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 ]

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 ]

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part E—Phonetics vs. Phonology. Hilário Parenchyma, C.Phil. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. We will skip the introduction, as we have been there, done that. Once more into the breach! For this installment in our series on Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, we will turn our attention to Phonetics and Phonology and the difference between the two: Phonetics:, ... Phonology:, ... Thanks to Professor Phlogiston, of the Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn, for the opportunity of a lifetime, as a student, to, on this occasion, share with so many of my fellow linguisticians my views, as illustrated above, concerning matters, which are of such immeasurable import ... [ 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 ]

De La SpecGrammatologie . A Letter to Future Historians of Satirical Linguistics, from the Editor-in-Chief, Trey “Jacquey D” Jones. Future SpecGrammologists will debate whether this period in the history of SpecGram is “Early Modern” or “Late Moron” or even “Proto-Interplanetary”—and whether we were titans or pipsqueaks, our scribblings impactful or inconsequential. They will undoubtedly furrow their collective brow as they attempt to decipher the opaque and recalcitrant tea leaves of some future tattered remains of the SpecGram archive and hazard ill-formed guesses at our true meaning and significance. ... [ 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 ]

Increasing Linguistic Self-Referentiality in Weird Ways. Γραμματο-Χαοτικον. As part of our ongoing mission to make the world of language a lot more interesting, we want to encourage our members—and the general language-using public—to increase the unusual self-referentiality of language. As an illustration, the word weird is a little weird, because it doesn’t follow the i-before-e rule.^* We propose that, for example, out of whack and wacky should be made slightly out of whack and slightly wacky, respectively, by pronouncing them with the opposite ... [ more ]

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 ]

SpecGram, Quarterly. A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. [Note: Due to a scheduling error⁰ 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 ]

Linguimericks & The Lingumerickocalypse, Book १०५. Though tempted I am to critique The French orthographic physique, When comparing with English I find naught to distinguish, So I’m saying they both have “mystique” —Roman C. S. Pelling, There truly is just a small touch Of irony, not very much, That the Teutonic sounds In Germany’s towns Aren’t called by the apt name of “Dutch” —Joost van Deutscher, Common Sense[i]s My Japanese Linguistics teacher told me, ‘Antonyms are pairs of lexemes with opposing senses; Lexeme A has sense A and lexeme B has sense not-A. Common sense, eh?’ As this definition opposed my senses, I asked, ‘Teacher, ... [ more ]

Metrical Dimorphism: An Onomastic Noun-Verb Hypothesis. by G.R.R. L’Power & Lexi Kahn, Ph.D. Candidates, Department of Onomastic Empowerment, Hervard University. There is a well-known pattern of disyllabic word pairs in English that differ primarily by stress. The table below presents a few examples:^* cóntest / contést, décrease / decréase, éxtract / extráct, ímport / impórt, ínsult / insúlt, óbject / objéct, pérmit / permít, présent / presént, récord / recórd, súspect / suspéct, In this paradigm, nouns carry initial stress, while verbs shift stress to ... [ more ]

Further Studies in Multilingual Stimuli Incongruence. An Experimental Study Preregistration. Badkamer Schildpad Syrup. J. Ridley Stroop, my sixteenth cousin four times removed, is famous for his 1935 experiment demonstrating that naming the color of a word is more difficult when the word is itself the name of a different color. For example: RED GREEN BLUE. Less well known is that our extended family—particularly the Syrup branch—is particularly competitive. As a result, ever since I began studying experimental psychology, my parents and grandparents have waged a never-ending campaign encouraging me to “keep up with the Stroops” and “out-Stroop ... [ 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! ... Dear SLAC, My favourite satirical linguistics journal is closing down. What can I do? Yours disconsolately —B. Reft ... My dear secondary flotation device, The answer is obvious: You must join their editorial board and take over. Seize the means of joke production, the joke means of production, and the mean jokes ... [ more ]

Psammeticus Press, www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, The Future English Bible. Psammeticus Press. The market for English language Bibles is lucrative, and any publisher worth its stock price is seeking to further edify the faithful by issuing its own proprietary English version. The visionaries at Psammeticus Press, though, can smell an over-crowded niche a mile away, and for some time we have been ruminating on how to overcome this difficulty and horn in on the Bible market. The key is this: most Bible publishers don’t know squat about linguistics. Fortunately for us, we do. What’s more, we know enough about linguistics to be able to predict, based on our latest Language Change ... [ more ]

Assessing the Impact of Speculative Grammarian on the Reconstitution of Nonparametric Satirical Meta-Theory. Trent Slater, The Δίς Λεγόμενον Centre for Endeepened Ideation. Time works via obdurate obstinacy, reworking the not-yet to the now and the now to the was, elongating the path from the would-have-been-if-only-I-remembered-my-turkey-sandwich to the oops-I-dropped-my-pizza. By this, we understand that time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. Thus, sadly, we find ourselves pronouncing funerary odes and laments over the corpus of a journal whose finery ... [ more ]

Rasmus Rask Puzzle I. by Lila Rosa Grau. This puzzle is worth 8 points. I always swoon a little when I think of my favorite linguist, Rasmus Rask—voted the most eligible bachelor in Philology in 1926 and 1927! And so, when SpecGram commissioned me to create a new type of puzzle for their Summer Puzzle Mega Issue, I decided to devote a puzzle to Mr. Charming Scandinavian Linguist himself. A Rasmus Rask 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 ... [ more ]

Falsehoods About Linguistics. Compiled by N. Correct, N. Accurate, and Aaron Nius. Inspired by Patrick McKenzie’s “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names” here is a list of ideas, thoughts, and assumptions about linguists and linguistics that come up from time to time, but none of which are necessarily true. Linguists know what a language is. Linguists know what a word is. Linguists know what linguistics is. Linguists can tell you the correct way of doing linguistics. Linguists can tell you the correct way of speaking a language. All linguists know multiple, if not many, languages. All linguists love languages. All linguists enjoy learning, and learning about, different languages. Knowing how to ... [ more ]

Folk Linguistics. The SpecGram Folklore Elves™. You’ve got to remember that these are just simple linguaphiles. These are people of “little-𝓁” language. The common clay of the new Word. You know... morons. — Dʒim, Blazing Syllables Unravel the charm of language with this delightful collection of folk linguistic aphorisms. From idiomatic quirks to linguistic wonders, explore the charming wisdom (or lack thereof) of the common folk as they offer alleged insight into the colorful tapestry of human communication as they (attempt to?) navigate the intricate maze of words and meaning. The most effective way to learn a language is immersion because sound travels ... [ more ]

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