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 ]

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, 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 ]

Speculative Grammarian. Volume CXLIX, Number 1. January 2004. Speculative Grammarian, Vol CXLIX, No 1 EDITOR, Trey Jones EDITOR EMERITUS, Tim Pulju ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Jesse Beach, Aya Katz, Sérgio Meira, Don Reindl, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES, Keith Slater, John Newell, Dave Fleck, All Your Morpheme Are Belong To Us, ... [ more ]

(P)ain Itself. A Letter from the Managing Editor. First I must apologize for the title of this installment. My typesetting assistant, who was tired of receiving my monthly letter transliterated into runes and written on papyrus (a habit I picked up from the locals while living in Tierra del Fuego in the 1950s), created a “template” for me to fill in on this “computer” in my office. She titled it Lorem Ipsum and filled it with pseudo-Latin text. My document-fetching research assistant, when I asked how to change the title, demonstrated by changing the title to the more philologically appropriate (Do)lorem Ipsum, a humorous change for which I thanked her. After that, according to ... [ more ]

The Middle Finger, Having Flipped, Moves On .... A Letter from the Managing Editor. ... and so should you, dear shareholders: nor all your whining nor lawsuits shall lure it back to cancel half a bird. As most of our readers surely remember from the last issue, we had a very public and slightly testy exchange with some of our more obnoxious shareholders in this space. Apparently our initial sortie against our arrogant aggressors was more than a bit preliminary. I can’t go into too many details because a ridiculously confidential but legally binding settlement has been reached among several concerned parties. However, the ultimate upshot is that “we, the Editorial Board of Speculative Grammarian, are ... [ 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 ]

— http://SpecGram.com/PaniniPress Welcome to the online home of Panini Press, an academic publishing house formerly dedicated to the proposition that Linguistics is the noblest of the academic fields, but now with a focus on Subjects of more relevance to the Working Linguist’s everyday life and career. ❦पा Important announcements from Panini Press: ❧ Word Problems for Linguists (November 2025): Linguists, we here at Panini Press know you thought that you’d never again have to do anything more mathematically complicated than figure out the tip on your dinner bill. However, the real world often has other plans, so, for your own good, Dr. Barbara Millicent Roberts’s new book, Word ... [ more ]

Discourse Gender in Hakka Creole. Keith Slater, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC. INTRODUCTION: Over the last few years, Hakka Creole (Taiwan) has gained considerable attention in linguistic circles, due to several truly strange features of the language. This article presents details of yet another such surprising discovery—one which may well revolutionize the way linguists deal with texts of substantial size in the future. THEORETICAL PREREQUISITES: (Editor’s note: Mr. Slater’s article was too long. Therefore, we cut out the part about theoretical prerequisites entirely. If, as a result, you have trouble understanding the rest of the article, too bad. If you really want to know what he said here, ... [ more ]

Further Pre-Nara Japanese Poem Discoveries. SpecGram Wire Services, Tom Stinnett reporting. Archaeologists from the Basil Randolph Anderson Center for Lexico-Archeological Sartorial Poetry Studies (BRA-CLASPS), at the site of the pre-Nara dig in Japan have made further announcements. First, Translator Karōshi Sararīman at BRA-CLASPS has provided a likely title and possible translation of the first fragment, reported on earlier. Margo Edi and her fellow researchers have also provided another fragments of the exquisite poem about the woman wearing yellow garments. It is now clear that her name was Si (pronounced “Shee” in modern Japanese) and that the poem describes a ... [ more ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CLXI, Number 2; March 2011, MANAGING EDITOR, SENIOR EDITOR, EDITOR EMERITUS, Trey Jones, Keith Slater, Tim Pulju, Speculative Grammarian, Vol CLXI, No 2, CONSULTING EDITORS, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Jouni Maho, Daniela Müller, David J. Peterson, Bill Spruiell, ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Jonathan Downie, Mikael Thompson, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES, Jeff, Burke, Bethany Carlson, Nynke, de Haas, Alex, Savoy, Freya Shipley, Tom, Stinnett, Sheri Wells-Jensen, COMPTROLLER GENERAL, Joey Whitford, Welcome to the Linguistic Freak Show, ... [ more ]

