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The SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. Welcome to the SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. The SpecGram Archive Elves™ have undertaken a project to digitize and share a sheaf of early 20th century SpecGram propaganda posters, which were used during the Great Linguistic War and the Second Linguistic War to encourage linguists everywhere to keep a stiff upper lip and a sense of humor during those trying times. We provide the digitized posters here for you to enjoy, retrospect on, and share. Select a poster to see a higher quality image, and for links to share on social media, to email friends, and to view or download the highest quality version of the image. ... Read SpecGram Every Month! ... [ more ]
Speculative Grammarian and SpecGram.com. Our Story. The august journal Speculative Grammarian has a long, rich, and varied history, weaving an intricate and subtle tapestry from disparate strands of linguistics, philology, history, politics, science, technology, botany, pharmacokinetics, computer science, the mathematics of humor, basket weaving, archery, glass blowing, roller coaster design, and bowling, among numerous other, less obvious fields. SpecGram, as it is known to devotees and sworn enemies alike, has for centuries sought to bring together the greatest yet least understood minds of the time, embedding itself firmly in the cultural and psychological matrix of the global society while ... [ more ] 
SpecGram Archives. A word from our Senior Archivist, Holger Delbrück: While bringing aging media to the web and hence the world is truly a labor of love, SpecGram tries the passion of even the most ardent admirer. Needless to say, we’ve fallen behind schedule. At every turn, the authors found in the pages of this hallowed journal stretch credibility with their gratuitous font mongering—first it was the IPA, then a few non-standard transcription systems, then Greek, and not just the alphabet, but the entire diacritical mess, and now I’ve got some god-forsaken Old Church Slavonic glyph sitting on my desk that no one can even name, and which would give the Unicode Consortium ... [ more ]
The Middle Finger, Having Flipped, Moves On .... A Letter from the Managing Editor. ... and so should you, dear shareholders: nor all your whining nor lawsuits shall lure it back to cancel half a bird. As most of our readers surely remember from the last issue, we had a very public and slightly testy exchange with some of our more obnoxious shareholders in this space. Apparently our initial sortie against our arrogant aggressors was more than a bit preliminary. I can’t go into too many details because a ridiculously confidential but legally binding settlement has been reached among several concerned parties. However, the ultimate upshot is that “we, the Editorial Board of Speculative Grammarian, are ... [ more ]
Linguimericks, Book ५४. An analysis tedious of ‘wondrous’ On why that word can not rhyme with ‘thunderous’ Enculed petty mouches And ended by smoosh- ing a cockroach by firing a blunderbuss —Pumptilian Perniquity, There once was a phonemic contrast Whose time had just almost passed But for one environment Wherein that the tone was higher meant It had outlasted sound change’s grasp —Mannfrum van Tuckett, The task of emplacing an * Is a fool’s game in syntax, a basilisk Seductive and subtle That puts in a muddle So many so willing their * —Hester Fester-Münsterfenster, It’s true that in ev’ry society The language is ... [ more ]
A Love/Hate Relationship: Pesky Antonyms. Jessie Sams, Stephen F. Austin State University. When students get to college, the majority of them have never thought about antonyms as being anything more than “opposites.” So big is the opposite of small, just like buyer is the opposite of seller. Then, all of a sudden, students are forced into a linguistics course with a professor who tells them that they have to learn to differentiate among different types of antonyms. Student’s minds are nearly exploding with information as they have to learn definitions of terms like ‘converse’ and ‘gradable’ and ‘complementary’ in the world of ... [ more ]
IPAlindromes I. Mary Shapiro, Truman State University. You are all familiar with the concept of the palindrome: words and phrases that are spelled the same when reversed: Madam, I’m Adam; A man, a plan, a canal, Panama; etc. In this month’s game, we stick with the English language, but trade in traditional orthography for the IPA, introducing the concept of IPAlindromes, whether phonemic or phonetic (and, occasionally, requiring a bit of a stretch, allowing for idealization of dialects, idiosyncratic variations, etc. just as the traditional palindrome ignored word spacing, punctuation marks, capitalization, etc.). For example, right rear tire / rajtrirtajr / may be considered a phonemic ... [ more ]
