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1. Vol CXCV, No 3 (23 visits)

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 ]


2. Archives (22 visits)

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 ]


3. Nunavut Bans Twitter—SpecGram Wire Services (21 visits)

Nunavut Bans Twitter. SpecGram Wire Services. In a move that has shocked the world, the Canadian territory of Nunavut has banned the social network Twitter. A spokesperson for the Nunavut government, explaining the ban, said, “Look, we’re all in favour of free speech, but face facts. Twitter simply isn’t compatible with Inuit culture. How are we supposed to say Tai­mai­lauq­si­ma­ju­tu­qa­luu­lauq­si­ma­ju­tut­qa­lu­juu­in­i­u­li­q&ua­i­aas­it,1 or ... [ more ]


4. Merchandise (16 visits)

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 ]


5. Vol CLXV, No 4 (15 visits)

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 ]


6. Cull Those Writers! The Lines Are Open!—SpecGram Management Executive Group (SMEG) (11 visits)

Cull Those Writers! The Lines Are Open!. SpecGram, as readers will know, attracts an immense degree of interest. Adverts for unpaid interns often attract many hundreds of applications for only a handful of places. And when it comes to competition for staff writer positions, it’s another world. So, blessed as we are with fame and global recognition, it does mean that we’re often overstaffed—and that consequently we do sometimes need to shed some of the writerly dead weight that may have accumulated. “Dead weight!?” we hear you cry. Apart from the delightfully metaphorical nature of both collocates in the phrase, it is, we admit, a surprise that so streamlined an operation as ... [ more ]


7. Foreign Policy Recommendations for a Brighter Linguistics Future—M. Hadrian Thumpsem et al. (10 visits)

Foreign Policy Recommendations for a Brighter Linguistics Future. by M. Hadrian Thumpsem, Tang Maike, and Vicces Mehély. Linguistics currently faces a bleak future of funding cuts and glutted job markets. While many remedies have been proposed, all these nostrums are doomed to fail because they incorporate misguided humanitarian ideals. Linguists must remember that it is good intentions which pave the road to self-imposed poverty. There are certain facts we must accept forthrightly if the linguistic enterprise is to flourish. Linguistics produces nothing, not even a marketable service. Does any serious reader not believe linguistics would collapse overnight if it weren't firmly lodged in academia? Yet would any of us ... [ more ]


8. Cartoon Theories of Linguistics—Part IV—Statistical Machine Translation—Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. (10 visits)

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part IV — Statistical Machine Translation. Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. We will dispense with the preliminaries, and get to the meat of the matter. For the next installment in our Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, we will turn our attention to statistical machine translation, using semi- automatically aligned texts: ... Next time: Phonetics vs. Phonology with guest cartoonist Hilário Parenchyma. References, Booth, A. D. L. Brandwood, and J. P. Cleave (1958). Mechanical resolution of linguistic problems. Butterworths Scientific Publications. Brown, P. S. Della Pietra, V. Della Pietra, and R. Mercer (1991). “The ... [ more ] Book!


9. Letters to the Editor (CLXIV.2) (9 visits)

Letters to the Editor. To the Editors: Primitives Are Not Primitive, A position statement The analysis of linguistic structures at all levels, the phonological, the syntactic, the semantic and perhaps some minor others, potentially less important ones I am unaware of, commonly leads to the discovery, description and definition of ever smaller indivisible units that are claimed to make up the constructions of language, speech, discourse and text. These units are usually referred to as “primitives”. I’d like to argue that this labelling carries a condescending connotation that does no justice to the elements so fundamental to our analyses. Indeed, the Concise OED defines ‘primitive’ as: ... [ more ]


10. Letters to the Editor (CLXIV.3) (9 visits)

Letters to the Editor. Madam, I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to our sister in arms Lea Kim Shopmont, for her lucid Notes on Sociophonology, and to yourself, for publishing this piece. It is a rare privilege to be allowed to read like-minded observations on this most vexing issue of grammatical and phonological sexism. On the specific matter of vowel height correlating with social standing, I wish to confirm my esteemed colleague’s suspicion that only primitive societies will eschew phonemic justice. My own research reveals that Scandinavian countries, reputed for their absence of overt sex demarcations, have predictably succeeded in eradicating patriarchal vocalic iniquity from their languages. In ... [ more ]


11. Questioning Answers—A Letter from the Executive Editor (8 visits)

Questioning Answers. A Letter from the Executive Editor. Dear Readers, Here in the editorial chambers of SpecGram we have often debated the age-old questions: is syntax more basic than discourse, or the other way around; why does phonology work so well when reduced to hyper-simplistic binary contrasts; and are you more likely to get tenure by documenting how people talk in some language or by talking about language documentation?, ... Tobias Roth, 2014, Wortverbindungen und Verbindungen von Wörtern, Narr Dr. Gunter. Chiasmus of the Month; May 2014, The answers to these questions are either exhilarating or depressing, depending on whether or not you’ve just spent an entire day trying to ... [ more ]


12. As to Phronology—Skippy Id (8 visits)

As to Phronology. Many years ago, in places not that far away, many people believed in the "science" of phrenology, through which one could discern many things about one's patient's personality by examining the bumps on their head. Quite a silly idea to be sure, phrenology has gone the way of the great lizards. In more recent years, there has come upon the scene the "science" of phonology, through which one hopes to find something out by pushing around symbols on a piece of paper that allegedly stand for sounds. To quote Gary Bruff, the eminent discourse pragmaticist, out of context: "Clever. Wrong, but very clever." Much as the lumpiness of the head tells the true scientist nothing of the disposition of the lumpy subject, ... [ more ]


