SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Replies, Rejoinders, Retorts, and Ripostes. A Letter from the Managing Editor. This month’s issue of Speculative Grammarian is full of the usual high quality content—what the kids these days refer to as awesome sauce, I do believe. This month’s sauce, though, is a special blend of old and new—a metaphorical fusion cuisine of updates, follow-ups, and responses to earlier works. In particular, our Letters Editor mentions our (alleged) colleague Al, rebuts an alleged nuclear linguist, and discusses Language Made Difficult, our witty and erudite wireless telesymposium—what the kids these days allegedly refer to as a podcast. Of course ... [ 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 ]

Speculative Grammarian’s Song. Mikael Thompson. I am the very model of a speculative grammarian, I take the meat of theory in and toss it out as carrion, I’ve read the latest Language and know all the strains linguistical, From Lakoff’s metaphorical to Fodor’s metaphysical. And aspect I can tell from tense and homophones from homonyms, And all the types of language use from wizened Noam’s to hairy Nim’s. From Pāṇini and Cratylus to cellular automata, (“Automata”? I shouldn’t ought to have said that. Ah ha!) I know the things I ought to know and several that I oughtn’t to. Applying optimality to issues of philology To show in every ... [ more ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CXCV, Number 3; February 2026, C HIEF C AT H ERDER &, A RBITER OF THE L AST W ORD, Trey Jones, O RDER OF THE, S PECULATIVE P SAMMETICOI, Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson, Tim Pulju, Bill Spruiell, Speculative Grammarian, Vol CXCV, No 3, H EAD OF L EARNING, L INGUISTICS T HROUGH, S ATIRE AND P UNS, Jonathan Downie, S YNTACTICO- P OET &, U NDER- E DITOR OF, U NDER- E DITING, Deak Kirkham, S ENIOR P UZZLING, T EST P ILOT, Vincent Fish, K EEPER OF THE, E DITORIAL T EA C ADDY, Pete Bleackley, A SSOCIATE D EPUTY, A SSISTANT S UB- M ANAGER, OF S ATIRICAL S UCCESS, Luca Dinu, O RTHOGRAPHER- A T- L ARGE, Daniel Swanson, D ILETTANTE E MERITUS, Tel ... [ 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 ]

A New Mechanism For Contact-Induced Change: Evidence From Maritime Languages. H.D. Onesimus, Gobi Institute of Maritime Linguistics, Lanzhou, China. Modern contact linguistics has demonstrated an impressive ability to account for language change and the emergence of new languages with a remarkably small number of mechanisms: bilingualism, creolization, borrowing, and convergence (also known as “smart drift”). However, a few intractable situations of language contact seemingly cannot be accounted for in terms of this elegant system (notable examples include Wutun, Ma’a and Texas English). In this article, I show how the long-standing problem of Penguin and the Cetacean languages reveals a new type of ... [ more ]

Don’t Baby That Baby, Baby. A Letter from the Editor-at-Bat, Butch McBastard. Despite the attempts by those who study the phenomenon to dress it up in jargon (“caretaker speech”), cutesiness (“motherese”), or TLAs (IDS/CDS—“infant-/child-directed speech”), baby talk is still baby talk, and frankly as a linguist I’m insulted that you think I’d fall for that kind of whitewashing of such a despicable practice. That’s right, I said it, baby talk is despicable. In addition to making one sound like a recent sufferer of ailuric prional exposure, it’s the kind of mollycoddling that has all but ruined several of the more recent generations ... [ 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 ]

I U Linguistics Club. Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. June 1978. ... i u linguistics club, edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... [ more ]

Quotes: What People are Saying. Here are a few of our favorite things people have said about Speculative Grammarian over the years, collected wild on the internet, or domesticated in email — Q1117. C’est sans doute un humour un peu ésotérique mais bon —Sémioticien du bisou — Q1116. Support the addition of the double-dot wide O to the IPA chart by buying some Speculative Grammarian merchandise! No, I’m not being sponsored or getting a commission from them. I just appreciate good geeky humour —Grace Teng — Q1115. Speculative Grammarian ist die erste Zeitschrift für satirische Linguistik. Kostenlos zugänglich, ein ... [ more ]

A Taxonomy of Argument Schemata in Metatheoretical Discussion of Syntax, or, Name That Tune. G.R.A.M.M.A.R.. At the Eighth Annual UWM Linguistics Symposium, the Conference on Current Approaches to Syntax (held March 15-17, 1979 at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), there was a special meta-presentation devoted to the nature of syntactic argumentation, or more properly to the types of metatheoretical argumentation involved in comparing theoretical approaches to syntax. In the interest of having a complete record of the conference, the Group for a Realistic Approach to Meta-Meta-Argumentation and Reasoning presents here a slightly revised version of the handout for the meta-presentation. Logical ... [ more ]

Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics. by Trey Jones. As a service to our young and impressionable readers who are considering pursuing a career in linguistics, Speculative Grammarian is pleased to provide the following Gedankenexperiment to help you understand the possibilities and consequences of doing so. For our old and bitter readers who are too far along in their careers to have any real hope of changing the eventual outcome, we provide the following as a cruel reminder of what might have been. Let the adventure begin ... [ more ]

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 Volume CXCIII, Number 3 Editor-in-Chief: Trey Jones; Executive Editors: Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson; Senior Editors: Jonathan Downie, Deak Kirkham; Contributing Editors: Pete Bleackley, Vincent Fish; Associate Editors: Luca Dinu, Yuval Wigderson, Daniel Swanson; Editorial Associates: Emily Davis, Andrew Lamont, Gabriel Lanyi, Daniela Müller, Steve Politzer-Ahles; Comptroller General: Joey Whitford; January 2024, ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXVII, Number 2 ... Trey Jones, Managing Editor, Keith Slater, Senior Editor, Bill Spruiell, Consulting Editor, Tim Pulju, Editor Emeritus; Associate Editors: Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Mikael Thompson, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Editorial Associates: Pete Bleackley, Florian Breit, Jonathan Downie, T.B. Geller, Adam Graham, Daniela Müller, David J. Peterson, Callum Robson; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Data is Optional; May 2013 ... [ more ]

In Retrospect.... A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. You have before you a Special Retrospective Issue of Speculative Grammarian. How did that happen?, Well, I said to myself one day, “Y’know, self, it’s a lot of hard work putting together an issue of SpecGram. I think we need a break. How about we just re-run a bunch of old articles and see if anyone notices?” And my self replied, “Gee, self, that doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. What about an issue highlighting some of the best articles from years gone by?” “Well, self, that would be a fine thing to do—but it doesn’t really address my goal of not having to do any ... [ more ]

Doing Fieldwork on Constructed Languages. By Curtis U. Lehder. As all linguists know, there are only about 6,000 languages left in the world today, and that number is shrinking rapidly. Constructed (or created or invented or planned) languages, on the other hand, number more than 128 trillion, according to conservative estimates, and more and more flower into existence each and every day.¹ Though up to now, formal linguists (or, at least, respectable formal linguists²) have largely ignored the works of language creators, it seems inevitable that at some point in time during the late 21st or early 22nd century, there will remain only one natural language (Lithuanian), while constructed languages ... [ more ]

Son of Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. IULC. November 1979. ... edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Son of, ^ Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... i u linguistics club, ... [ more ]

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