SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

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 ]

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 ]

Arabic Numeral to Numeri++ Converter. by Daniel Swanson & Trey Jones. Cognomen 2018 (SpecGram, CLXXX.3) in footnote ‡‡† lays out “a superior, novel solution” to extending Numeri++, his science-nerd–friendly upgrade to Roman numerals, to accommodate values beyond 5,000. Below we provide a handy converter^† for the mathematically and/or typographically challenged among you who would like to use this system — ^† It appears that our buddy Prae-Prae put a little too much faith in the Unicode Consortium. Obviously any entity with “Consortium” right there in the name is not to be trusted fully. The biggest problem is that ... [ more ]

Dear Grammy, Un Koala If-Eyed. Now “Dear Grammy” gives her honest answers to the personal and perplexing linguistics questions that bother teenagers and baffle parents. Dear Grammy, My husband and I have noticed our teenage son Juulius has begun to vape and we believe it has consequently affected his linguistic capacity for speech. While it could merely be the natural phenomenon of age grading, we are worried that vaping is having adverse effects on his linguistic health. Nevertheless, the symptoms that our son exhibits are of the following: high-rising intonation, proclivity to insert the particle “like” in daily parlance, development of a penchant for wearing “totally chic and latest ... [ more ]

From the Editors. It is with heavy hearts that we announce to our readers the most important linguistic news of the decade: Psammeticus Quarterly is shutting down. Mr. Slater is departing for China this fall, while Mr. Pulju is going to the even more alien land of Texas. But impending dissolution has not caused any dropoff in the quality of the current number. As is our custom in the August issue, the linguistic cartoon has been replaced with “The Poets’ Corner,” a treasury of the best poems written on linguistic topics over the past year. In addition, this number contains some truly important articles, with earth-shattering reports on the Native Speaker Fallacy, Kimatuúmbi vowel harmony, the ... [ more ]

From the Archives!— Alien Syntax Trees. The SpecGram Archive Elves™. alien syntax trees, As previously reported, our very own Butch McBastard unearthed a satchel of papers and other miscellanea labeled, “ Top Secret SpecGram Time Capsule, 1964—Do Not Open for 50 Years! ” The intermittent wrangling with the SpecGram legal team over potential ~~incriminating evidence~~ proprietary information continues, but we are again able to share with our readers some of the treasures found within the satchel. Here is a scan of the nineteenth archival item, a purported “alien syntax tree” of a language transliterated in AutoGrammatikon Normal Form III.37 as ... [ more ]

And the Winner Is.... A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. Last month—December 1, 2014, to be precise—marked the end of an era. More than two years in the making! Over a hundred hours of photographic planning, prop procurement, and picture-taking! Eighteen months of promoting! Dozens of dollars and scores of minutes spent on marketing! Finally The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics Cover Contest came to an end. ... The organisers of the conference Methoden für die Vielfalt—Vielfalt der Methoden,; December 2014, in Heidelberg, Germany. Chiasmus of the Month; January 2015, Due to an early lack of entries, we decided to open the contest to a ... [ more ]

Evidence for Right Hemisphere Damage as a Result of Exposure to Slovene Humor. by D. Reindl, Rice University. Consider the following statement from Caplan (1987): 'Gardner and his colleagues (Gardner et al. 1983) have found that right-hemisphere damaged patients have difficulty in understanding jokes. They are unable to pick the ending of a story which is humorous; instead they often pick an ending which does not make sense but which is not particularly funny.' From this we might conclude that the endings which these patients do choose are able to satisfy their own demands for completing a joke (rather than that they themselves are unable to appreciate jokes) and that, perhaps, we simply do not understand the ... [ more ]

B A B E L. The Journal of the Worldwide Linguistic Society, Volume I Number 3, September 1990, A Letter from the Publishers. Our many avid readers have no doubt noticed that several months have elapsed since the last appearance of the Journal of the Worldwide Linguistic Society. The reason for this is that we have encountered all sorts of problems around here, all of which can be attributed to the incompetence and willful malfeasance of former editor Tim Pulju. To begin with, he chose the name Babel for our publication without checking to see whether he was stealing any preexisting journal’s appellation. He was. Further, as will become obvious to those readers who read the letters page in the current number, he ... [ more ]

