of a verb. For example, thought becomes thinked, stole/stolen becomes stealed, ate/eaten becomes eated, and taught becomes teached.
- -er forms the comparative ("more") of an adjective. For example, better becomes gooder and worse becomes ungooder.
- -est forms the superlative ("most") of an adjective. For example, best becomes goodest and worst becomes ungoodest.
- -s and -es make any singular noun plural. For example, women becomes womans, halves becomes halfs, and children becomes childs.
- -wise turns any word into an adverb, getting rid of all adverbs not ending in -wise. For example, slowly becomes unspeedwise, peacefully becomes peacewise, and fully, completely, and totally become fullwise.
For example, "Eric ate extremely slowly" becomes "Eric eated doubleplusunspeedwise".
Finally, some vocabulary words are
- artsem, which is artificial insemination
- dayorder, which is order of the day
- dep, short for department
- doublethink, which is thinking two contradictory thoughts at once
- free, which is when something is lacking or absent. "Intellectually free" and "politically free" are replaced by crimethinkful.
- Ficdep, the Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department
- goodsex, which is sexual intercourse used for reproduction instead of physical pleasure, and only during marriage
- goodthink, which the Party defines as "political orthodoxy" or "a political orthodox thought"
- goodwise, which replaces the adverb well
- Ingsoc, which stands for English Socialism (the Party's political ideology)
- joycamp, which is a labor camp
- Miniluv, which is the Ministry of Love
- Minipax, which is the Ministry of Peace
- Miniplenty, which is the Ministry of Plenty
- Minitrue, which is the Ministry of Truth
- Oldspeak, which is standard English
- Recdep, the Ministry of Truth's Records Department
- ref means to refer to someone or something
- sexcrime, a sexual immorality (e.g., fornication, adultery, oral sex, homosexuality)
- speakwrite, a machine that turns speech into text
- Teledep, the Ministry of Truth's Telecommunications Department
- telescreen, a two-way TV set that the Party uses to spy on Oceania's population
- thinkpol, which is the Thought Police (the Oceania government's secret police force)
- unperson, someone who gets executed and whose existence is wiped from history and memory
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