Politics and the English Language (1946) Essay by George Orwell

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm ^ | 1946 | George Orwell

[WilliamofCarmichael]

The way it actually was in the Soviet Union:

"I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so."

The way it was described in the inflated style of progressives, pinkos, com-symps, commies, fellow-travelers of the 1940s and 1950s:

"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."

The way an employee of one of today's universities reacted to a recent book detailing the Soviet Union's crimes:

"Things just got out of hand."

[philman_36]

I had this old thing bookmarked and thought you might find it of interest given the other thread.

[Quix]

THANKS MUCH.

Angel-Gal . . . in your Clinton research . . . how much confirmation did you come up with . . . I don’t recall if it was Barbara Boxer or some other California Congressonal Commie . . . who said years before Klintoons took office that he was being groomed [understood in the conversation as a Communist] to take office as President.

What confirmation did you ever find for that reported assertion by the Congresswoman involved?

That’s essentially the process that landed OThuga in the White House, too.

[Quix]

THANKS THANKS

This thread linked below is documentation about

Obamma’s planned installment as President—planned at least as early as 1992 . . .

A software entrepreneur at an elite Russian dinner . . . was told by a rising woman Communist . . . the details of who “Barak” was . . . all proved true right down the line.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2732075/posts

The audio is tolerable to listen to . . . there is a text transcript later down the thread.

[metmom]

HOMESCHOOL PING

This ping list is for articles of interest to homeschoolers. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping List. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added or removed from either list, or both.

The keyword for the FREE REPUBLIC HOMESCHOOLERS’ FORUM is frhf.

This essay is a bit long, but well worth reading. I thought it would be of interest to homeschoolers considering the attention they pay to giving their children a quality education.

This was written over 60 years ago and is still applicable.

[Quix]

ABSOLUTELY INDEED.

[esquirette]

ungood.

[Alamo-Girl]

There were many dots which, when connected, suggested a pattern of Clinton being groomed.

Some of course would call the connecting of dots a conspiracy theory. But the only other way to see it would be as a list of bizarre and unrelated coincidences.

[Quix]

Ahhhh.

Thanks.

Who was the San Francisco area Congress woman who made that remark at a party?

What’s the name of the other one who’s now out . . . not Barbara Boxer but . . . she may have been black. It was one of the two of them.

No bother if it’s not on the top of your head, please.

[Alamo-Girl]

I don’t recall off the top of my head.

[B4Ranch]

Openly conceal and deceive. The sign of a true politician.

[Quix]

Some of course would call the connecting of dots a conspiracy theory. But the only other way to see it would be as a list of bizarre and unrelated coincidences.

What is so seemingly INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT for some FREEPERS in applying that VERY BASIC logic to so many of the geopolitical and National political forces and movements over the last 100 years and particularly since OThuga took office???

It seems like, from where I sit and have studied it for 45 years . . . the evidence is AT LEAST THAT ABUNDANT AND CLEAR about globalism/communism/socialism/oligarchic tyranny engulfing the world by deliberate design.

There is no longer excuse for using "theory" about it. It's been proven many hundreds of times over.

But even if it had not been proven--the thousands of "coincidences" are many trillions of light years beyond tooooo incredible for any sane person to claim that as an out.

Is THE TRUTH just too uncomfortable for even Christian Conservative FREEPERS to bear admitting to?

[Alamo-Girl]

I don’t think it is that the information is discomforting - but as we discussed before posters have different filters for what is acceptable evidence to them.

[okie01]

bookmark

[Quix]

Right. Right.

I don’t know if you still have this sort of thing in your ready access noggin, or not . . .

Pretend you are 75-80% finished compiling all the Clinton stuff . . .

Consider those Conservatives or at least moderates leaning conservative.

Those whatever small percentage who were more or less fair-minded to a fault. They were not yet convinced, when you started, that Clinton was near as bad as most of us were convinced he was.

In your interactions with such folks in your social network and on FR . . . At what point in your compiling all that data and sharing it . . . did a significant percentage of those super fair-minded folks begin to go . . .

UT-OH—HE’S A REAL SOCIALIST/COMMUNIST/RAPIST JERK

or some serious variation thereof?

When did their understanding and convictions tilt toward REALITY vs rosy or neutral fantasies about Clinton?

And what caused them to finally wake up?

Was it really the quality of the data?

Was it the mass of the data?

What was it?

[Cronos]

good joke:

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!

[Cronos]

On a serious note: with the setting up of a "standard English" which must never be departed from - this is what the French tried to do, with the result that French became too stratified and is losing ground because it doesn't change or adapt or adopt quickly enough. English on the contrary is gloriously messy and adapts and adopts multiple words from myriad languages. That is why it is still living while French is increasingly stratified.

The second point is that three changes have intensified the simplification of the English language:

1. Increased Americanisms, Australianism, Indianism etc. -- the language is breaking into various dialects, just as Latin did
2. The increasing use of Spanish in the US, leading to simplified Spanglish (Spanish is quite a simple language to pick up -- very few phonemes even compared to English which has few -- and grammatically simple to start).
3. The texting revolution leading to ever simplified spelling

Authors like PG Wodehouse or Arnold Bennett do have words many folks will not use normally or understand.

[Cronos]

I agree with the first being a mortal wound -- English is increasingly ambiguous

To give you one example -- the word sofa in English can have multiple translations in Polish (which drove me crazy) depending on whether it is a flat sofa, a foldable one etc. etc.). Sanskrit, from what I hear is mathematically correct and there are other options. If meaning inflation increases then the language may be abandoned for a more precise language.

[Cronos]

...ours is a mongrel language which started with a child's vocabulary of three hundred words, and now consists of two hundred and twenty-five thousand; the whole lot, with the exception of the original and legitimate three hundred, borrowed, stolen, smouched from every unwatched language under the sun, the spelling of each individual word of the lot locating the source of the theft and preserving the memory of the revered crime.

Twain was right on the spot...

[Cronos]

I like Orwell

Have you read "down and out in London and Paris"? I just started it and it is a good read.