Paramount Seeks To Leverage Linguistic Capital. SpecGram Wire Services, Attempting to leverage the success of its Klingon monopoly, Star Trek owner Paramount Pictures has been making aggressive advances on the world’s minority languages. Offers for majority ownership of such diverse languages as Eastern Yugur, Basque, and Mofu are reported by knowledgeable sources as running well into the tens of millions of US dollars. Yule University’s Dr. Mark Whale, director of the Endangered Linguistic Systems Fund, says that Paramount’s move has both advantages and disadvantages. Dr. Whale told our reporter “while there is no guarantee that a media corporation would actually promote language preservation, ... [ more ]

On the Scourge of Anti-Passive Stylistic Advice. Hidden Agents for Passives. [Note: This editorial has been accepted for publication as it was deemed of interest to our audience. No guarantees are offered on quality or relevance —Eds. ] Press Release Editorial Begins It has come to our attention that the passive voice has been deemed extraneous to good style. Advice has been given by leaders in grammar and style that the passive is seen as slow or awkward. This important linguistic structure has been denigrated by cartoonists and authors alike too! Let there be no more of this! The passive is supported by us and monies are being raised to support the campaign led by our organisation. It will be shown ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear Most Egregiously Vanilla Editors, We were let down by your recent article, “Challenging the Gendering of Theoretical Constructs in Morphology”. Given the title, we expected something a little more... challenging? Instead we got the typical linguistsplaining—pointing out a problem everyone already knows about while not offering any solutions. All with no recognition of non-linguonormative morphs, such as unbound -ish, or male-male pair bonds in compound nouns, or polyamorous multi-clitic groups such as I’dn’t’ve, or... etc. etc. etc. We would say that you disappointed us—and the rest of your readers—but we ... [ more ]

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 ]

University News. Goofy Geeks Grumble, Gripe ’Gainst Gossipy Greek Glyph Goofs. by Ruthlessly Roving Reporter Miss Deakina Andrea Kirkhamia The Greek Department of Greek at the Greco-Hellenic University for Greek Studies in Grimsby, UK, is on the verge of collapse after internecine conflicts on the pronunciation of letters of the Greek alphabet have threatened to derail the once highly respected department. The difficulties apparently emerged at a faculty lunch-cum-finger buffet, when a relatively new hire, Helen DeTroi, a promising post doc with an Oxford PhD in Sophoclean Mime, is reported, while they shuffled down the buffet queue, to have asked of the Chair ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian. Volume CXLVIII, Number 4. March 1998. Speculative Grammarian, Vol CXLVIII, No 4 EDITOR, Tim Pulju ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Aya Katz, John Newell, Keith Slater, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES, Dave Fleck, Victor T. Jones III, Donald Francis Reindl, Sérgio Meira de Santa Cruz Oliveira, I don't reckon you will find anything on Judge Irwin, ... [ more ]

Linguist of Fortune. The Journal of the Linguistic Society of South-Central New Caledonia. Volume I, Number 1. November 1990. Linguist of Fortune: The Journal of the Linguistic Society of South-Central New Caledonia, ... [ more ]

The First Report and Overview of the New Pan-global International Council for Marginalising Language (NPICML) on the execution and exclusion of all unnecessary vocabulary in the English Language. Being the first study of the use of only one global lingua franca and two basic descriptive words, including one from the exotic country of South Africa in a bid to further global diplomatic relations while annihilating almost 6 000 languages. . By the Dishonourable Sir CJ Cockspur, Head of the International Marginalising Institute’s Southern African and South African office in Johannesburg. Esteemed colleagues, it has come to the NPICML’s attention that, since the human race has fallen out of the trees and ... [ more ]

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