Abbreviated

It's been so long I almost forgot my login details.

Anyway.

Last month I finished both Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell (oy vey, so bleak! Orwell must be so much fun at parties). What I found most interesting was the appendix in 1984, detailing the grammar and structure of Newspeak, the language used by the fictional government of Oceania. I was especially intrigued by what Orwell wrote about the use of abbreviations in Newspeak, saying "...it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop." This particular passage is most interesting to me:

It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words Communist International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily recognized, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth.

It reminded me of the time I was in Balik Pulau when the kids there would abbreviate certain words. Someone who keeps his emotions in check is "con", short for "control" while someone who is always bringing attention to himself is "mencapub", short for "mencari publisiti". I think this is not unique to the kids in Balik Pulau, I believe it's widespread throughout the schools in all over the country. In fact, I remember one of my Gombak cousins referring to her school as "Semenkeb", short for Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan.

I guess for the kids, they just wanted to create a language of their own, something that belongs to them, one that the adults wouldn't understand. It's true that by shortening the words, they become something completely different, the meaning is altered somewhat, it becomes something almost frivolous and less important. I thought they abbreviated wherever they can so as to speed up their conversations, a shorthand of sorts, and this is probably useful now in the age of text messaging, but I guess it's also so they don't really have to think about the importance of the meaning behind the words they're saying.

One of my sister's first observation of Indonesia was how they too like to abbreviate proper names, one of which I remember most being "TimTim" for Timur Timur. Sure enough, this is mentioned in the Newspeak entry in Wikipedia:

On July 5, 1959 President Sukarno of Indonesia abolished parliamentary democracy and established a system of government-by-decree called Manifesto Politik or in short Manipol - an abbreviation greatly reminiscent of those in Orwell's book, though there is no evidence that Sukarno read the book or was directly influenced by it. In a similar way, the Indonesian term "Tapol" (political prisoner) - first used as a derogatory word by the authorities, later adopted as a term of pride by the "tapols" themselves - was created from the first syllables of "prisoner" and "political".

I guess the sole aim of abbreviating words, other than for the sake of brevity, is so you don't really have to think of what you're saying, or others who are listening, don't have time to dwell on the gravity of each word. Everything's fastfastfast and the words are no longer words, but mere letters.