Nineteen Eighty-Four
| Pronunciation | /ˈo |
|---|---|
| Usage | 2023: Obscure (5% → ) Most speakers don't understand this word.2022: Obscure (5%)
|
| Book and era | No book (post-pu) |
| Part of speech | Content word |
Nineteen Eighty-Four or 1984 is a dystopian novel by George Orwell. In the book, a totalitarian surveillance superstate enforces Newspeak, a simplified controlled language with a limited vocabulary, to suppress free and critical thinking.
Hasty comparisons to 1984 are very common, to the point that a nimisin, owe, has been coined to joke about it. Whether Newspeak portrays government propaganda realistically in the first place is debatable. The strong Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is generally discredited, and Toki Pona calls into question whether a language can be used to constrain expression.
Differences between Toki Pona and Newspeak
- Toki Pona is learned by choice, not by force. It is meant for self-control, not controlling others. It is specialized and is not an IAL, so it is not meant to displace any other language. The Toki Pona community does not support raising a child as a Toki Pona monolingual, considering this language deprivation.
- While Toki Pona is designed to reflect a certain ideology, it is possible to speak in ways that are incongruous with it. The ideology also has no political goal, and is not authoritarian.
- Newspeak has a continually diminishing vocabulary. Toki Pona's vocabulary has expanded since the publication of Toki Pona: The Language of Good. Words made and revived by the community have entered widespread use. 17 such words, the nimi ku suli, are officially endorsed in Toki Pona Dictionary.
- Words "that could be dispensed with" are removed from Newspeak. Toki Pona has many redundant words, including antonyms: ike ("bad") instead of pona ala ("ungood"). Styles of Toki Pona that experiment with removing words are generally not motivated by minimizing redundancy.
- Newspeak words have "rigid", "exact and often very subtle" semantic spaces. Most Toki Pona content words are extremely broad in meaning, covering physical and abstract concepts, and so are able to express various shades of meaning depending on context. The goal is to express as much of universal human experience as possible in a low amount of words. With enough practice and effort, you can say anything in Toki Pona.
- Newspeak is famous for compound words with fixed meanings. Toki Pona tries to avoid letting phrases solidify like this. Where Newspeak narrows meaning down, Toki Pona allows a combinatorial explosion of meaning.
- It is trivial, and perfectly allowed, to construct Toki Pona phrases that contradict Ingsoc orthodoxy. nasin pi lawa ma li ken ike. "The way of a government can be bad." sona ala li wawa ala. "Ignorance is not strength."
- Toki Pona encourages critical thinking because of its limitations. To discuss something well, you must understand it well and figure out an informative way to describe it. This provides new insights and makes it clear when there is an opportunity to learn more about the world.
- By giving practice with circumlocution, Toki Pona can improve your faculty with other languages, rather than erode it. This makes it easier to define terms, and to give descriptions in place of unknown or forgotten terms.
- In Newspeak, many words and phrases mean the opposite of what they appear. Toki Pona tries to draw attention to apparent contradictions and encourage speakers to investigate them more deeply. For example, translating "bad friend" as jan pona ike ("bad good person") could motivate you to rethink a friendship. utala li utala ala ("War is peace") would have a similar effect.
- Toki Pona avoids euphemism. The English "downsized for profitability" might be rendered lawa esun li wile awen jo e mani mute li weka e jan mute ("The head of the business wanted to keep having a lot of money and removed a lot of people"; "mass firing for greed"). Even if you do find a way around saying what you mean directly, it may be considered rude.