SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

The C-Rhyme and Pun-ish-ment of St. Alvin. by Jerry Fyodor & Josef Dobrovskýevsky. It is now commonly accepted that St. Alvin was always accompanied by an assistant called Theodorus. Theodorus was a budding philosopher, with interests in Kant, Hegel and innateness in generative grammar. He was however, very rotund and was therefore known as the Deep Fat Friar. As a young monk, St Alvin left his first monastery, where he had taken a vow of silence, to found an order that believed that people were best served by creating attractive paper to put around Christmas gifts. It is for this reason that his autobiography was entitled “From Trappist to Wrappist.” The members of that order were noted for their ... [ 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, 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 ]

Don’t Just Talk (About) the Talk. A Letter from Recursive Editor Edak Krikmah. At my local monthly meeting of Linguist(ic)s and Vanilla Slices (LaVS), we got talking. No surprise there: we’re linguists! But then one of us (it may have been Wilhemina, but I’m not sure) made a passing comment on what someone else (perhaps Bertrand?) had just said. Then, and this is the crux of it, Bartholomew (and I’m sure this was him) pointed out that what Wilhemina had said had actually been about what Bertrand had said. You’ve guessed it—we’re here to celebrate the highs and lows, the joys and sorrows, the tax bills and Last Wills and Testaments of meta-talk. What went on to ... [ more ]

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 ]

Encrypted Missives from the Cosmos. A Letter from Associate Editor Jonathan Downie. We at SpecGram pride ourselves on providing the most up-to-date and stimulating research available anywhere in the world.¹ However, in this issue, due to budget cuts, staff holidays and an unfortunate incident with a hairdryer and a mongoose, we have had to content ourselves with the best research available from people who have the time to submit to journals that don’t have an impact factor. We therefore apologise in advance for anyone who seriously thought they would read material that is more useful than the contents of a postmodernist’s refrigerator.² ... [ more ]

A Primer in, SF Xenolinguistics. - eep opp ork ah-ah -, Justin B. Rye. — - ash nazg durbatulûk -, Table of Contents. Fantasy Exotic Tongues—An Introduction, Let’s Speak Alien—In Ten Easy Lessons, The Unspeakable—And The Unthinkable, Universal Translators—A Buyer’s Guide, CETI for Beginners—Little Green Manuals — - borag thungg -, FANTASY EXOTIC TONGUES—An Introduction. If you’ve reached the online version of this article chasing the search-string “ +fantasy +exotic +tongues ” then I’m afraid you’ve probably come to ... [ more ]

Rasmus Rask Diamond Puzzle X. by Lila Rosa Grau. This is the tenth Rasmus Rask puzzle, devoted to the original Mr. Charming Scandinavian Linguist. The puzzle is similar to a crossword puzzle, in that there is a grid for filling in words and phrases, and clues for the ACROSS and DOWN directions. However, all the squares in a Rasmus Rask puzzle are filled with letters, and the answers to the clues may (but are not required to) overlap. Clues for a particular row or column are given together, in the order they appear in the grid. No indication of the amount of overlap between clues is given. Letters spelling out RASMUS RASK in a diamond shape are given to provide a framework for filling in the answers. ... [ more ]

Phonological Ergativity, The greatest linguistic discovery of the century¹. Keith Slater, UC Santa Barbara. The history of linguistics reveals a consistent tendency to overlook the unfamiliar in favor of that which closely approximates structures readily apparent in the analyst's own dialect. Just as Western philologists failed for decades to grasp the simple truth that not all languages need Latin verbal inflection systems, so were modern linguists lamentably slow to divine the nature of entirely non-European case systems such as the widespread ergative-absolutive type. Commendable though our recent progress in this arena has been, there remains much work to be done. In this paper, it will be shown that ergativity ... [ 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 ]

