Excerpt: 1984

I have discovered proof that when my friend's son was three, he was reading literature in the middle of the night. Here's the proof:

In a discussion with his mother, she asked him, "What do you hear when I talk to you?" (The question was prompted by a lack of response when she was instructing him.)

His reply: quack, quack, quack.

There is only one place he could have gotten this answer. George Orwell's 1984. And I quote,

As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.

"There is a word in Newspeak," said Syme. "I don't know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise."

George Orwell, 1984, chapter 1 section V