SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

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 Merchandise. Introduction. In order to lend a hand to our good friends and steadfast supporters over at the Linguist List during their 2006 fund drive, we prepared a small selection of limited edition SpecGram merchandise, including T-shirts, stickers and magnets. Originally these items were only available as prizes awarded as part of the Linguist List fund drive. In 2012, several of the SpecGram editors suffered from a rare form of collective frontal lobe damage, which made it seem like a good idea to put together a SpecGram book. The result in 2013 was The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics. In 2014, Editor Mikael Thompson entered a deep fugue ... [ 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 CLXV, Number 4; October 2012, MANAGING EDITOR Trey Jones SENIOR EDITOR Keith Slater EDITOR EMERITUS Tim Pulju Speculative Grammarian, Vol CLXV, No 4 CONSULTING EDITORS David J. Peterson Bill Spruiell, ASSOCIATE EDITORS Madalena Cruz-Ferreira Daniela Müller Mikael Thompson, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES Cem Bozsahin Florian Breit Jonathan Downie Adam Graham Tel Monks Mary Pearce Callum Robson Mary Shapiro Sheri Wells-Jensen, COMPTROLLER GENERAL Joey Whitford Stop Voicing Now! ... [ more ]

Linguistic Contributions To The Formal Theory Of Big-Game Hunting¹. R. Mathiesen, Brown University. The Mathematical Theory of Big-Game Hunting must surely be ranked among the major scientific achievements of the twentieth century. That this is so is largely the work of one man, H. Pétard, in whose fundamental paper (1938) certain recent advances in mathematics and physics were employed with great skill to create a theory of unmatched—not to say unmatchable!—power and elegance. One must not, of course, dismiss Pétard’s predecessors totally out of hand: the field had a long and distinguished history as a technology, was raised to the rank of a science by the ... [ more ]

Dates in the Month of May that Are of Interest to Linguists. James D. McCawley, University of Chicago. (Note: May, the month in which Goodspeed day is celebrated, by recently established tradition, can be seen from the following to be a linguistically auspicious month), May 2, 1919. Baudouin de Courtenay concedes defeat in his bid for the presidency of Poland. May 3, 1955. Mouton & Co. discover how American libraries order books and scheme to cash in by starting several series of books on limericks. The person given charge of this project mishears and starts several series of books on linguistics. No one ever notices the mistake. May 5, 1403. The Great English Vowel Shift begins. Giles of Tottenham calls for ale at his ... [ more ]

An Excursus in Orthographic Cosmology and/or, Cosmological Orthography of the Babelverse, A Preliminary Report. Claudette von Helganschtein Searsplainpockets, and Helgi von Helganschtein Searsplainpockets, Principal Interns in Quantum Physicolinguistics, The Institute for Bibliotecababelology Ẍ enoörthographic Quasȉcosmogȍnич Keplȯπτολεμαοhawkinġian Ṕortulaṕonticular Ǣdificōcōnstrūctiōnæ — known colloquially, though inexactly, as “omnidimensional alphabridges” — are long- theorized but little- evidenced hypothetical, potential, side- effectual artefacts of high- speed wh- movement at lexico- quantum scale in environments of ... [ more ]

Hey Linguists!—Get Them to Get You a Copy of The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . Hey Linguists! Do you know why it is better to give than to receive? Because giving requires a lot more work! You have to know what someone likes, what someone wants, who someone is, to get them a proper, thoughtful gift. That sounds like a lot of work. No, wait. That’s not right. It’s actually more work to be the recipient—if you are going to do it right. You can’t just trust people to know what you like, what you want, who you are. You could try to help your loved ones understand a linguist’s needs and wants and desires—but ... [ more ]

Linguistic Topology. I. Juana Pelota-Grande, Centre den Geometrik Linguistiken . That many groups of human languages are sprung from some common source is obvious to any student of the subject, whether linguist, philologist, or polyglot. However, the detailed nature of these genetic relationships is often difficult to unambiguously determine--and likely the subject of heated debate. The impressive array of analytic methods brought to bear on the problem is a testament to the inherent difficulty of the task. However, one of the human species' most amazing tools for analysis--vision--has never been fully and properly applied to the problem. Language and vision are two towering pillars of ... [ more ]

Mix & Match ‖‖‖. by Max & Mitch Ninelette. The goal of this Mix & Match puzzle is to reconstitute a set of nine 9-letter words that have each had three bigrams removed. Below are two separate puzzles. Each includes a table to fill out and a set of bigrams with which to fill it up. Using each bigram once, fill the blanks in the table to form various nine-letter words. When you are done, three additional words will be revealed in the vertical direction for each puzzle. If you think you’ve figured out all the answers—that’s 24 nine-letter words!—submit your solution to the editors of SpecGram by December 15th, 2025. Solutions and solvers will be ... [ more ]

与工以口 - 尺口爪凡以 Keyboards. by Kien-Wei Tseng & Siva Kalyan. For those Windows and Macintosh users who can’t get enough of the Sino-Roman script, we are happy to provide Sino-Roman keyboards. A preview of the keyboard layout is shown below, and the archive with the keyboard installer for Windows and the archive with the keyboard bundle for Macintosh are ready for download. ... [ more ]

