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1. Archives (18 visits)

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 ]


2. Vol CLXV, No 4 (15 visits)

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 ]


3. Merchandise (15 visits)

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 ]


4. Ministry of Propaganda (14 visits)

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 ]


5. Psammeticus Press (9 visits)

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 ]


6. Shigudo, Reluctantly—Sir Edmund C. Gladstone-Chamberlain (7 visits)

Shigudo, Reluctantly. Sir Edmund C. Gladstone-Chamberlain, Professor Emeritus of Linguistic Science, Department of Lexicology and Glottometrics, Devonshire-upon-Glencullen University, Southampton. In 1963, at the tender age of 24, I found myself on an expedition deep in the Amazon Basin, up a smallish tributary of the Río Ucayali. There we encountered a well-established tribe of indigenous people, numbering close to 400 and living in relative isolation, who called themselves the Shigudo. Several members of the tribe spoke nearly fluent Spanish,1 and we were able to communicate quite effectively with them. As our expedition was chiefly anthropological in nature, and the Shigudo were, anthropologically ... [ more ] Book!


7. Psammeticus Press—Chiasmus of the Month Awards (6 visits)

Psammeticus Press www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, Chiasmus of the Month Awards ... This somewhat irregular award is a sign of our recognition of and deep appreciation for the authors’ contribution to the upholding of decent writing standards in academic literature and to the dissemination of the finest of speech figures. Winners are selected for each most many issues by our Chiastic Editor and Editorial Chiasturge. The honorees to date are listed below. Chiasmus of the Month; November 2025, Todd Copeland, 2024, “A Figure of Speech and a Speechless Figure: Determinations of Identity in George Sand’s Indiana and Edith Wharton’s The House of ... [ more ]


8. The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics (6 visits)

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 ]


9. The Oxford Comma: A Solution—Eliza Doolittle (5 visits)

The Oxford Comma: A Solution. Eliza Doolittle. The Oxford Comma has once again raised its nasty little head in linguistic circles, thanks largely to the efforts of one Ms Truss and her book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It is time once and for all to put this little beast to rest. (No, not Ms Truss, you moron--the Oxford Comma). For those of you wondering what the Oxford Comma (OC) actually is, I have one question: what on earth are you doing reading an up-market linguistic magazine like this? So for your delectation and delight here is a definition of the OC: it’s the insertion of a comma after the penultimate item in a list, just before the and--for example, ‘coffee, cream, and ... [ more ] Podcast!


10. Toward a Prophylactic Approach to Techblather: Some Illustrations—Athanasious Schadenpoodle (5 visits)

Toward a Prophylactic Approach to Techblather: Some Illustrations. Athanasious Schadenpoodle. A: Tactical devices (misuse of specific lexical items). A1 Functionality, as in “Access the program’s advanced functionality!” Motivations: Technical: Function, a quite handy word, was conscripted by mathematicians—a group that combines an admirable respect for precision with an utter disregard for what words already mean and a deep distrust of anything time-bound. The word’s roots in notions of utility were chopped off, its purposive branches trimmed; it was repotted in an abstract relational container. Programmers, whose views of language are quite similar to ... [ more ]


11. Vol CXCV, No 2 (5 visits)

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 ]


12. SpecGram, Quarterly—A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief (4 visits)

SpecGram, Quarterly. A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. [Note: Due to a scheduling error 0 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 ]


13. Anglomorphic Cuneiform and Puzzle Solution—Trey Jones (4 visits)

Anglomorphic Cuneiform and Puzzle Solution. Trey Jones, l’École de SpecGram, Washington D.C.. In the last issue, we offered a mildly amusing puzzle; the task given was to decipher the apparently “anglomorphic” Kenduzandi cuneiform found in the image—provided by the Weyland Tiberius Flanderklieg Archives—of the stone tablet accompanying the mytholingual tale “Why Princes are not Scribes, and the Rat Eats Grain”. Of course the correlation between the Kenduzandi cuneiform and alphabetic letter forms is amusing, but ultimately ridiculous. To give it the respect it deserves, we got a fourth grader to outline the letters in marker. (To really give it the respect ... [ more ] Merch!


