SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Update on Linguistic Protocol Regarding Addressing the Monarch. Her Majesty’s Department of Linguistics. Citizens, non-doms, holders of indefinite leave to remain, EU citizens who’ve already filled in the quick-and-easy computer registration thingy, visitors and anyone else: As is well known, Her Majestic Britannic Majesty Queen Liz of Winalot Prime must, as a Monarch Appointed by God, be addressed and interacted with in a manner consistent with her Royal Head-of-What-a-State-We’re-In-Ness. Top-level examples of this include the pronunciation of ‘ma’am’ which as anyone who has watched The Queen with that lovely Michael Sheen chap ... [ more ]

Linguistic Contributions To The Formal Theory Of Big-Game Hunting¹. R. Mathiesen, Brown University. The Mathematical Theory of Big-Game Hunting must surely be ranked among the major scientific achievements of the twentieth century. That this is so is largely the work of one man, H. Pétard, in whose fundamental paper (1938) certain recent advances in mathematics and physics were employed with great skill to create a theory of unmatched—not to say unmatchable!—power and elegance. One must not, of course, dismiss Pétard’s predecessors totally out of hand: the field had a long and distinguished history as a technology, was raised to the rank of a science by the ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian and SpecGram.com. Our Story. The august journal Speculative Grammarian has a long, rich, and varied history, weaving an intricate and subtle tapestry from disparate strands of linguistics, philology, history, politics, science, technology, botany, pharmacokinetics, computer science, the mathematics of humor, basket weaving, archery, glass blowing, roller coaster design, and bowling, among numerous other, less obvious fields. SpecGram, as it is known to devotees and sworn enemies alike, has for centuries sought to bring together the greatest yet least understood minds of the time, embedding itself firmly in the cultural and psychological matrix of the global society while ... [ more ]

Logical Fallacies for Winning Arguments and Influencing Decisions. by F. “Al” Lacie, Ph.D. Grand Old Party Linguist. Keeping to the approximately quindecennial pattern established by G.R.A.M.M.A.R. 1979 and Seely, 1993, I am pleased to provide a list of common logical fallacies and cognitive biases used in argumentation in the field of Linguistics (and elsewhere). However, it is not my intention to present these logical fallacies (with examples!) so that you, the dear reader, may learn to avoid them, but rather so that you may learn to use them—if they didn’t work at least some of the time, no one would still be making these “errors”. You may also be able to recognize these ... [ 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 ]

ADVERTISEMENT The Vowel Space DVD Boxed Set The Vowel Space DVD Boxed Set, Available for the first time ever in one collection! ... All ten films in the classic cult sci-fi comedy horror franchise are available for the first time ever in one DVD boxed set! Come revel in the spectacle of Gnome Chornsky playing Otto Jespersen XIV^th across nearly four decades in this 13-Disc collection featuring all ten Vowel Space films and three all-new bonus discs. It’s the ultimate paean to this man’s man, this linguist’s linguist, this linguocosmological explorer’s linguocosmological explorer. His desiccated sense of humor and subtle snark explode onto the screen like a ... [ 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 ]

PAID ADVERTISEMENT Plagiarism Uncovered in SpecGram Pages. The Linguistic Inquirer. Pursuant to the terms of the pre-litigious resolution of Grammar Entelechy v. Speculative Grammarian¹ the editors of SpecGram have recently disclosed the truth about the academically distasteful practices by which the allegedly “esteemed”² journal foists its linguistic and paralinguistic agenda on the profession. Of particular concern is Speculative Grammarian³’s long-running, recurring, and well-documented theme that languages, dialects, and grammars can be or become degenerate.^{4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, ...} [ more ]

Proto-Indo-Spamopean, An Early Exemplar of “Ye Olde Baite of Yon Clicke”. X. Kuvador, R. Kialugist, and Pael E. O’Ntolojiss. While many today lament the imminent demise of the English language (Hat 2006), the corrupting influence of western culture (Bolson 2014), and the amorality of advertising and the pursuit of the mighty dollar (Board 2010), it is nonetheless clear to the classically educated scholar (Plaid’oh 2009) that, really, there is nothing new under the sun (van der Meer 2013). A recent excursion into the darkest recesses of the Hall of Lost Philological Manuscripts in the Lukkitha Sizathat Graduate Library on the campus of the Varrie X. Pensive College of the Remunerative Arts has ... [ more ]

The Compleat Linguist. John-Boy Walton. Man’s sentence’s in vain, for it’s subject is pain, And sorrow, and short as a quick click; ’ Tis a hodge-podge of syntax, semantics, and sounds, And sounds, semantics, and logique. But we’ll take no care when the funding proves fair; Nor will we vex now our wee brains; We’ll banish all sorrow, and sing till to-morrow, And theorize and theorize again. ... [ 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 ]

The History of the Indo-Europeans, An Agony in Six Fits. Tim Pulju. ... Once upon a time, on a warm spring day about 5500 years ago, a young Indo-European named Bright-Fame drove an ox-cart into the family compound. “Greetings, father,” the young man said, using the vocative case. “Greetings, shmeetings,” the dwelling-lord answered, knowing, through a sort of inverse racial memory, that there would one day be an Indo-European language called Yiddish. “What are you up to now? What’s that contraption you’re dragging around with those dual oxen?” “It’s a wheeled vehicle,” Bright-Fame replied. “Wheeled vehicle?” his father ... [ more ]

Chickenese—A Grammatical Sketch. Damon Lord. Many linguists and animal psychologists have sought to discover if mankind is the sole species to have developed language. Recent experiments with chickens at Foxchester University, in Foxchester, England, have discovered that mankind is no longer alone. The language discovered has been dubbed Chickenese by linguists. All attempts to quantify grammar have failed; linguists believe Chickenese has little (if any) grammar. The current theory is that, due to the small size of the brain of the domesticated chicken and the limited vocabulary of the chicken species, thought processes are not developed enough to develop grammar, although repetition has been observed. ... [ more ]

Linguistic Emissions Reduction Sought. SpecGram Wire Services. Sanaa, Yemen—Tempers flared at global climate talks today, as environmental and linguistic concerns met head-on. The dispute is about so-called “inefficient articulations,” which detractors say increase the metabolic cost of speaking, while offering no linguistic benefit to speakers. These articulations, such as the large transition between the uvular [q] and palatal [i] in the Arabic surname Sadeqi, require more metabolic energy than most other segmental transitions, and are contributing to global warming, detractors say. More difficult sounds require greater metabolic effort, which leads to higher ... [ 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 ]

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 ]

Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome . Are you looking for a book about ancient Roman history that’s interesting, informative, and amusing? No? Oh. Well, all the same, as long as you’re on this webpage already, we’d like to recommend that you buy Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome. Easy to read, full of genuine historical facts, and adorned with amateurish hand-drawn pictures, The History of Rome is so good that even Girolamo Savonarola might hesitate to cast it into the flames. And best of all, it’s only $6.99! Buy one now! Interested, but wary of being burned by a slick advertising campaign for a product that fails to live up to the hype? Then download the free preview and read ... [ 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 ]

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XLVI — The SpecGram LingNerds are joined by returning guest Pete Bleackley. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics, the LingNerds discuss something *else* that tries to look like iconicity, and then look at some innovative and/or abominable on-going changes in English. ... [ listen ]

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