as a machine gun spraying forth bullets.
His training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost
foolproof instrument, and the texture of the words, with their harsh sound
and a certain wilful ugliness which was in accord with the spirit of
Ingsoc, assisted the process still further.
So did the fact of having very few words to choose from. Relative to
our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were
constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed, differed from most all other
languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year.
Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the
smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make
articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain
centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word
duckspeak, meaning 'to quack like a duck'. Like various other words in the
B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the
opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but
praise, and when the Times referred to one of