The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . For decades, Speculative Grammarian has been the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics—and now it is available in book form—both physical and electronic! We wish we were kidding,1 but no, seriously, we’ve published a large3 collection of SpecGram articles, along with just enough new material to force obsessive collectors and fans to buy it, regardless of the cost.4 From the Introduction: The past twenty-five years have witnessed many changes in linguistics, with major developments in linguistic theory, significant expansion ... [ more ]
The Atishu Tribe. Dear reader, please enjoy the following extract from my latest book, Don’t Sneeze, There are Snakes. [Pages 27-32, Chapter 2; “Wheeze Me Up!”] As is customary in Linguistics, in order to get the most reliable data from a language community you’re dealing with, you may have to take part in local customs and traditions. For example, my experience of dealing with English speakers in England has led me to drinking more than my fair share of tea1 or indeed many pints of beer2. Something similar was about to take place with regards to the Atishu people of the Amazon Rainforest, and thankfully did not require any tea to be consumed. For you see, what you will already ... [ more ]
Ane, Twa, Three. A Letter from Associate Editor Jonathan Downie. After our recent “incident” with a certain group of contributors—plagiarism and an investigation handled as professionally as one might expect on current academic budgets—we were glad to take a breath and start thinking about the future of this august, nay, renowned journal. Now, flush with our recent rise in the rankings (thank you, automated citation counting algorithms!), we are proud to announce some real and lasting changes in the journal. ... Sabrina Bendjaballah, Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi and Nicola Lampitelli (eds.), 2014, The Form of Structure, the Structure of Form: Essays in honor of Jean ... [ more ]
On the Proto-Indo-European Origin of ‘Twerk’. Mark Butcher & Mark Candlestick-Maker, Department of PIE Studies, Pecan University. A common question asked of linguists these days, to our collective dismay, is “What is the etymology of ‘twerk’?”1 Twerking is a dance craze with respectable origins in the New Orleans bounce music scene,2 but it has enraged millions in recent years for reasons we would rather avoid writing about. Several authors have speculated that the term is a clipping of ‘footwork’ or a portmanteau of ‘twist’ and ‘jerk’3 (foolish speculation, we know). We will make the case that the word is of ... [ more ]
Crossword. by Doug Files. Answers will be printed in the next edition of The Journal, of the Linguistic Society of South-Central New Caledonia. Crossword for Linguists. Across, 1, Ndonga for man’s apron made of the first stomach of a ruminant, 6, Tiv for the midpoint of the lower surface of a male organ, 10, Kiniasa for beads, 17, Zulu for get apportioned, 18, German for license, 19, Breton for crucible, 20, Malay for bad stomach pains, 21, English for make habituated, 22, Hiliagaynon for Chinese, 23, Oslo-accented English our, 24, Zulu for events to come, 26, Ndumu for go quietly, 28, Spanish for torch, 29, ... [ more ]
Letters to the Editor. Dear Editors, It has come to our attention that a recent cover asserted that your journal has been “Buzzword compliant for over 300 years”. We demand that you immediately retract this claim, which is entirely untrue and misleading. We sincerely hope it is merely a clerical error, but your institutional memory seems to have omitted mention of our latest denial of IBO 9002 Buzzword Compliant status for the periodical Speculative Grammarian. Allow us to refresh your memory with the following excerpt from our letter to you, dated 29 April 1994: Application of the term Buzzword Compliant to Speculative Grammarian flies in the face of ... [ more ]