How Computers Can Do Fieldwork For You: A Case Study. So, as a very mature and worldly individual—I am 20 years old after all—I am continually surprised by the lack of sophistication among the older generations—y’know, from 30 on up. They seem to be oblivious to the most rudimentary facets of everyday life, like Twitter, Reddit, and Fark. I mean, these people grew up on this planet—not like in Africa or something. Posers. So, as part of my self-designed interdisciplinary degree in International Computational Business Communication Studlies (I love that my advisor didn’t catch that extra “l” until my junior year—too late to ... [ more ]

Cultural Constraints on Aharip Grammar. Leon Mikhailovsky. Recent research on Aharip, one of the typologically remarkable languages of the Mt. Iso area of Papua New Guinea, has revealed striking evidence in support of recent proposals that a people’s culture can significantly affect the grammar of the language spoken by that people (Everett 2005). In particular, the culture of the Aharip, who live between the 300 and 400 meter isoclines of Mt. Iso, appears to prohibit any direct reference to immediate experience. Instead Aharip culture appears to be governed by a ‘Distant Experience Principle’ (DEP). The cultural and grammatical consequence of the DEP are wide-ranging, including a tense system that ... [ more ]

Attenborough to Receive Second Knighthood— But Can Linguistics Cope With It?. by our Honorary British Titles Editor, Sir the Honourable Rear-Admiral the Lord Earl-Baron of Ovathatopp-Taytles KCVM, FRSA, FOOL, TWIT. With the welcome news that all-round naturalist and TV supremo dude, Sir David Attenborough, has received a second knighthood from the Windsor clan at one of their many castles/palaces/stately homes/estates, the world of linguistics went into literal meltdown as observers pondered the un-sir-tainty of how to best address a double knight of the realm. Sir David, who was of course ecstatic about the award, played the role of scientist to a tee when asked by reporters how ... [ more ]

Advances in Neurolinguistic Technology. A Progress Report of the, Center for Proactive Neurolinguistics. Since its inception, the Center for Proactive Neurolinguistics has been dedicated to the use of advanced medical techniques for the improvement of the linguistic abilities of both aphasic and non-aphasic individuals. The editors of Speculative Grammarian have been kind enough to publish our progress reports at irregular intervals. This is the fifth such report to be published. Advance #1--A team lead by Drs. Yarlagadda and Vesalius has successfully replaced the cortical neurons in the third frontal gyrus, left hemisphere (i.e. "Broca's area"), with an identical network composed of insulated copper wiring. Dr. ... [ more ]

The C-Rhyme and Pun-ish-ment of St. Alvin. by Jerry Fyodor & Josef Dobrovskýevsky. It is now commonly accepted that St. Alvin was always accompanied by an assistant called Theodorus. Theodorus was a budding philosopher, with interests in Kant, Hegel and innateness in generative grammar. He was however, very rotund and was therefore known as the Deep Fat Friar. As a young monk, St Alvin left his first monastery, where he had taken a vow of silence, to found an order that believed that people were best served by creating attractive paper to put around Christmas gifts. It is for this reason that his autobiography was entitled “From Trappist to Wrappist.” The members of that order were noted for their ... [ more ]

Phonotronic Energy Reserves and the Tiny Phoneme Hypothesis. Dr. Equus Q. Quagga, Center for Geosynchronous Orbital Linguistics, São Tomé and Príncipe. In response to Quentin Atkinson’s recent claims in his paper “Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa” many (with most following Dr. William N. Spruiell’s 2011 conjecture) have hypothesized that larger phoneme inventories are necessitated by a lack of phonotronic energy in the local environment, thereby limiting the size of each individual phoneme in phonetic mouth-space. Thus, for example, one (specifically, Dr. Spruiell) would expect regions of low phonotronic energy in ... [ more ]

Flush Times in Buffet City!. by Artemus Zebulon Pratt, Speculative Grammarian Editor-on-the-Lam. Recently I had nearly finished editing an appalling piece of “quantitative” “linguistic” “analysis” submitted to this journal by a self-declared graduate student, my services being declared indispensable and remunerative by the superior editorship.¹ After surveying 342 undergraduates, or, more precisely, surveying an undergraduate population for a response rate of 9.2%, on how much they liked each possible syllable-final cluster in English on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 = “No way, dude!” to 5 = “Totally way, dude!” ... [ more ]

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