Rule. Metalleus. ...Let us now restate the above rather unwieldy sentences in terms of a more concise and perspicuous formalism, as in (4). (4), V → [+long] /, ... [X__C, 0, (, ... -, ant, +, cont, ₁<+, Italian>₁, ... CVC, 1, 0, 0, ... -, stress, -, tense, -, cons, -, voc, <+, NSF> ... ), ... <+Di> ... +Anglo-Frisian Brightening, -tense, -cons, ... -seg, < -rule 14, > 3, 3, ... <₁, >₂ [βstr], ... C₀ +ic, +id, +ish, (C₁, +, ... -str, V, ... C₀ [-cons], ... <NSP< VA, > 3, 3, ... #, ... [ more ]

The Joke’s on Us! Part II, A Review of Alleged Humour in SpecGram. Hugh Merrous, Joe King, and Belle E. Laffgh, Under-Department of Ostensibly Amused Readership. Speculative Grammarian’s Under-Department of Ostensibly Amused Readership was recently put under new section management, who immediately set about reviewing recent reader feedback on the perennial question of whether SpecGram is funny or not, and if it is, whether it is trying to be. This resulted in the following policy decision outcome: we need to do something to establish the humorous intentions and effects of SpecGram. Thus, in the long tradition of formulaic and predictable one-liners,^* ... [ more ]

Pseudo-Psiblings™ And Other Views of Multiply-Blended Families. A proposal for improving and clarifying family nomenclature for the 21st century. by Trey Jones. Introduction. Language evolves—otherwise we’d all be able to read Beowulf in the original, right? Sometimes language changes in response to cultural changes. But sometimes it doesn’t change fast enough to keep up with cultural changes. This paper seeks to give English a little push in a much-needed direction. There has been a fairly radical change in Western society in the last hundred years or so. It used to be that if a woman was on her fourth husband, one automatically felt a little sorry for ... [ more ]

You Have Two Cows.... by Beau Vign & Dogie Vheel, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. Many students of politics and economics are familiar with the “You have two cows...” series of satirical metaphors for various political and economic systems. The most commonly cited variations on the theme include the following: Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. Communism: You have two cows. You give them to the government and the government gives you some milk. Fascism: You have two cows. You give them to the government and the government sells you some milk. Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. These ... [ more ]

Διπλοῦν Ὁρῶσιν Οἱ Μαθόντες Γράμματα. A Letter from the Managing Editor. Fall¹ is in the air. Just as glorious color bursts forth outside our office windows, so do new ideas explode in the brains of our contributors. The astute² reader will have noticed the recrudescence³ of the excellent⁴ series, “Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know” over the last several issues. This is of course a cause for celebration.⁵ In addition to another fine installment of that series, this number contains ... [ more ]

In the 8th Circle. Found among the papers of Dante Alighieri by Gabriel Lanyi. Luogo è in inferno detto Malebolge. In the “evil pits” (malebolge) of the 8th circle of hell, alongside the bolgias of the panderers, seducers, flatterers, false prophets, hypocrites, evil counselors, simonists, counterfeits, and so on, Dante had planned to create a special ditch for the forgers of words, or the wordmongers. Recently discovered notes for Canto XXIII show that he intended to punish these unfortunate souls to forever keep eating the offensive words they have invented, throw them back up into their laps, and eat them again, to the obscene laughter and ridicule of malicious little devils ... [ more ]

PAID ADVERTISEMENT — http://SpecGram.com/PaniniPress New from Panini Press! . Word Problems for Linguists ❦पा by Barbara Millicent Roberts, Ph.D. Department of Applied Mathematical Linguistics Handler University Published 2025. 194 pg. Linguists! You’ve spent years dissecting syntax trees, contemplating the very origin of language itself, and arguing about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or the Voynich manuscript with clueless neckbeards online—safe in the knowledge that you’d never again have to do anything more mathematically complicated than figure out the tip on your dinner bill—and if you have tenure, you don’t even have to do ... [ more ]

Call for Volunteers. Unfortunately, SpecGram is ceasing publication in late 2025, so we will no longer be needing any new volunteer editors. If you’d like to help out your favorite journal of satirical linguistics, you can join us! Volunteer Editors: We’re always looking to expand the rolls of our editorial board. Duties include proofreading new issues before they are published, advising the senior editors on various projects, contributing to collaborative articles, and even suggesting ideas for articles or projects. There’s no specific required level of participation, but it’d be great if you had time to proofread most new issues during the the last week of the month. Rewards include membership ... [ more ]

Evidential Complexity and Language Loss in Pinnacle Sherpa. Keith Slater¹, Lanzhou, China. Abstract In this paper I describe an unprecedented situation of language loss: that which is found in Pinnacle Sherpa. The language has been completely lost by the oldest and middle-aged segments of the population, but is strongly maintained by the young. The loss is due to exponential increases in the complexity of the Pinnacle Sherpa evidential system, which have rendered older speakers unable to adequately indicate the source of information in their utterances. Pinnacle Sherpa, a Bodic language of Nepal, has not been described before. Over the past couple of years, bored with my day job, I have been conducting ... [ more ]

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