The SpecGram Linguistic Advice Collective. Are you in a world of linguistic hurt? The SpecGram Linguistic Advice Collective (SLAC) will offer you empirical, empathic, emphatic advice you can use!^* Remember, if you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice, then you don’t need advice! So, if you need advice, trust us—and cut yourself some SLAC! ... Your Royal SLACness, Since you have previously offered such useful advice on English plurals, I have a query of my own: what is the plural of haggis? Having recently relocated to the land of tartan and bagpipes, I would find it quite useful to know. And speaking of which, where can I find one of those “wild ... [ 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 ]

From Mwahaha to Bwahaha: Some Observations on Evil Laughter. By Lady Esmerelda Rose Beeton-Frasier. Evil laughter is present across the globe and can be observed in all cultures and languages.¹ At first it would appear that “Evil Laughter” or “EL” as it will be referred to, may take on various different phonetic forms, and I propose, after much research² that EL falls somewhere between “Glee”³ and “Hysterics”.⁴ EL might start out as Gleeful Laughter (GL), may progress to EL before either ceasing, or escalating rapidly to Hysterical Laughter (HL).⁵ Those who are well schooled in the art of EL may skip GL and proceed ... [ 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 ]

A Sample of Self-Definers— Phonetics, Phonology, & Phonotactics: Part III. The SpecGram Book Elves™. Here is an eleventh hand-curated selection from “Appendix A: A Self-Defining Linguistic Glossary” a.k.a. “The only truly reliable cram sheet for your Linguistics 101 final” from The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics. ^hpre-aspiration, mpre-nasalization, ppogressive assimilation, aprothesis, reduduplication, rerressive assimilation, sandhir rules, sl̩abc̩ cn̩sn̩n̩ts, semiwowel, schwə spelling pronunkiati-on, syncpe, to˦ne le˥tters˧ ... [ more ]

Lost Media: Linguistics Rock!. The SpecGram Media Elves™. In 1974, following the success of Schoolhouse Rock!, the independent production company Lingo Lango Longo released Linguistics Rock!, a linguistics-themed animated musical educational program similar in style to Schoolhouse Rock!. Unfortunately, the style, the branding, the episode titles, the characters, and the music were all very similar to Schoolhouse Rock!—so much so that Lingo Lango Longo’s Leado Lawyero, Leo Lombardo—in a stunning act of moral courage—pulled the plug on the whole enterprise before Lingo Lango Longo could be sued into oblivion. All that ... [ more ]

The Original Language of Winnie-the-Pooh. Aureliano Buendía, Universidad de Macondo. The text known in English as Winnie-the-Pooh occurs in dozens of different languages. Scholars have long debated the question of what was the original language of composition. One of the most popular hypotheses has been that the original text was written in English. The present paper will use textual evidence to demonstrate the impossibility of that hypothesis and to suggest a more likely candidate. Consider the following lines from the beginning of Chapter I in the English-language version. (1) ...here he is...ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh. When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to ... [ more ]

Things You Know You Didn’t Want to Know, (but, alas, they are actually true), gathered at great personal risk of, melancholiolinguistic harm from actual editorial feelings, A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief This month’s issue, sadly, marks the final installment of TYDKYDK which, for more than seven years, has collected students’ pearls of wisdom—all laboriously digitised by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira from hand-written papers. All those pearls of wisdom you have seen over the years are real, though students’ names have been withheld to protect the guilty. We can try to put on a brave face against the sorrowful news. Think of the oft-repeated quip, “Don’t cry ... [ more ]

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 ]

A Sample of Self-Definers— Writing & Writing Systems. The SpecGram Book Elves™. Here is a seventh hand-curated selection from “Appendix A: A Self-Defining Linguistic Glossary” a.k.a. “The only truly reliable cram sheet for your Linguistics 101 final” from The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics. bjd, abbrev. ’a•bu•gi•da, boustro, uopǝɥd, Epigraphy, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰𐍂𐌰𐌶𐌳𐌰 impr abjd, [ aɪ pʰiː eɪ ], πανελλήνια κοινή ... [ more ]

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