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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 ]

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, 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 ]

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 ]

The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . For decades, Speculative Grammarian has been the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics—and now it is available in book form—both physical and electronic! We wish we were kidding,¹ but no, seriously, we’ve published a large³ collection of SpecGram articles, along with just enough new material to force obsessive collectors and fans to buy it, regardless of the cost.⁴ From the Introduction: The past twenty-five years have witnessed many changes in linguistics, with major developments in linguistic theory, significant expansion ... [ 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 ]

Anti-Rhetoric. A Critical Methodology for Critically Assessing Critical Thinking. Rhetoric, as the art of persuasion, has a long and none-too-honorable history. Silly or stupid ideas, couched in the right language, may sway—and in many cases have swayed—the uncritical thinker. Anti-rhetoric is a method for assessing a listener’s susceptibility to rhetorical suasion. The technique itself is simple, yet powerful. Present two sides of a lopsided argument in a counter-lopsided way—using the full complement of rhetorical tricks to prop up the untenable position, while burdening the obviously logical position with the antithesis of each rhetorical device ... [ more ]

IPAlindromes II—Find the IPAlindrome!. Mary Shapiro, Truman State University. In the last installment, I introduced the idea of the IPAlindrome (based on phonemic and/or phonetic transcription rather than written English). This time, it’s up to you to uncover the IPAlindrome, based on the given paraphrases. The IPAlindromes here are all phonemic, ignoring allophonic variation introduced by aspiration, nasalization, etc. As last time, diphthongs are treated as single units. E.g. (A pithy observation, not a full sentence.) When the mind is not sharp, using a trademarked chemical product to remove body hair leads to exsanguination. → Dull brain, Nair, blood. Below are five more for you to figure ... [ more ]

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XI — The SpecGram LingNerds discuss how vowels control your brain, and whether toddlers listen to themselves, or are just stupid. They also investigate more Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics with guest Sheri Wells-Jensen, and discuss their futurological visions for English. ... [ listen ]

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 ]

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XXXI — The SpecGram LingNerds go it alone in this episode. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics, the LingNerds discuss word aversion and random interesting linguisticky factoids. ... [ listen ]

The Sociolinguistic Impact of Hippie Linguist Naming Practices. ɹɒbɪn O’Jonesson. There is little discussion in the literature concerning the social and psychological effects of the distinctive and unusual names given to children by their hippie parents, such as Moonbeam, Peacekarma, Ryvre, Starchild, Redpony, and so many more. Even less attention has been paid to the naming practices of the particular sub-culture of hippie linguists, who advocated for free morphemes in the 60’s and gave their children names such as Monophthongbreathstream, Pronouncopula, Rezonator, Asteriskchild, Redponymy, and Noam. ... The family VW van in 1971. Very few people so-named have kept their monikers into ... [ more ]

Brother, Can You Paradigm?. Written by Harris Risman¹, 1. Show respect to the Gracious Grammarian, Though his foes call him Brutal Barbarian. It takes chutzpah and nerve to ignore the chef-d’oeuvre, Of a hero and humanitarian. 1.1, He is prince without peer. He is hailed as a seer, By disciples from Dover² to Darien³. 2. He never need ask “Can you spare a dime?”⁴, He’s transformed⁵ his whole field with his paradigm.⁶, Though he generates strife, His ideas brought green life, To a dried up and colorless arid time.⁷, ... [ more ]

Metalinguistic Autoreference. Benoît de Cornulier, Centre Universitaire de Marseille Luminy. What¹ could the source be for that self-determined sentence: “This is true”?², ¹Fieldwork was supported by grants from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and the Central Research Fund of the University of London. Analysis and cogitation were partly supported by grant CS-1957 to Tokyo University and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique through grant 412H. I am grateful to Alain Barthelemy, Ted Lightner, and Maurice Gross, who discussed an earlier version of this work (Marseille-Luminy 1968, mimeo.). For the definitive version I am especially ... [ more ]

The Influence of Seasonings in Middle and Modern English. Rosemary and Basil Dillon. English cuisine is notorious for being heavy in the stomach and light on flavor. However, it would be incorrect to presume that this has always been the case.¹ A careful examination of literature in the Middle and Early Modern English periods provides compelling evidence that the English were once spice-crazy. Take, for example, one of the earliest known songs in English. Sumer is icumen in, (Cumin is in/from Sumer) We must admire the historical and philological chops of England in the Middle Ages. Not only does cumin originate in the historical area of ancient Sumer, it also happens to be one of the few words in English ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXXI, Number 4 ... Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Associate Editors: Pete Bleackley, Jonathan Downie, Mikael Thompson; Assistant Editors: Virginia Bouchard, Mark Mandel, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Samuel Andersson, Emily Davis, Vincent Fish, Deak Kirkham, Tel Monks, Ollie Sayeed, Mary Shapiro, Bill Spruiell, Daniel Swanson, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Penguins Need Not Apply; June 2018 ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian is proud to present yet another irregular installment in the Linguistic Anthropologic Monograph Endowment's Bizarre Grammars of the World Series. Recursive Processing: An Anthropological, Linguistic Study of the Benhirloŋtam⁰, Bizarre Grammars of the World, Vol. 55. Background, The Benhirloŋtam live in a world that can best be described as fractal. The mountain range visible on the horizon is oddly regular, and any piece of it looks like a smaller version of the whole thing. A sketch is shown in Figure 1 below: ... Figure 1. A sketch of mountains visible from the village. The Benhirloŋtam build their homes in four triangular parts, connected to form ... [ more ]

Palinilap Cimordromic, Center Embedded Passives. Küçük Kaynaranyak Küçük, Universitätsphilosoph, University of Qaanaaq, Greenland. Across the world, increased intercultural contact via business dealings has led to the spread not only of English and other linguæ francæ of business, but also of business cultures. In many industries and geopolitical zones, the two main competitors in the marketplace of ideas are Japanese-style corporate and personal responsibility (up to and including seppuku, as needed) and American-style quicksilver-like shifting of blame. Unsurprisingly, the American way is winning out, in large part because it is ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXVI, Number 4 ... Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Associate Editors: Pete Bleackley, Madalena Cruz-Ferreira, Jonathan Downie, Bill Spruiell, Mikael Thompson, Sheri Wells-Jensen; Assistant Editors: Virginia Bouchard, Florian Breit, Mark Mandel, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Kenny Baclawski, Adam Baker, Bethany Carlson, Robin Day, Anders Horn, David Marino, Tel Monks, Cathal Peelo, Davis Prickett, Laura Ryals, Mary Shapiro, Isabelle Tellier; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Unencumbered by the Thought Process; August 2016 ... [ more ]

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