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 ]

Je suis /hoze/. Chesterton Wilburfors Gilchrist, Jr. Chairman, Department of Lexicology and Glottometrics, Devonshire-upon-Glencullen University, Southampton Once again I am compelled to relate the tale of graduate students who have displayed shocking behaviour in the pursuit of linguistic analysis. I have written previously of some students who left me flabbergasted after proposing an analysis of Spanish hola as an inflection of a back-formed infinitive holar, meaning “to be greeted”. Now, one of those same students has completed his first foreign language requirement (Spanish) and has moved on, with the same arrogance and bravado, to his second (French). This time I did not ... [ more ]

Notes on the Kzinti Language. by Arthur T. Saxtorph. The Kzinti, our spacefaring rat-cat neighbors, have not been studied in any detail from a linguistic or even generally cognitive point of view. We have been, until the recent treaty, much too busy finding ways of killing them to worry with more intellectual pursuits. Now, though, the situation has changed, and we have a chance to consider the Kzinti and their language, and what that tells us about the workings of their minds, and in turn perhaps the workings of our own minds. Very little ground work has been done, and so much yet remains to be accomplished; but here I will try to summarize the knowledge that we have gained so far, to aid future researchers. Much of 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. Retractions, Rejections and Reconstructions: The Multiply Integrated Lives of Linguistics Texts by Speculative Grammarian Retextualization Editor Reid Rafft Published 2025. 2,328 pages When it comes to texts ... [ 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 ]

French Love, Poodles and Google Translate: A New Methodology to Build Language Families. Isabelle Tellier. There are many legends about Machine Translation. One of the most famous states that, in its first age in the fifties, when for obvious Cold War reasons it focused on English-Russian translations, an artificial device provided with the (biblical) sentence “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” was asked to translate it into Russian and then back into English and gave “The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten”. Another similar one evokes the sentence “Out of sight, out of mind” which, translated into Chinese (or Japanese) and then back into English, supposedly became ... [ more ]

Crossword. by Tim Pulju. Clue: Common Proper Nouns, Across, 1. Ling. alph. 4. Where Brahui, Evenki, and Khmer are spoken, 8. Kroeber or Sechehaye, for short, 10. Distal, 11. Not actor Greenstreet, 12. Nilo-Saharan language, 16. Bloom-filled, 18. Atk. diet taboo, 19. When PIE was spoken, 20. Negative disjunctive, 21. Penultimate prefix, 22. Caedmon’s lang. 23. Not Dr. McCoy, 27. Copies of a particular Bible trans. 29. Type of dislocation, 30. Sacred syllable for 40 Across, 31. Whale hunter, 33. Buffoon, 34. Diminish, 36. Not Trager, 39. Acad. ... [ more ]

Et Al.. by Nick Williams. This puzzle is worth 8 points. Et Al. is the crossword of linguistics coauthors. Each answer is the last name of a linguist, and each clue is the year in which they coauthored a publication with another linguist in the crossword. 14-across and 11-down are already given to get you started, and all the information necessary to complete the puzzle can be found online. Good luck!, ... Everything That Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know About Logic—Prof. D. Innere Form, ... /fənɛtɪk krɪptəgræm/ —Moko Dude, Ph.D. ... SpecGram Vol CLVII, No η Contents, ... [ more ]

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 two trigrams removed. Below are two separate puzzles. Each includes a table to fill out and a set of trigrams with which to fill it up. Using each trigram 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 September 28th, 2025. Solutions and solvers will be ... [ more ]

DIS(PLAY)FUL END(GAME)SOMELY. by Maija Meikäläinen, Ph.D. and Matti Meikäläinen, J.D. Takahikiä College, Pippurlandia. These puzzles are worth ¹/₃ point each. Below are a number of word pairs, such that the last letters of the first word overlap with the first letters of the second word, as with DISPLAY and PLAYFUL. The overlapping letters have been replaced with the same number of blanks, which you need to fill in. At least one of the terms in each pair has some relation to language or linguistics. EU(_ ... _)OLE, A(_ ... _ _)OUN, AC(_ ... _ _)ER, ACOU(_ ... _ ... )KLER, AD(_ ... _ _)ATIM, ALPH(_ ... _ _)TED, AS(_ ... _ _)ENCE, ASTE(_ ... _ _)INESS, ... [ 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 CLXII, Number 3; August 2011, MANAGING EDITOR, SENIOR EDITOR, EDITOR EMERITUS, Trey Jones, Keith Slater, Tim Pulju, Speculative Grammarian, Vol CLXII, No 3, CONSULTING EDITORS, David J. Peterson, Bill Spruiell, ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Jonathan Downie, Daniela Müller, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES, Rick, Bryan, Jeff, Burke, Christine, Collins, Bethany Carlson, Tom, Keal, Kevin, McGowan, Tel Monks, Sean, Roberts, Mary Shapiro, Freya Shipley, Verity, Stob, Sheri Wells-Jensen, Nick Williams, COMPTROLLER GENERAL, Joey Whitford, E = mc ... [ more ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Black Leather Issue, Volume CL, Number 2; April 2005, Special Interactive 3D content, Speculative Grammarian, Vol CL, No 2, MANAGING EDITOR, Trey Jones, EDITOR EMERITUS, Tim Pulju, SENIOR EDITOR, Keith Slater, ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Bryan Allen, Mark de Vries, Martin Hilpert, Edward Johnson, Steven Lulich, Sheila McCann, Jamin Pelkey, Mikael Thompson, Bill Spruiell, Rob van der Sandt, Joey Whitford, There is no spoon. ... [ more ]

Reviews in Linguistic Historiography: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. by, Хөөмийн Гийлгүүлэгч Associate Professor, Department of the History of Science. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been famous ever since its publication in 1818 as a vividly related medical-scientific case study, so much so that its significance in the history of medicine has far overshadowed its importance in linguistics. Indeed, its crucial role in medical history has led to its extremely wide currency in popular portrayals of medical research,¹ while its neglect by linguistic historiographers is only matched by its ... [ more ]

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 two trigrams removed. Below are two separate puzzles. Each includes a table to fill out and a set of trigrams with which to fill it up. Using each trigram 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. CHA, ___, ___, MOM, ___, ___, DIS, ___, ___, IDI, ___, ___, PHO, ___, ___, PAR, ___, ___, TEX, ___, ___, SCR, ___, ___, HAI, ___, ___, ALA, ARY, ENT, GED, LIA, NAT, OGY, OMA, ORY, OUN, RAC, RST, SOL, TER, TIC, TOL, UTE, YLE, ___, RIN, ___, ___, NED, ___, ___, ... [ more ]

I U Linguistics Club. Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. June 1978. ... i u linguistics club, edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... [ more ]

Nominative Determinism. Lynne Guisticks & Yoko Ono-Maztique, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. Introduction. For many years sociolinguists have been investigating evidence that suggests that the name of a researcher may have a subtle but determinative effect on the field in which that researcher operates. Or, as Nicolette Koch-Ehrend, Professor of General Specialization at the Free University of Monnie-Cash explains: Two rather silly people named Sapir and Whorf had the idea that language determines thought in some way, rather like how the brand of tea determines the sort of afternoon cake one takes. This is all well and good for food, but their very names give lie to the ... [ more ]

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