14. Collateral Descendant of Lingua Pranca—Ten New Commandments for Linguists—Trey Jones, et al. (4 visits)

Ten New Commandments for Linguists. Transcribed from the original Stone Tablets by Trey Jones, With much help from the Commandment Clarification Committee, including Joel Boyd, Aya Katz, Jouni Maho, Ken Miner, Daniela Müller, David J. Peterson, and Joey Whitford. As a Linguist, thou art an ambassador for the scientific study of Language and languages in the land of the monolingual naive speaker. Even though the monolingual naive speaker roll their eyes at thee and chastise thee as a word-obsessed fool and exalt their own native speaker competence, thou shalt proselytize the study of “Language with a big-L” whenever and wherever thou mayest do so, spreading the true word of descriptivism and railing ... [ more ] Podcast! Book!


15. First Names First—Tim Pulju (4 visits)

First Names First. by Tim Pulju. Across, 1. Ballpoint bestseller, 4. Sassy, 8. Billy Budd’s captain, 12. South of San Diego, 13. At any time, 14. 21st-century Walkman, 15. Makes a fall guy out of Mr. Nahasapeemapetilon, 17. Yield, 18. Department store founder, now banished to the basement, 19. A large number (possibly 61 or 30,505), 21. Informant, informally, 22. Edible root eaten as staple, 23. Where the sun is a rare thing, 26. Cover, as with barnacles, 30. Drinks the health of, 31. Artic. feat. that produces pharyngealization, 32. Go astray, 33. Sub, 36. Margaret, in ... [ more ]


16. Linguimericks—Book १०४ (4 visits)

Linguimericks, Book १०४. Beaver PV Irony Phrasal verbs with animal stems Abound in English lexis— Like ‘beaver away at a conference’. And the irony is I noticed this With my beaver away at a conference —B Verr, I can’t face it! Word combos with face! Well, let’s chase ’em: There’s face off and the A-Team’s ‘the Faceman’ About face and volte face Examples amass If we simply sit down and we face ’em —Face Man, Sonnet 18(v2) Shall I compare thee to an allomorph? Thou art more complex and in form more rich Than any morpheme that one might attach To free or to bound roots, which then puts forth Its range of forms; ... [ more ]


17. Strangecraft, Part VIII—Douce Amitié Souvent Perdue et Recherchee—Mikael Thompson (4 visits)

Strangecraft. by Mikael Thompson. ... - VIII -, Douce Amitié Souvent Perdue et Recherchee . As we sailed to New York I thought how best to edit my account of recent events, for my group was sure to demand a full report; I was too wary to give them that, but much of what had passed I was willing to share. Foremost of my considerations was a complete ignorance of their motives in learning about shoggoths, though I had serious doubts that their interest was purely scholarly. It would be best to make no mention of the manuscripts I had retrieved from administration, but then I was unsure how to explain my encounter with a shoggoth, and above all how to explain my survival when Trevor and Finley had been ... [ more ]


18. Pseudo-Psiblings™—And Other Views of Multiply-Blended Families—Trey Jones (4 visits)

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 ]


19. Are Turkish and Amharic Related? Are They Ever!—April May June (4 visits)

Are Turkish and Amharic Related? Are They Ever!. by, April May June, Freshman in Elementary Education, Indiana University at Bloomington. It is — "Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks they can talk about language." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — well-known from my L103 class that Turkish and Amharic supposedly aren't related, though it is no longer clear which languages they are related to. However, I have found lots of words in the two languages which sound alike and mean the same thing in only two months of hearing them spoken in two local restaurants. The similarities first caught my attention during an argument at the Turkish restaurant in which the owner kept saying "sought." ... [ more ] Book!


20. From Mwahaha to Bwahaha: Some Observations on Evil Laughter—Lady Esmerelda Rose Beeton-Frasier (4 visits)

From Mwahaha to Bwahaha: Some Observations on Evil Laughter. By Lady Esmerelda Rose Beeton-Frasier. Evil laughter is present across the globe and can be observed in all cultures and languages.1 At first it would appear that “Evil Laughter” or “EL” as it will be referred to, may take on various different phonetic forms, and I propose, after much research2 that EL falls somewhere between “Glee”3 and “Hysterics”.4 EL might start out as Gleeful Laughter (GL), may progress to EL before either ceasing, or escalating rapidly to Hysterical Laughter (HL).5 Those who are well schooled in the art of EL may skip GL and proceed ... [ more ]


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Last updated Feb. 9, 2026.