LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM (Newspeak)

Thor Kottelin thor.kottelin at elisa.fi
Mon Jun 2 13:45:05 CEST 2003


> At 22:13 +0300 2003-06-01, Thor Kottelin wrote:
> 
> >A more likely case of usage would be <span lang="en">uneasy</span> vs. <span
> >lang="x-en-newspeak">uneasy</span>. The latter doesn't mean "anxious" or
> >"nervous", but simply "difficult".
> 
> This is a reading rule. There are dozens of ordinary English words 
> which can be read in more than one way, or which have completely 
> different meanings.

But in this case we're dealing with a defined variant of the English
language, so we have the option of tagging the word for clarity.

> "Normans, you are doubleplus ungood.  You have committed many acts of
> thinkcrime and sexcrime.  You are obviously unsane, but I will heal you.
> First of all, how did you become a thinkcriminal?  There are no oldthinkers,
> where do you get your thinks so speedwise?"
> 
> This language is English.

I don't think any of my English teachers would have accepted that passage as
English unless I would somehow - implicitly or explicitly - have "tagged" it
as Newspeak. Also, FWIW, "doubleplus", "ungood", "thinkcrime", "sexcrime",
"unsane", "thinkcriminal", "oldthinkers" and "speedwise" all fail my email
client's spell checking.

Thor


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