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 ]

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 ]

Psammeticus Press, www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, NEW PUZZLE, This puzzle is worth 250 points. Critical Readings in Linguistics Crossword Puzzle, By H.D. Onesimus and his underlings, Presented by Psammeticus Press. Price: Free In honor of this SpecGram puzzle issue, H.D. Onesimus presents this crossword puzzle. The clues are all based on essential works in Linguistics. Prize! Anyone who submits a correct solution to this puzzle will receive a certificate for a 2.5% discount on one book from Psammeticus Press. Across, 1. Word #15 on page 234 of Linguistics for Lazy People, 4. Word #220 on page 8 of An Interpreter’s Dictionary of Linguistic ... [ more ]

Greek Particles. Two facts well-known to linguists for many years are that Ancient Greek orthography represented speech much more closely than does modern English orthography, or practically any other modern European orthography, and that speech, unlike writing, is full of hesitations, false starts, and meaningless expletive utterances which are not recorded in writing. For instance, In English, a typical spoken text might be: Well, it’s the, umm... you know, the one that, uh, you got from the store across the street. We can make a number of interesting observations about the meaningless expletives in the above and in similar texts, of which the interested reader can collect many more examples, if he is so inclined. The ... [ more ]

Psammeticus Press www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, BOOKS, SERIES, and MORE The following valuable volumes, spectacular series, and interesting items have been released with pride by Psammeticus Press, an academic publishing house founded in honor of the first and purest of linguistic inquirers: one might criticize his methods, but who could quibble with his results? Follow the links below to learn more about these fabulous books and excellent series, each destined to become a classic in the field. Warehouse Moving Sale We’ve lost the lease on our warehouse and anything we can’t sell we have to move—or rent interns from Speculative Grammarian to do it—and that’s expensive! Help us out and buy a ... [ 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 is proud to present yet another irregular installment in the Linguistic Anthropologic Monograph Endowment's Bizarre Grammars of the World Series. The Hyperactive Voice: An Anthropological, Linguistic Study of the Oboioboioboiwikantsitstil⁰, Bizarre Grammars of the World, Vol. 54. Introduction, Once again, here in the Amazon, we have found evidence that, perhaps, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis does not represent as much of a one way avenue of causation as perhaps some had thought. Once again we have found evidence that accidents of culture and environment can have drastic, even devastating effects on language. Recall, if you will, the case of the Winodanugai (LAME BGW, ... [ more ]

Gothic for Travellers. A. Judzis, the Visigoth. Making friends Hints for the traveller: The Goths are a very friendly and gregarious people. They will be quick to invite you to their homes for special ceremonies and entertainments. They also have hot tempers, so don't turn down an invitation to go home with a Goth. Good conversation starters are death, torture, eating and drinking. What do you do?, hwa taw-yis thoo, 𐍈𐌰 𐍄𐌰𐌿𐌾𐌹𐍃 𐌸𐌿 I'm a... ik im... 𐌹̈𐌺 𐌹́𐌼 tax collector, mow-tar-ees, 𐌼𐍉𐍄𐌰𐍂𐌴𐌹𐍃 harlot, kahl-kyo, ... [ more ]

Obituary. It is with great sadness that we report that Velma Hortensia Schleppengruber passed away last week at the age of 37. Ms Schleppengruber was a legendary figure among laboratory phoneticians as perhaps the most cited subject in the history of instrumental phonetics, though her participation was not limited to that field. Among her most famous appearances in the linguistic literature are the following: “The experimental design was a standard attention-tracking experiment with stimuli on the computer screen accompanying the target sounds. A total of 47 infants were tested, but the data for one infant were excluded due to failure to habituate to the design after 45 habituation trials.” “An initial ... [ more ]

Survey of Linguistic Evidence of Meta-Consciousness in Tier-19 Terran Primates, presented by, Cëŏjpruustcrêrt êe Âgriüsturttâiy, Fuördrêostsklanöukklėû Růŕskramnnuũrgciwä, Departmental Encephallus, and, the coherent bio-voltaic after-image of, Ëø Daerl stiic Uasŝăź swerz Ê, Encephallus Emeritus (deceased), The Department of Biolinguistics of Sub-Sentient Species, Qomnliscrëvuelzaern University, Planet Skeushiōrbprăisxẽqnaŏ Gløŏňuăthphêimbal Cluster, Žæaẘstaowhiethæoyalt Galaxy, Presented at the ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear Editors, I was very disappointed to see your article, “The Solution to Poor Pedantry is... More, Better Pedantry” from the Meta-Pedantry Association. Are you not aware that they are a radical nihilistic splinter group of the Γραμματο-Χαοτικον? Their generally unpublicized goal is to increase the density of meta-pedantry and other forms of so-called “self-folding pedantry” in order to create a pedantic singularity and potentially cause the collapse of the academic-pedantic continuum. I personally do not believe in the academic-pedantic continuum, nor that a singularity ... [ more ]

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