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1. Archives (23 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 ]


2. 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 ]


3. Vol CLXV, No 4 (16 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 ]


4. Vol CLXIX, No 3 (9 visits)

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXIX, Number 3 ... Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Bill Spruiell, Senior Editor, Sheri Wells-Jensen, Consulting Editor; Associate Editors: Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Jonathan Downie, Mikael Thompson; Assistant Editors: Pete Bleackley, Virginia Bouchard, Florian Breit, Callum Robson; Editorial Associates: Kenny Baclawski, Bethany Carlson, Sophie Elsässer, Katerina Kandylaki, Stephanie Leser, Jouni Maho, Tel Monks, Daniela Müller, Tuuli Mustasydän, Cathal Peelo, David J. Peterson, Jona Sassenhagen, Lea Schäfer, Megan Smith, Zac Smith, Le Anne Lucia Spino, Tangent Wong; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; The Most Interesting Manner, Adverbial in the World; March ... [ more ]


5. How to Use the Comparative Method for Fun and Profit—Al Tayo-Nostradamus, Esq. (6 visits)

How to Use the Comparative Method for Fun and Profit, Al Tayo-Nostradamus, Esq.. The comparative method is one of the most powerful tools ever developed by historical linguists. With the comparative method, you can take any two languages, determine whether they are related, and reconstruct their common ancestor, thus incontrovertibly cementing your reputation as the discoverer of the Italo-Turkic language family. But enough about me. The point is, the comparative method can—besides helping you further your scientific goals, as well as your academic and professional goals (which may or may not overlap with your scientific goals)—elevate you above the masses and make you one of the linguist ... [ more ]


6. 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 ]


7. Vol CXCV, No 2 (5 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 ]


8. About Us (5 visits)

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 ] Podcast!


9. 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 ]


10. All Hail Metalleus!—A Letter from the Managing Editor (4 visits)

All Hail Metalleus!. A Letter from the Managing Editor. In this issue we are pleased and proud, but also a bit saddened, to present the final installment of our long-running series of Metalleus reprints. We started this series, lo these many issues ago, in Volume CL, Number 4, in October of 2005. Metalleus was also instrumental in convincing the editorial board to seek and secure permission to reprint Lingua Pranca and Son of Lingua Pranca on our website. With this last reprint, and the two Lingua Pranca anthologies, the SpecGram website now boasts the most complete collection of Metalleus anywhere—and we are very pleased that it is so. As the works of Metalleus are ... [ more ]


11. Son of Lingua Pranca (3 visits)

Son of Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. IULC. November 1979. ... edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Son of, ^ Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... i u linguistics club, ... [ more ]


12. Word Ladder 三—Learned Hand and Benighted Foot (3 visits)

Word Ladder 三. by Learned Hand and Benighted Foot, O̊ṗṗo̊ṡi̊ṫůṡ Ḁṭṭṛḁc̣ṭi̥c̣u̥ṣ Ūñīṽēr̃s̃īt̃ūs̃ 上海. To complete this third Word Ladder, fill in six-letter words based on the clues provided. Note that some words will run from left to right, while alternating words will run from right to left. Also, the last two letters of each word will overlap with the first two letters of the next word—though they will be read in the opposite direction. If you think you’ve figured out the answer, ... [ more ]


13. SpecGram, Quarterly—A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief (3 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 ]


14. SHRLI: Stealthy High Resolution Linguistic Intake—Hellgrün Dunkelblau, Ph.D. and Myrkur-Viviti Темнота (3 visits)

SHRLI: Stealthy High Resolution Linguistic Intake. A case study in semi-unobtrusive quasi-automated pseudo-naturalistic fieldwork. undertaken by Hellgrün Dunkelblau, Ph.D. and Myrkur-Viviti Темнота Department of Computational Fieldwork, Caenoches Technical School, Darkness Falls, Massachusetts, On January 1st, 2005, Caenoches Technical School officially opened the four-story Ciemność Mallumo Hall for the Humanities, a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility for housing four growing humanities departments: Classics, English, Linguistics, and Psychology. Over the previous year, while the building was being constructed, the chairs of the four ... [ more ]


