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, 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 ]

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 Perplexed Linguist’s Guide to English Departments. Now with Footnotes! Athanasious Schadenpoodle. So, Dear Reader, you have completed your Ph.D. in Linguistics (yay you!), run headlong into the grim realities of the modern job market (poor you!), broadened your ideas about possible teaching contexts (smart you!) and landed a gig in an English department (lucky you?). You’ve potentially got the base of the Maslovian pyramid covered for at least a semester, but you’re in a rather alien environment, surrounded by people who talk funny in a way that Dialectology 501 never prepared you for and who have some markedly odd folkways. Some culture shock is inevitable, but a little knowledge can go a long ... [ 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 ]

Past Tense, Present Mood, Future Voice. A Letter from the Managing Editor. The past couple of months have been a rather tense time, here in the SpecGram offices. Especially August, when we published those two special monographs. Monograph authors can be troublesome. Their heads swell up and they think they are “hot snot on a silver platter” when they may be nothing more than “cold boogers on a paper plate” as we hear the kids are saying these days. Now, Rye and O’Shaughnessy were nice enough, and not too demanding. But Kaithe was over the top—demanding a personal dressing room and a big bowl of red M&Ms at every stop on the press junket. What a prima donna! But that is all ... [ more ]

Improving L2 Performance with Pirahã Shigudo_, and Simple English. The effects of syntactic and semantic priming on successful L2 communication. Jeannot Van Tricasse, Jules Verne University, Paris, France. As is well known, students of foreign languages are often frustrated by their lack of ability to express thoughts of normal complexity in the language they are studying.^{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10} This frustration can easily turn into a bitterness that leaves the student unable or unwilling to continue their language studies, even after a year or more of study.^{11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20} This is an unfortunate state of affairs for many reasons. Bilingualism has been implicated in ... [ more ]

Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome . Are you looking for a book about ancient Roman history that’s interesting, informative, and amusing? No? Oh. Well, all the same, as long as you’re on this webpage already, we’d like to recommend that you buy Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome. Easy to read, full of genuine historical facts, and adorned with amateurish hand-drawn pictures, The History of Rome is so good that even Girolamo Savonarola might hesitate to cast it into the flames. And best of all, it’s only $6.99! Buy one now! Interested, but wary of being burned by a slick advertising campaign for a product that fails to live up to the hype? Then download the free preview and read ... [ more ]

The Pragmatics of Noam Chomsky’s Menswear Criticism and Its Implications for Universal Grammar. P.G. McSim, Junior Research Fellow in Pragmatics, University of Arizona. On March 25th, 2016, Noam Chomsky and the journalist Glen Greenwald took part in an event at the University of Arizona. On greeting Greenwald, Chomsky said the following— You know, there’s this interesting essay by Albert Camus, written during his first visit to the United States, in which he described his surprise at what he regarded as the poor clothing taste of Americans, particularly men’s choices of ties. Somewhat surprised by this, Greenwald replied, “Are you sharing that anecdote because you dislike my tie?” to which ... [ more ]

The Prescriptivist Handbook, 213^th Edition, from The Editors of Psammeticus Press, Published 2024. 150 pages Word connoisseurs, language mavens, and members of similar non-professions everywhere can rejoice, as Psammeticus Press has just released the 213^th edition of The Prescriptivist Handbook, the acclaimed¹ language-adjacent publication used by millions worldwide. Since its first edition in 1811, The Prescriptivist Handbook has helped countless people prevent the degradation of the English language into senseless illogicality by introducing linguistic innovations to enable them to speak efficiently, logically, and (most importantly) correctly. Not only that, its various ... [ 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 ]

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 ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXIX, Number 4 ... Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Associate Editors: Pete Bleackley, Jonathan Downie, Mikael Thompson; Assistant Editors: Virginia Bouchard, Mark Mandel, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Florian Breit, Bethany Carlson, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Vincent Fish, Anita G. Gorman, Andrew Lamont, Tel Monks, Mary Shapiro, Bill Spruiell, Don Unger, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Evidence? We Don’t Need No Steenking Evidence!; October 2017 ... [ more ]

