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 ]

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 ]

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 ]

A Panoply of Stupid Hijinks. The Dijkstra Triplets (Stuart, Kirsten, and Elizabeth). The answers to the clues below all share a common trait. When aligned by their commonality, in the order provided, an additional word will be spelled out. Italian dessert made with egg yolks and wine (8 or 10) Country with a capital... with a capital Fun! (6) People taking a class (8) Pure vowel (11) My ordinal person number (5) Noun or article that identifies a thing (8) First nation, alphabetically (11) Tranquility (8) Verb with an incomplete conjugation (9) Plant whose seeds are not encased in an ovary (10) Speech disorder characterized by sound repetitions (10) Fairly large (7) Royal Dutch airline (3, abbrev) Complete the puzzle and send ... [ more ]

PAID ADVERTISEMENT — http://SpecGram.com/PaniniPress Bestsellers of 2018 At Panini Press, we continue to be Committed to the life and career of the Working Linguist—but All Work and No Play makes Jack a Dull Vowel. For your Amusement and Edification, we collect here the Bestselling Fiction and Non-Fiction Books of 2018, from Panini Press. All are now available at Fine Book Retailers world-wide.❦पा Literature and Fiction The Alphabetist (25th Anniversary Edition), by Paulo Coelocutio Mesolect and Holonymy, by Rupi Kauser Where the Cardinal Vowels Sing, by Deliberativa Owens Nine Perfective Strong Verbs, by Liane Mirativity A Curve in the ... [ more ]

Thirteen Untranslatable Words. by Michael Covarrubias. I’m a language lover. I have been since I was a kid. Just about eleven months after being born, I started saying words and I’ve been using them ever since. I probably use words every day and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. After a while, we language lovers have a hard time learning more about our native language. That’s why we branch out to memorize other languages. It can be hard though, because a lot of foreign languages have words in them that we just can’t translate into English. Maybe it’s because we don’t have the concept in English, and that makes it impossible to make up a label for the concept. Or, more interestingly, ... [ more ]

Pseudo-Psiblings™ And Other Views of Multiply-Blended Families. A proposal for improving and clarifying family nomenclature for the 21st century. by Trey Jones. Introduction. Language evolves—otherwise we’d all be able to read Beowulf in the original, right? Sometimes language changes in response to cultural changes. But sometimes it doesn’t change fast enough to keep up with cultural changes. This paper seeks to give English a little push in a much-needed direction. There has been a fairly radical change in Western society in the last hundred years or so. It used to be that if a woman was on her fourth husband, one automatically felt a little sorry for ... [ 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 Quiz to End All Quizzes. ... Everyone makes Internet quizzes—even your three richest widowed aunts use their mite, if not their might, to bedazzle the gullible and amass those sweet, sweet clicks. So stand aside, ladies, SpecGram is on the ~~make~~ move! There’s a new quiz powerhouse in town, and since we don’t believe in planned obsolescence, you’ll never need nor want another!, Just answer these 17 handy-dandy mutually orthogonal questions to get the answers to all (or at least the 7 most important) of your burning questions. ... [ more ]

ADVERTISEMENT Do You Speak English XS?. English XS Box Not all companies speak your language. When opportunity knocks, you need a company that knows how to say “Come in! Have a brandy! Let’s discuss emerging markets!”. That’s why we patented the English language. It was knocking on our door. And we answered. In English. Naturally. Some in the West are concerned that our de facto ownership of global discourse may cause problems for communication and free speech. That is because they are commies. Nevertheless, we do not take our responsibilities as the planet’s semantic hegemon lightly. We have guaranteed royalty-free access to the right to read until at least 2015. And for those who ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXVII, Number 3 ... Trey Jones, Managing Editor, Keith Slater, Senior Editor, Bill Spruiell, Consulting Editor, Tim Pulju, Editor Emeritus; Associate Editors: Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Mikael Thompson, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Editorial Associates: Pete Bleackley, Virginia Bouchard, Florian Breit, Jonathan Downie, T.B. Geller, Adam Graham, Daniela Müller, David J. Peterson, Callum Robson; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; I Took an Ejective to the Knee; June 2013 ... [ 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 ]

