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, Winston? It
was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought.
A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention
of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of
enthusiasm.
'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost
sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read
some of those pieces that you write in the Times occasionally. They're good
enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to
Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You
don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that
Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller
every year?'
Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped,
not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-
coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:
'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range
of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible,
because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that
can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning
rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the
process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year
fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little
smaller. Even now, of course, there's

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