The Original Language of Winnie-the-Pooh. Aureliano Buendía, Universidad de Macondo. The text known in English as Winnie-the-Pooh occurs in dozens of different languages. Scholars have long debated the question of what was the original language of composition. One of the most popular hypotheses has been that the original text was written in English. The present paper will use textual evidence to demonstrate the impossibility of that hypothesis and to suggest a more likely candidate. Consider the following lines from the beginning of Chapter I in the English-language version. (1) ...here he is...ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh. When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to ... [ more ]

~~Linguimericks~~, Schwimmericks, Book ७६. With Guest Editors Ross and Rachel. As we worship the gods of the schwas We dance in a circle round fires; We bring central vowel gifts, Whose sacrifice lifts Our chant (‘[ ə ], [ ə ], [ ə ]!’) to the stars —Carly C. Cairns, A versatile grapheme is ⟨E⟩ Flip ⟨E⟩ round and it means “There must be.” Little ⟨e⟩’s heard in “bait” see But rotate ⟨e⟩ one-eighty, And it’s stress-free and placed centrally —Emily Davis, The best monophthong—and by far— Is not [i], [y], [e], [ ɔ ], [ ɪ ] or [a:] But the ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXXII, Number 1 ... Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Associate Editors: Pete Bleackley, Jonathan Downie, Mikael Thompson; Assistant Editors: Virginia Bouchard, Mark Mandel, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Florian Breit, Bethany Carlson, Emily Davis, Vincent Fish, Deak Kirkham, Ollie Sayeed, Mary Shapiro, Bill Spruiell, Steve Straight, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; A Big Fat “Meh” on the Great, Platonic Likert Scale in the Sky; July 2018 ... [ more ]

Vinegar Valentines. As Valentine’s Day rolls around once again, we at SpecGram recognize that not everyone has a special someone to spend the day with. Some people have no one; pity unto them. But the real losers on Valentine’s Day are those who have someone, just not someone who is particularly special. Whether it’s a creeper, a stalker, a jilted ex, or just a poor misguided soul who is a little too thick to take a hint, these Vinegar Valentines—a genre which rose to popularity in the late 19th century—will help you let them down, albeit none too gently. Click an image for higher resolution. ... [ more ]

Bilabial Angel of Mwah. Presented by, The Phreeee-Phinkin’ Philosophers of Philologogia, and The SpecGram Encyclopedia of Linguistic Deities . Recent archaeological scrapings around and scrabblings about in the Western Desert of Chx’reeb, New Mexico, have literally unearthed further evidence of the much-discussed and highly controversial¹ Bilabial Angel of Mwah, a spiritual figure who is purported to have played a central role in the development of ritual in and around the area of what is now New Mexico c.5654–5639 BCE. The trove² contains some ~~papyruses~~ ~~papyrae~~ bits of papyrus in the recently deciphered Linear Vitamin C³ include songs, ... [ more ]

Reasons Not to Study Linguistics— Part III. Compiled by Dyspepsia Prater and Cynnie Sizzum, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. Linguists, generally, try to encourage others’ interest in their field with enticements such as, “linguistics helps us understand the human condition” “every language provides a unique view of the mind” “linguistics empowers people” “you can work in translation, interpreting, foreign language teaching, the tech industry, fieldwork, etc.” Blah, blah, blah. You see, no matter how exciting a field seems, there’s someone out there who is sick and tired of putting up with it. Rather than promise nothing but ... [ more ]

Оrthоgraрhіc Perрlехer. Welcome to the Speculative Grammarian Оrthοɡrаphіс Ρerplехеr! This not-quite-pointless little tool will munge your text, randomly replacing some characters with homoglyphs that are nearly identical¹—or at least quite reasonably similar to the untrained eye. Why? To make text both very hard and very easy to find via normal search (try to find “οrthoɡrарhіс реrрleхer” on this page, for example); to confuse and amaze your friends and enemies alike;⁶ to pass the time in a ... [ more ]

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