The Phonology Test. Ulfheðnar ber Sarkur. Ahh, the phonology test! It’s a rite of passage among linguists-to-be. There are those who grok the interplay of phonemes and the ordering of phonological processes, and there are those who decide to question whether such complex mechanisms could be instantiated in the human subconscious and whether their apparent existence is merely the echo of historical processes. That second type also tends to drop phonology by the second prelim and scurry off to some “philosophy of language” class—which is not even taught by the linguistics department, for crying out loud! Dr. Professor Noarn Chornsky—who has recently moved to take up a ... [ more ]

Green Linguarian—With Brightest Hopes. With Darkest Despair.. Linguistic Film Reviews with Trey Jones. Green Linguarian, “With brightest vowel. With darkest alveolar lateral approximant.”, Starring, Jakob Grimm as Hal Jargon/ Green Linguarian, William Jones as Thaal Syntactro, Benjamin Lee Whorf as Kiloword, Leonard Bloomfield as Hačektor Hammond, Also Featuring, Franz Boaz as Abin Singulur, George Zipf as Paralipsis, ... Green Linguarian stars a badly miscast Jakob Grimm as Hal Jargon, who takes over the role of Green Linguarian from dying extraterrestrial linguist Abin Singulur, played by Franz Boaz, whose talent is wasted in such a brief role. ... [ more ]

ANNOUNCEMENT 2018 Conferences in Nerdolinguistics. In response to the rise of articles on the translation of names in Harry Potter and the newly jiggly emerging field of Pokémonastics, Speculative Grammarian and Panini Press are proud to announce a whole new series of conferences on Nerdolinguistics. They are as follows: Memes for the Old: How and Why the Young Find Humor in Meaningless Internet Drivel Guest speakers: Pew D. Πι Virtual Login, Mobile Devices Only; Recording Available in 2018, Beyond The Hysterical Cackle: Perspectives on the Morphosyntax of 70’s TV Laugh Tracks Guest speakers: Laverne, Shirley, Kotter, Gilligan, Sanford, & Fonzie The Back Lot, Hollywood; January 2018, ... [ more ]

Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics. by Trey Jones. As a service to our young and impressionable readers who are considering pursuing a career in linguistics, Speculative Grammarian is pleased to provide the following Gedankenexperiment to help you understand the possibilities and consequences of doing so. For our old and bitter readers who are too far along in their careers to have any real hope of changing the eventual outcome, we provide the following as a cruel reminder of what might have been. Let the adventure begin ... [ more ]

ADVERTISEMENT Linguistic Lingerie. Need a gift for the lady linguist in your life? Already got her The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics? This 100% natural linen nightshirt, tastefully embroidered with Middle English ⇒ Early Modern English sound changes, will be exactly what she wants. She’ll love The Great Vowel Shift! , Available in regular, ˑ and ː sizes. ... [ more ]

Not My President. A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. Just a short while ago—on January 20, 2017—the final reverberations of a long and difficult election season were felt as a new president was sworn into office after one of the most unprecedented political campaigns in history. We are talking about, of course, the election of Arkhibuldinho Rasputinsky McFudgment (SpecGram Senior Junior Editor, Ret.) to the office of President of the SpecGram Junior Editor’s Union and Xenographōrium—official motto: J.E.U.X.—because life’s not just all fun and games! Arkhie ran an unorthodox campaign. His campaign slogan, ... [ more ]

“Double-Dot Wide O / Nasal-Ingressive Voiceless Velar Trill” by J–––– J––––––. From Speculative Grammarian CLI.3; July 2006. Reviewed by Jonathan van der Meer. ... Double-Dot Wide O, Spoiler Alert !. It’s been more than eight years, so I’m going to go ahead and let you in on a little secret: the nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill is a pig snort, and the double-dot wide O looks like a pig snout. (Some phoneticians will argue that they themselves produce a uvular trill. They probably do—especially when reading journals less interesting than SpecGram—but ... [ more ]

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