In the movie, INGSOC is the name of the political party of Oceana. All references on the internet refers to it as English Socialism, but the acronym starts with an "I" and not an "E". So what does the "I" stand for? Yes, I though it might stand for International, as in International Socialism, but then you still have that "G". Seems like it should be ENGSOC.
shareOrwell spelled it INGSOC in the book too. I don't know why. Maybe Newspeak always spells it "Inglish".
Orwell modelled Newspeak on Esperanto, which he hated for some reason. Esperanto uses phonetic spelling.
I didn't know that Orwell dabbled in Esperanto. Fits in though, a universal language to go along with a universal political system. Some research reveals that his enmity for Esperanto is in question. More likely he hated "Basic English" after initially promoting it. That's probably what Newspeak was intended to be. So yes, maybe Orwell assumed in his novel that Newspeak eliminated the letter combination "En" and replaced it with "In" since they sound so similar. . Don't know for sure, just guessing.
It's spelt that way because it's phonetic. The idea of newspeak is that it's moving towards the simplest, most logical possible language. Being phonetic is part of that, along with removal or irregularity (eg all superlatives and hyperlatives are formed the same way).
Doing so removes the colour (and hence the joy) from life. It's a major theme of the story.
Such is the quirky nature of language. The way we speak, read and write English in the 21st century would literally be Newspeak to someone who lived in England in the 11th century. That's due to the Great Vowel Shift:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
Today, we have text speak, which is not dissimilar to the corrupted English that George Orwell imagined with Newspeak. For example, in the TV series Outnumbered Pete Brockman, a history teacher, complained about one of his students writing an assignment in which Alexander the Great is lazily written as Alexander the Gr8.
That's an interesting revelation about the development of the English language, but the Great Vowel Shift doesn't explain the spelling of the acronym. The pronunciation shifted over time but not the spelling. Text speak does corrupt the language nowadays, and looks relevant but that is decades after "1984" was written. Having said though, despite the lack of mobile devices during Orwell's time, he must have witnessed corruptions of the English language and carried it over into his novel. For a while, he promoted Ogden's Basic English then turned against it, maybe for those very reasons - too many eliminations and restrictions. "En" sounds so similar to "In", why not just use "In" all the time. Those lazy texters sure do - just guessing.
I think "Ing" (rhyming with sing) would also have made the pronunciation of Ingsoc clearer to the reader. Some might think the prefix "Eng" sounds the same as the last four letters in "henge". There's no confusion or ambiguity with "Ing".
I have to admit, when reading the novel for the first time, I initially thought the word "Newspeak" was pronounced "news peak" rather than "new speak".
Fun fact: when the 20th century began, it was predicted that the letters c, x and q would disappear from the alphabet because phonetic spelling would make those letters obsolete. Where I live there is a photocopying and printing business call Kwik Kopy.
Fun fact: when the 20th century began, it was predicted that the letters c, x and q would disappear from the alphabet because phonetic spelling would make those letters obsolete.
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I read that 400 years ago, Shakespeare's contemporaries were already complaining that some letters were redundant, but nobody has done anything about it. And now the invention of ASCII ( assigning consecutive numbers to the letters for use inside computers) has probably frozen the alphabet.
It's hard to imagine the alphabet without a "c". How would people spell "church" phonetically?
shareHow would people spell "church" phonetically?
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Well, if they really wanted to do that, they could restrict "y" to consonant usages ("i" takes of vowel usage) and spell it tyurty. But I definitely wouldn't want to do that.
with a 't' and a 'j'?
Did you ever notice that people who believe in creationism look really un-evolved? - Bill Hicks
Shakespeare's contemporaries were already complaining that some letters were redundant