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 ]

Hey Linguists!—Get Them to Get You a Copy of The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . Hey Linguists! Do you know why it is better to give than to receive? Because giving requires a lot more work! You have to know what someone likes, what someone wants, who someone is, to get them a proper, thoughtful gift. That sounds like a lot of work. No, wait. That’s not right. It’s actually more work to be the recipient—if you are going to do it right. You can’t just trust people to know what you like, what you want, who you are. You could try to help your loved ones understand a linguist’s needs and wants and desires—but ... [ more ]

Nunavut Bans Twitter. SpecGram Wire Services. In a move that has shocked the world, the Canadian territory of Nunavut has banned the social network Twitter. A spokesperson for the Nunavut government, explaining the ban, said, “Look, we’re all in favour of free speech, but face facts. Twitter simply isn’t compatible with Inuit culture. How are we supposed to say Taimailauqsimajutuqaluulauqsimajututqalujuuiniuliq&uaiaasit,¹ or ... [ 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 ]

The Perplexed Linguist’s Guide to English Departments. Now with Footnotes! Athanasious Schadenpoodle. So, Dear Reader, you have completed your Ph.D. in Linguistics (yay you!), run headlong into the grim realities of the modern job market (poor you!), broadened your ideas about possible teaching contexts (smart you!) and landed a gig in an English department (lucky you?). You’ve potentially got the base of the Maslovian pyramid covered for at least a semester, but you’re in a rather alien environment, surrounded by people who talk funny in a way that Dialectology 501 never prepared you for and who have some markedly odd folkways. Some culture shock is inevitable, but a little knowledge can go a long ... [ 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 three bigrams removed. Below are two separate puzzles. Each includes a table to fill out and a set of bigrams with which to fill it up. Using each bigram 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 December 15th, 2025. Solutions and solvers will be ... [ more ]

The Speculative Grammarian AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠. On several occasions, mention has been made of the AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠ in the pages of SpecGram; in the current epoch, these references date back as early as at least 2004.¹ In the following years there have been denials,² mentions,³ more⁴ mentions,⁵ leaked internal documents,⁶ and even some early oral history⁷ (accompanied as it was by additional denials). Throughout this time the consistent official stance of the Editorial board of SpecGram has been to deny that the AutoGrammatikon™ exists, ... [ more ]

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part ж—The Trouble with NLP. Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. Please review previously discussed materials as needed. Now that that is taken care of, let us consider why Natural Language Processing (or, its alter-ego, Computational Linguistics) has not been the resounding success regularly predicted by the NLP faithful: We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were hungry/over-ripe. Time/Fruit flies like a(n) arrow/banana. pretty little girl’s school crying computational linguist Up next: Lexicostatistics vs Glottochronology. References, Baeza-Yates, Ricardo and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto (1999). Modern Information ... [ more ]

Virtual NLP Dice. The SpecGram Überlinguistaffen. ... [Re-roll.] [Re-roll like you mean it !!] As many successful practitioners of Natural Language Processing know, the surest path to success is to come up with some complicated-looking equation and then rest on your mathematical laurels for the rest of your career—because “Math is hard, and hard things are for smart people, and smart people are just better. QED.” Or so we learned from the original ad for NLP Dice: “Local Linguist Mom Discovers One Weird Trick for Deriving NLP Equations!—Computational Linguists Hate Her!” (SpecGram ... [ 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 ]

Оrthоgraрhіc Perрlехer. Welcome to the Speculative Grammarian Оrthοɡrаphіс Ρerplехеr! This not-quite-pointless little tool will munge your text, randomly replacing some characters with homoglyphs that are nearly identical¹—or at least quite reasonably similar to the untrained eye. Why? To make text both very hard and very easy to find via normal search (try to find “οrthoɡrарhіс реrрleхer” on this page, for example); to confuse and amaze your friends and enemies alike;⁶ to pass the time in a ... [ 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 ]

Speculative Grammarian is proud to present yet another installment of indeterminate regularity in the Linguistic Anthropologic Monograph Endowment’s Bizarre Grammars of the World Series. The Laziest Language on Earth. An Anthropological Linguistic Study of the Perry So-so⁰. Bizarre Grammars of the World, Vol. 61, Introduction. Back in 1922, my Historical Linguistics professor, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, noted that ease of articulation is a driving force in language change—hence the regular occurrence of lenition rules—but the opposing need to maintain a clear communication channel prevents everything from degenerating to a long low mid vowel. Turns out ... [ more ]

ON VARIATION UNDER EARTHLINGS. By Churles R. DAREWIN, M.A. FELLOW OF THE ROLLING, GRAMMATICAL, LINGUÆAN, ETC. SOCIETIES; AUTHOR OF ‘JOURNAL OF RESEARCHES DURING A. N. CHIMPSKY’S VOYAGE ROUND THE MARS.’. Variability — Individual Differences — Doubtful languages — Wide ranging, much diffused, and common languages vary most — Languages of the larger branches in any country vary more than the languages of the smaller branches — Many of the languages of the larger branches resemble varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having restricted ranges. BEFORE applying the principles arrived at in the last centuries to earthlings in bellum ... [ 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 ]

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 ]

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part I—Non-Configurational Languages. Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. A. Mathematician Friend¹ once told me that, in mathematics, it is sometimes said that if you cannot explain the basic outline of a mathematical idea to a bright and interested 10-year-old, then you don’t really understand it yourself. That got me thinking, and I’ve come to a couple of conclusions: According to my 10-year-old niece, I don’t understand any mathematical ideas. Something similar could be said for linguistic ideas.² It is generally accepted that math is hard (Davis & Hersh, Friend, Lakoff & ... [ more ]

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