15. An Excursus in Orthographic Cosmology and/or Cosmological Orthography of the Babelverse—Claudette von Helganschtein Searsplainpockets & Helgi von Helganschtein Searsplainpockets (3 visits)

An Excursus in Orthographic Cosmology and/or, Cosmological Orthography of the Babelverse, A Preliminary Report. Claudette von Helganschtein Searsplainpockets, and Helgi von Helganschtein Searsplainpockets, Principal Interns in Quantum Physicolinguistics, The Institute for Bibliotecababelology Ẍ enoörthographic Quasȉcosmogȍnич Keplȯπτολεμαοhawkinġian Ṕortulaṕonticular Ǣdificōcōnstrūctiōnæ — known colloquially, though inexactly, as “omnidimensional alphabridges” — are long- theorized but little- evidenced hypothetical, potential, side- effectual artefacts of high- speed wh- movement at lexico- quantum scale in environments of ... [ more ]


16. Sprachgeist Guides for the Linguist on the Go!—Part IV—Book Announcement from Panini Press (3 visits)

PAID ADVERTISEMENT — http://SpecGram.com/PaniniPress New from Panini Press: Sprachgeist Guides for the Linguist on the Go!— Part IV As any linguist knows, it’s useful—and sometimes vital—to get an accurate picture of a language you’re not a specialist in, and to do it quickly. Unfortunately, up to now, doing so has involved trying to plow through reference grammars, and we all know the problems with those! You can cut through all that and get all the really important information about a language—its Sprachgeist, if you will—with a volume from Panini Press’s continuing series! ❦पा — Available ... [ more ]


17. Lingua Pranca—Recent Advances in Linguistics—Metalleus (3 visits)

Recent Advances in Linguistics. Metalleus. Language... is found deep within the mind. (S. Schane) In order to maintain the crossover constraint it is necessary to draw a distinction between the circumstances in which the constraint may be violated and those in which it is valid. (I. Howard) What we must do now is to change linguistic theory so that this ‘wrong’ solution will be the right solution. (P. Kiparsky) In some cases the decision to use a phonological feature... may have been made under illicit historical stimulation. (P. Kiparsky) ...hence I propose that curly brackets be banished from linguistics. (J. McCawley) It is at least possible. (R. Lass) But is it crucial? (D. Dinnsen) These exceptional ... [ more ]


18. A Braille Orthography for tlhIngan—Stovepipe Wells-Jensen (3 visits)

A Braille Orthography for tlhIngan. Stovepipe Wells-Jensen. Origin of the System. In the Klingon Empire, charity and social programs, thought to be essentials of civilization in Federation space, are rare indeed. The dependent and weak-willed products of that softer society might thus be surprised to learn that education of blind Klingons has been a matter of course in the Empire for millennia. Klingons know that if their spirits are not broken by coddling, blind youngsters mature into self-sufficient citizens and skillful and deadly combatants. It is unwise to anger these warriors lest one find oneself suddenly alone in a darkened corridor with a very serious problem. A tactile writing system was thus a ... [ more ]


19. Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome (3 visits)

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 ]


20. Mix & Match ‡‡‡—Max & Mitch Ninelette (3 visits)

Mix & Match ‡‡‡. by Max & Mitch Ninelette. The goal of this Mix & Match puzzle is to reconstitute a set of nine 9-letter words that have each had various n-grams removed. Below are two separate puzzles. Each includes a table to fill out and a set of either unigrams or trigrams with which to fill it up. Using each n-gram once, fill the blanks in the table to form various nine-letter words. When you are done, three additional words will be revealed in the vertical direction for each puzzle. If you think you’ve figured out all the answers—that’s 24 nine-letter words!—submit your solution to the editors of SpecGram by August 21st, ... [ more ]


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Last updated Jan. 4, 2026.