this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2025
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There are no extant recordings of George Orwell's voice
Also, the word doublespeak isn't from Orwell. In Nineteen Eighty-Four he used the term Newspeak, meaning a sort of clipped form of language designed to limit expression of thought, and doublethink, the practice of holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time and believing both to be true, but he never used the word doublespeak.
Interestingly though, it actually predates Nineteen Eighty-Four, but nobody really knows who coined it exactly.
Newspeak was inspired by Esperanto, because George Orwell had an annoying Esperantist roommate. "bad" in Esperanto is "malbone," literally "un-good." "terrible" in Esperanto is "malbonege," literally "very ungood."
Also Esperanto at the time was hoped to be the universal second language of the working class. That did not mean esperantists were any less annoying then though
they meant well! honestly Esperanto has a really positive community, even still. but I can see how it'd get on someone's nerves.