Most Popular Pages—Today

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1. Ministry of Propaganda (22 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 ]


2. Archives (19 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. Merchandise (18 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 ]


4. Lingua Pranca—Linguistic Contributions To The Formal Theory Of Big-Game Hunting—R. Mathiesen (11 visits)

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 ] Podcast!


5. Vol CLXV, No 4 (10 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. Vol CXCV, No 2 (9 visits)

Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCV, Number 2 Penultimate Issue Editor-in-Chief: Trey Jones; Executive Editors: Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson; Senior Editors: Jonathan Downie, Deak Kirkham, Vincent Fish; Contributing Editors: Pete Bleackley, Luca Dinu; Associate Editors: Yuval Wigderson, Daniel Swanson; Editorial Associates: Kenny Baclawski, Emily Davis, Gabriel Lanyi, Mark Mandel, Tel Monks; Comptroller General: Joey Whitford; All the Noise That’s Fit to Print; November 2025, ... [ more ]


7. SpecGram, Quarterly—A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief (7 visits)

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 ]


8. Books (6 visits)

SpecGram Books. A number of books and book-like entities (including various monographs) have come into existence in and around Speculative Grammarian over the years. Here we’ve collected links to all of their digital and corporeal manifestations in one place for your convenience. ... The Splendid Words, by James S. Pasto,; January 2019 The tale of a man obsessed, driven by a hunger and thirst to uncover—he knows not what! Far past reason, he has hunted and hated, been haunted and humiliated. Now his search has borne fruit—discover whether it is bitter or sweet! Available to read online. ... The History of Rome, by Tim Pulju; July 2018 Speculative ... [ more ]


9. The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics (6 visits)

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 ]


10. Pseudo-Psiblings™—And Other Views of Multiply-Blended Families—Trey Jones (6 visits)

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 ]


11. The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics—A Review—Don Boozer (6 visits)

The Speculative Grammarian Essential, Guide to Linguistics— A Review. by Don Boozer, Librarian for the Language Creation Society. The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics is an anthology of articles, essays, and other content gleaned from the online publication Speculative Grammarian or SpecGram “as it is known to devotees and sworn enemies alike”. The following scenario might provide some rough idea of the tone of “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics”: Ben Zimmer1 and The Harvard Lampoon have a torrid one-night affair (over a spaghetti and lasagna dinner) from which ... [ more ]


12. Prädikatsaussage—Advertisement (5 visits)

ADVERTISEMENT Prädikat­saussage. We live in an age in which scientific knowledge is growing by leaps and bounds. An age in which each new piece of knowledge enriches technology. An age in which the production of marvels the past had only dreamed of, or never could have conceived of, is easy and economical. An age in which lightning boils our water, in which goo from the ground heats our homes, in which lowly fungi save us from disease. And now, it is an age in which the rules of thought keep us fed! In a triumph of high technology, our firm, Prima­lecker­früh­stücks­fleischer­zeugungs­begüns­tigungs­gesellschaft GmbH, and its American subsidiary Primlick Inc. are pleased ... [ more ]


13. Center Embedding Passives—A Call for Further Research—Advertisement (5 visits)

ADVERTISEMENT Center Embedding Passives—A Call for Further Research. We have been following with interest the execrable discussion of center embedding (Küçük, Palin, Drome, and M.Adam). The “analyses” presented by the various authors strike us as quite possibly the most heinous atrocities ever perpetrated on Linguistkind. If it were only the analyses that failed to pass muster, we would confine our reaction to a mere sigh of conference paper proportions; however in this case, even the data itself is repugnantly inadequate, and this cannot pass uncorrected. The list of “center embedding” languages which has thus far been discussed in this lamentable exchange includes the ... [ more ]


14. Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics (5 visits)

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 ] Book!