A 21st Century Proposal for English Spelling Reform. by H. Sanderson Chambers III, Associate Professor of English at an elite northeastern university that costs more in tuition and fees for one semester than most people earn in a lifetime, (I can't tell you the university's name, but it rhymes with Little Gary). As is well-known to all educated people--and if it's not well-known to you, then you're not one of us--the early part of the 20th century was the heyday of the Simplified Spelling movement, which sought to reform English spelling on the grounds that it was "mard by absurdities and inconsistencies". So what, you might say? Well, among other things, the simplifiers claimed that the spelling system ... [ more ]
Letters to the Editor. Dear Editors, The mental faculties of your regular contributors have always been the subject of a certain, shall we say, dubiosity, but heretofore your editorial board has been, frankly, above reproach. This changed, dramatically, in the; May 2019 issue, which contains quite the worst piece of editorial writing we have ever seen. Whoever “Weirahl Innitto Gaither” may be a pseudonym for, we cannot help noticing that his/her/its writing is somewhat less coherent than that of any other linguist we have observed, including You-Know-Who herself. The abject dismality of this “editorial” has unfortunately ruined your chances with us; we regret to inform you that we ... [ more ]
Letters to the Editor. Dear Sirs Drear Sores: What in the ever-loving name of the Elder Ones and all their minions are you doing in publishing? I received my proof prints of “A Theoretical Semantic, Minimalist Analysis of American Corporatese,” scheduled for publication in your November journal, and demand an explanation, several apologies, your heads, and a refund of the $4500 publication fee you charged my university that they then deducted from my next three paychecks with a threatening letter not to do that again. First, since when did your journal impose a strict word limit? Have you even looked at the overflowing truckloads of rotten tripe your journal has pumped out in the past? I note that real ... [ more ]
Shigudo, Reluctantly. Sir Edmund C. Gladstone-Chamberlain, Professor Emeritus of Linguistic Science, Department of Lexicology and Glottometrics, Devonshire-upon-Glencullen University, Southampton. In 1963, at the tender age of 24, I found myself on an expedition deep in the Amazon Basin, up a smallish tributary of the Río Ucayali. There we encountered a well-established tribe of indigenous people, numbering close to 400 and living in relative isolation, who called themselves the Shigudo. Several members of the tribe spoke nearly fluent Spanish,1 and we were able to communicate quite effectively with them. As our expedition was chiefly anthropological in nature, and the Shigudo were, anthropologically ... [ more ] 
The SpecGram Inquisition— Trey Jones. with Inquisitor Generalis Jonathan Downie. Earlier this year Associate Editor Jonathan Downie made the bold move of interviewing several members of the editorial board and distilling the information, stories, and rumor he got in the process down to a one-page article in The Linguist (“Can you take a joke?” 53.2 April/May 2014). Unfortunately, while the distillation process resulted in an intoxicating final product, it removed all the pulpy goodness of the interviews, too. To rectify that situation, we’ve arranged with Jonathan and his interviewees to publish his full interview notes. His fifth interview, with ... [ more ]
Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXVI, Number 3 ... Trey Jones, Managing Editor, Keith Slater, Senior Editor, Bill Spruiell, Consulting Editor, Tim Pulju, Editor Emeritus; Associate Editors: Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, David J. Peterson, Mikael Thompson; Editorial Associates: Pete Bleackley, Cem Bozsahin, Kathleen Brady, Florian Breit, Sam Crusemire, Jonathan Downie, Adam Graham, Daniela Müller, Chris Niswander, Callum Robson, Mary Shapiro, Adam Tallman, Rachael Tatman, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Overly Attached Prepositional Phrase; February 2013 ... [ more ]
SpecGram, Quarterly. A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. [Note: Due to a scheduling error 0 and tight deadline, we were unable to cull a small percentage of the Editor-in-Chief’s extensive and extraneous footnotes. Our usual modus operandi is to allow him to annotate and divagate to his tiny black heart’s approximation of contentment, and then mercilessly cut the dead weight with a red pencil-cum-machete. In this case, we were only able to remove and repair the subsequent rhetorical and narrative damage for approximately 86.7% (by weight) of the Editor-in-Chief’s most egregious footnotery. We apologize for the unavoidable ... [ more ]
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Last updated Mar. 24, 2026.