13. Preliminary Report on B—, one of the Tantric languages of Hm-hmumble-rsia—Freya Shipley (8 visits)

Preliminary Report on B— one of the Tantric languages of Hm-hmumble-rsia. B— is a non-Outdoor European language, closely related to D— T— and G—. Together with Professors Jim Matisoff and Charles Li, I have been engaged in nonstop field research on B— for the past thirty-eight years. We are now in a position to hint at a suggestion of a tentative report on our earliest preliminary findings. Detailed and Highly Technical Phonetic Overview. Stop consonants show delayed release. Delayed release is what the Tantric languages are all about. You put your tongue on your alveolar ridge, say, and you just leave it there. The seasons change. Children grow up. Do you ever release it? ... [ more ]


14. Letters to the Editor (CLXXXV.3) (8 visits)

Letters to the Editor. Dear Most Honored Sirs and Ma’ams, I was quite pleased with the positional symbolism of the letters in your latest issue. The placement of the bubbly lightness of the wugs bubbling lightly to the top combines deliciously with the four-square squareness of the discussion of matrices belying the crookedness of the subtext, and its placement cattycorner from other crookedness emphasizes the crookedness that underlies all human endeavor; while the placement of the discussion of trees, with the Canadian on the left and the Texan on the right, as so often holds, is fittingly at the bottom, symbolizing the foundational importance of trees to both linguistics and the ecosystem, and even to the paper ... [ more ]


15. The Noises of Belchburper von Chufflenuffle—Noise #37: ‘Aaaaaaaaah’ (8 visits)

The Noises of Belchburper von Chufflenuffle. Noise #37: ‘Aaaaaaaaah’. In this bespoke series, Adjunct Professor of Phonetic Paralinguality, Belchburper von Chufflenuffle, examines the communicative and linguistic significance of that often overlooked type of sound, the paralinguistic noise. This month: ‘Aaaaaaaaah!’ as in ‘That’s a lovely cup of tea!’. Human beings are genetically wired to sit back and relax. In fact, some of them are hard-wired to do nothing but sit back and relax (among them managers, politicians, TEFL teachers and sociolinguists). It is this inherent tendency, which is part of the long evolutionary development of homo sapiens, intertwined with ... [ more ]


16. Ministry of Propaganda (8 visits)

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 ]


17. The Topology of Syntax—Iain A. Plicable (8 visits)

The Topology of Syntax. Iain A. Plicable, Lecturer in Mathematical Linguistics, University of Ledworth. A key theorem of Universal Grammar is that lines do not cross in tree diagrams. However, critics of Universal Grammar challenge even such a basic result as this on the basis of sentences such as the following, taken from Virgil’s Eclogues: ultima, Adj.F.S.Nom, last Cumaei, Adj.M.S.Gen, Cumean venit, V.3.S.Pres, come iam, Adv, now carminis, N.M.S.Gen, song aetas, N.F.S.Nom, age, “Now the last age of Cumaean song comes.” ... Figure 1: An invalid tree diagram, Leaving aside the fact that such forays into historical linguistics tell us nothing about the ... [ more ]


18. The Hidden Language of Public Seduction—An Anthropological Linguistic Study of Spanyol—Claude Searsplainpockets (5 visits)

Speculative Grammarian is proud to present yet another installment of indeterminate regularity in the Linguistic Anthropologic Monograph Endowment’s Bizarre Grammars of the World Series. The Hidden Language of Public Seduction. An Anthropological Linguistic Study of Spanyol0. Bizarre Grammars of the World, Vol. 60, Introduction. Earlier this year, in preparation for fieldwork in Mozambique, Chad, and Japan, I decided to review some Spanish-language pedagogical audio materials (Cash 2007). As I was listening intently and re-acquainting myself with this beautiful language, I was quite surprised to hear many seemingly innocuous phrases presented with a tone of voice that ... [ more ] Podcast! Book!


19. Change A Little, Change A Lot Challenge—An Orthographophonetical Puzzle—Ulfheðnar ber Sarkur & The SpecGram Überlinguistaffen (4 visits)

Change A Little, Change A Lot Challenge. An Orthographo­phonetical Puzzle. Ulfheðnar ber Sarkur &, The SpecGram Überlinguistaffen. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They cannot spell it because they have nothing to spell it with but an old foreign alphabet of which only the consonants—and not all of them—have any agreed speech value. —George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion As Shaw so eloquently states, the English alphabet is hardly fit for purpose. Its alleged rules are, at best, suggestions. This unholy mess we find ourselves in the middle of has a few redeeming qualities. It’s given us ... [ more ]


20. Linguimericks & The Lingumerickocalypse—Book १०५ (4 visits)

Linguimericks & The Lingumerickocalypse, Book १०५. Though tempted I am to critique The French orthographic physique, When comparing with English I find naught to distinguish, So I’m saying they both have “mystique” —Roman C. S. Pelling, There truly is just a small touch Of irony, not very much, That the Teutonic sounds In Germany’s towns Aren’t called by the apt name of “Dutch” —Joost van Deutscher, Common Sense[i]s My Japanese Linguistics teacher told me, ‘Antonyms are pairs of lexemes with opposing senses; Lexeme A has sense A and lexeme B has sense not-A. Common sense, eh?’ As this definition opposed my senses, I asked, ‘Teacher, ... [ more ]


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Last updated Feb. 16, 2026.