15. Language Death by Speaker Rejection—More Case Studies—William Carlos Williams Carloses Williamses (5 visits)

Language Death by Speaker Rejection— More Case Studies. by William Carlos Williams Carloses Williamses, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. In a previous article I introduced a new mechanism of language death: that by which languages actively reject their speakers, rather than the other way around. I presented five case studies showing that this rejection is actually quite common. Since the publication of that article, I have discovered a number of additional examples of this phenomenon, and I summarize them here for those who, like me, crave a deeper understanding of how (and why) a language may refuse to permit its own transmission. Case Study 6: The Kih Lurty Language Kih Lurty is a language ... [ more ] Podcast!


16. Letters to the Editor (CLII.4) (5 visits)

Letters to the Editor. Dear Members of the Editorial Board: As you know, since 1832, as per an agreement made between the Editorial Board at that time and the Grammar Entelechy, your journal and its stylistic guidelines have been reviewed at 52-year intervals by the Managing Archon. Enclosed below please find the Archon’s dicta regarding your current publication standards: We note with approval the very low incidence of that horrid prodigy of plebeian publishing, the “exclamation point.” We have found it lurking in your advertisements section, and understand that merchants are a base lot, and hard to manage; we urge you to keep strong the barriers preventing its migration into the more civilized sections of ... [ more ]


17. Linguimericks, Etc.—Book ५२ (5 visits)

Linguimericks, Etc. Book ५२. Linguistics, the queen of the sciences, Pretends to adhere to alliances With psychology, sure!, And its public allure, But don’t ask what its gauge of compliance is —H. Stephen Straight, A title, seen browsing my interest In languages ancienter than the rest, That called Punic Q-Celtic And Palaic Kartvelic I judged thus: “Farrago delenda est!” —Pumptilian Perniquity, The reduction of vowels has caused vicious wars, Or is viewed as just warmed-over vichyssoise. But your everyday linguist Who’s not a rank jingoist Has a relish and zest for delicious schwas —Hester Fester-Münsterfenster, A linguist of uncommon girth Was known for his ... [ more ]


18. Where are the Ghost Linguists?—Δρ. I.C. Дедпи Пол, Þн.δ. (5 visits)

Where are the Ghost Linguists?. Δρ. I.C. Дедпи Пол Þн.δ.. Over fifteen years ago, my friend and mentor—Dr. F. Ang Bangah, Ph.D.—published his seminal article, “Where are the Vampire Linguists?” (SpecGram Vol. CLVII, No. 2, 2009), in which he interpolated the plain facts presented in the HBO documentary television series True Blood into a call for leveraging the innate and explicit linguistic and anthropological knowledge of vampiric informants who are hundreds or even thousands of years old. Dr. Bangah initially opened the Vampiric Linguistics Advancement Department (V.L.A.D.) at the University ... [ more ]


19. Linguimericks, Etc.—Book ७ (5 visits)

Linguimericks, Etc. Book ७. When fieldworking in the midwest It’s advisable to wear a vest But in busy New York Where dialects fork The Sopranos means kevlar is best —Col. O. Nihilist, There once was a scholar named Gandhi, Who studied Sanskrit at Bhiwandi. To learn phonology He went down to the sea, And his consonants ended up sandhi —Pete Bleackley, Parvus Jacobus Horner Sedebat in corner, (edens a Christmas pie) Inseruit his thumb, Extrahit a plum, Clamans, “Quid smart puer am I!” —P. Ublekkdeaux Meign, Syntacticians in search of new data, Forayed to some fieldwork locata. Though the languages there Had case markers to spare, They found nary a trace of a θ —Morris ... [ more ]


20. Just SpecGrammy Things (4 visits)

Just SpecGrammy Things, From The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . As the end of the year and its concomitant [+holiday] season approach, we at SpecGram want to encourage you to settle back and enjoy a little 1ST.SG.ACC time! Revel in all the one.. two.. many! little things that make being a fan of SpecGram so awesome! Some of our favorite SpecGrammy things include: Almost two thousand hilarious, thought-provoking, magically linguistical articles available at your fingertips or for you to take a random walk through. A surfeit of limericks—more limericks than you can shake a plethora of sticks at. So many puzzles and games—most ... [ more ]


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Last updated Feb. 5, 2026.