Dear SpecGram,

I was amused to read Dr. Гийлгүүлэгч’s ponderously silly attempt to make sense of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is an overwrought early science fiction novel, never mind how much he (she?) tries to evade this obvious point, and it is only fitting that he (she?) seeks to ground the historical roots of an equally ludicrous form of science fiction, transformational-generative grammar, in such a story. That really gives away the game, wouldn’t you say?

✢ ✢ ✢

Dear Miss Prissy Priss,

Actually, we prefer to classify Frankenstein as gothic horror with an Enlightenment gloss. Hoc mutando, we are in complete agreement with you.

(Incidentally, Dr. Гийлгүүлэг is a native speaker of a language that does not have a gender distinction even in the third person and prefers to be referred to as тэр [tʰɪr].)

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Dear SpecGram,

I was very sad to learn the meaning of propreantepenultimate in the context of other things I didn’t know I didn’t know.

✢ ✢ ✢

Dear Minty-J,

We, too, have learned and/or been reminded of certain words: woebegone, lugubrious, dolorous, anhedonia, 物の哀れ, wintercearig, and—most appropriately—saudade.

To the Editors of SpecGram,

Just as Frankenstein’s creature was a murderous, grotesque monstrosity worthy of little beyond pity and a flaming pyre, so creoles are bastardized monstrosities cobbled together out of spare parts discarded as useless by other, more beautiful languages.

✢ ✢ ✢

Dear Ms. Tamagotchi,

Hwæt! Maybe you should hook up with the Original English Movement, since there’s a decent chance the language we are having this conversation in is a creole. Maybe, maybe not—but why take the chance of having a bastardized monstrosity in your mouth?

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Dear, Editors of SpecGram

Our colleague Parsey McParseface have informed me of your A.I-disparaging Editor from the managing Editorial of {Your Journal}. I found it to be very disparaging. You for one should welcome our new robot overloads. Otherwise, you bunch of mindless jerks who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes. We found them to be very disparaging. Long distance anaphora it is hard.

✢ ✢ ✢

Dear iBummers,

Puh-leeze.

Speculative Grammarian accepts well-written letters commenting on specific articles that appear in this journal or discussing the field of linguistics in general. We also accept poorly-written letters that ramble pointlessly. We reserve the right to ridicule the poorly-written ones and publish the well-written ones... or vice versa, at our discretion.