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A Student’s Guide to the History of Linguistics, Based on Example Sentences. Franz Neumayer. The following sentences exemplify important concepts in linguistics, and relate them to the linguists whose names are most associated with their development. They are provided as a service to MA students reviewing for comprehensive exams. If you do not understand how each sentence exemplifies its concept, or why these particular names are included, you need to re-read the relevant articles. This list will be expanded in future years. Readers are invited to submit additional examples. Accessibility Hierarchy Keenan and Comrie are the people by whom the accessibility hierarchy was described. Bloomfieldian Linguistics ... [ 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 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 ]
Are Turkish and Amharic Related? Are They Ever!. by, April May June, Freshman in Elementary Education, Indiana University at Bloomington. It is — "Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — well-known from my L103 class that Turkish and Amharic supposedly aren't related, though it is no longer clear which languages they are related to. However, I have found lots of words in the two languages which sound alike and mean the same thing in only two months of hearing them spoken in two local restaurants. The similarities first caught my attention during an argument at the Turkish restaurant in which the owner kept saying "sought." ... [ more ] 
How Computers Can Do Fieldwork For You: A Case Study. So, as a very mature and worldly individual—I am 20 years old after all—I am continually surprised by the lack of sophistication among the older generations—y’know, from 30 on up. They seem to be oblivious to the most rudimentary facets of everyday life, like Twitter, Reddit, and Fark. I mean, these people grew up on this planet—not like in Africa or something. Posers. So, as part of my self-designed interdisciplinary degree in International Computational Business Communication Studlies (I love that my advisor didn’t catch that extra “l” until my junior year—too late to ... [ 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 ]
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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 ]
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 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 ]
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 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 ]
Why Linguistics is Not a Science. The SpecGram Editorial Board. In a couple of recent editorials we have answered several of the questions most frequently submitted by SpecGram readers. Since the publication of those editorials, by far the most common question received in our offices has been, “Could please furnish us with your bank account number so we can transfer payment to you?” We cannot in good conscience accede to this request, as it violates a number of constraints and therefore suffers from what we like to call “fatal infelicity.” Another frequent question, though, is more worthy of our attention, (though only due to its being fifth on the frequency list) and it is to that more ... [ more ]
SpecGram Puzzles and Games. Collected all in one place for your brain-teasing pleasure, below is a list of the currently available linguistically themed puzzles and games that have appeared over the years in SpecGram and related publications. Puzzles? Contents Acrostics | Anagrams | Choose Your Own Career | Crosswords | Cryptic Crosswords | Cryptograms | Domino Puzzles | Drop Quotes | EtymGeo™ | Fieldwork Puzzles | FonoFutoshiki | FonoNurikabe | HanjieLinguru | HashiWordakero | HitoriGuistiku | HomonimoKakuro | Interactive Fiction | IPA Code Puzzles | IPAlindromes | Language Identification | Latin Squares | LingDoku | Ling-Ken | L’Ishing | Logic Puzzles | Mad Libitum Games | Magic Squares | Masyu Ortograpiu ... [ more ]
SpecGram Dictionary of the Linguistics of Mythological Beasts . It’s Not Just Legendary; It’s Unreal . Volume 87: The Werewolf, by Val Kiri1 (with the assistance of Dec, Shaun, and Harry). While books about syntax have their place,2 we all know that language is basically just words. Hence dictionaries. Now these come in many shapes and sizes, although most are three-dimensional and usually cuboid. Geometrical universals aside, though, many dictionaries are actually pretty useless; we all know what most words mean after all! For example, I’ve used quite a few words in this intro already and I’ve only had to look up two!3 While the inutility of ... [ more ]
“Interpretez seront les extipices”, On the Correct Interpretation of Nostradamus, Part the Third. by Roger Prentiss Claremont, Independent Sovereign Scholar. In Parts the First and Second of this series, we discussed the basis of our new interpretation of the prophetic verses of Michel de Nostredame (1503-1566), usually known as Nostradamus. His verses have eluded definitive interpretation for several centuries, and this series shows that that is because earlier interpretations made the basic error of assuming his verses were in French. In fact, they are better interpreted as English encoded in French. This part shall complete the task of interpretation of selected verses, after which we shall turn ... [ 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 ]
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Last updated Feb. 1, 2026.