Most Popular Pages—Today

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1. Ministry of Propaganda (5 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 ]


2. A Review of Wailin’ Jennings’ Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Linguists—Praenomen Gentilicium Cognomen, Esq. (4 visits)

A Review of Wailin’ Jennings’ Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Linguists . by Praenomen Gentilicium Cognomen, Esq.. Well-known kʌn.trɪ.n.wɛs.tʌrn star Wailin’ Jennings—son of famed rhotacism and blues crooner Moanin’ Jennings and grandson of beloved buggie-wuggie icon Hollerin’ Jennings—has released a groundbreaking new album. This, his tenth album in a twenty-three year career, is poised to become his artistically and stylistically most successful effort yet. Jennings has masterfully blended studio phonology, live morphology, and engineered syntax to create some of the slickest music ever made, without ... [ more ] Podcast!


3. Merchandise (4 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. Vol CLXV, No 4 (4 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 ]


5. LingDoku II—More, Better, Harder—Trey Jones (4 visits)

LingDoku II. More, Better, Harder. Trey Jones, l’École de SpecGram, Washington D.C.. In the April issue, Speculative Grammarian made a shameless attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Japanese number/logic game SuDoku by concocting a SuDoku-like activity suitable for Linguists. Our original LingDoku puzzle simplified the logical reasoning component of traditional SuDoku, and introduced a thin veneer of linguistics to create an artificial barrier to participation for non-linguists. The solution to last issue’s puzzle is given here. In all likelihood it is the correct solution, but nothing in life is certain. Well, as it turns out, the original LingDoku puzzle is ... [ more ]


6. Ple Nvæn-ila Fieldwork Puzzle—Claude Searsplainpockets (3 visits)

Ple Nvæn-ila Fieldwork Puzzle. Claude Searsplainpockets. and the SpecGram Puzzle Elves™ Claude Searsplainpockets recently completed several months of fieldwork among a tribe known as the Ple Nvæn-ila. He said that he found the language and the culture to be “quite respectable, but not really worthy of the Bizarre Grammars of the World series.” To keep all of Claude’s hard work from going completely to waste, we’ve decided to turn all his data into a puzzle of sorts. Here is your task: Translate these two sentences, to and from Ple Nvæn-ila, based on Claude’s field notes, given further below (after the Intermission). I heard that two big weird obnoxious ... [ more ]


7. SpecGram, Quarterly—A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief (3 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 ]


8. Linguimericks, Etc.—Book १९ (3 visits)

Linguimericks, Etc. Book १९. On fieldwork, I met a translator Whose clients all said, “we don’t rate ’er. She’s too ’igh-fallutin’ And yer darn tootin’ We won’t pay such a strong aspirator.” —Col. O. Nihilist, Conlanging I know not a thing on, But Star Trek want something to bring on. I’ll just throw some darts At these IPA charts, And whatever I get, call it Klingon —Pete Bleackley, A renowned Textese expert at Warwick Was accused of gross database con trick. This got him so bitter That he posted @Twitter “#allmytweets ain’t faked data, it’s my yardstick.” —Cailín na Luimní As I learn more of ... [ more ]


9. Update on Linguistic Protocol Regarding Addressing the Monarch—Her Majesty’s Department of Linguistics (3 visits)

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 ]


10. Collateral Descendant of Lingua Pranca—On the Meta-Abstractness of the Abstract Abstract—Métha Maxwell (3 visits)

On the Meta-Abstractness of the Abstract Abstract. Métha Maxwell, (no relation). Abstract: Little note has been taken of the linguistically universal logical and empirical implications and consequences that bear crucially on linguistic methodology and meta-processes that arise from E. Maxwell’s 1979 paper, On the Abstractness of Abstractness. Though no complete copy of this important paper is known to have survived to the present day, the abstract is sufficient for one to conclude, as E. Maxwell does, that any further investigation of the problem outlined in the abstract, must of necessity, for the reasons given in the abstract, incorporate that paper’s working hypothesis and theoretically ... [ more ] Podcast!


11. Linguimericks—Book ५५ (3 visits)

Linguimericks, Book ५५. In Europe and Africa too English is rising, it’s true It’s a real lingua franca A commercial anchor But in Britain, fake news is L2 —Col. O. Nihilist, Now there was a linguist named Jones, Who could pronounce quite clearly all phones. But he wore out his pharynx, His tonsils, and larynx, And now he just lays there and groans —P. Ublekkdeaux Meign, A linguist went out on a bender And wrapped round a lamppost his fender. The cops asked him why, He replied, “You just try Explaining that sex isn’t gender.” —Pete Bleackley, Now They’re Killing Grammatical Distinctions Of our language they’re making a mess— No distinctions ... [ more ]


12. Vol CLV, No ε (3 visits)

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CLV, Number ε ; October 2008, Special Supplemental Issue Speculative Grammarian, Vol CLV, No ε MANAGING EDITOR, Trey Jones, EDITOR EMERITUS, Tim Pulju, SENIOR EDITOR, Keith Slater, “Those who forget history are, doomed to do badly on the test. ... [ more ]


13. Australians Reject “Drunk Strine” Claims—Matilda Swagman (3 visits)

Australians Reject “Drunk Strine” Claims. SpecGram Wire Services, Matilda Swagman reporting. Australians throughout the world are outraged at the claims made by Dean Frenkel that their distinctive accent arises from the slurred speech of drunken convicts. Backpacker Sheila McGonnagall, working at The Banker and Barrowboy, London Bridge, said, “Strewth! He’s got kangaroos loose in the top paddock! What kind of drongo would think Strine comes from heaps of blokes yabbering while off their faces? A two pot screamer, that’s who. Like a couple of tallies is enough to get a dinkum Aussie full. Besides, you should see the bloody poms when they’re on the turps. Holy dooley!” In ... [ more ]


14. 50 Schwas of Vowel—Advertisement (3 visits)

ADVERTISEMENT 50 Schwas of Vowel. SpecGram Press Me Against You brings you a sizzling, schwizzling story of passion in the articulatory phonetics lab. Sche was a brilliant billionaire businesswoman; he was an early career articulatory phonetician with a massive student debt and a schmouldering passion for unstressed mid-central vowels. Sche schmoozed him; he was schmitten. They schwaltzed schwowly across the tile floor of the articulatory phonetics laboratory. Sche held him close and schwhispered, ‘Have you ever been schwacked on the behind with a schwhip? That’ll make you articulate some vowels!’ ‘Schwow me!’ he schwaid, schwivering with anticipation ... and they kissed: ... [ more ]


15. The C-Rhyme and Pun-ish-ment of St. Alvin—Jerry Fyodor & Josef Dobrovskýevsky (3 visits)

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 ]


16. Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome (3 visits)

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 ]


17. Cartoon Theories of Linguistics—Part ж—The Trouble with NLP—Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. (3 visits)

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part ж—The Trouble with NLP. Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. Please review previously discussed materials as needed. Now that that is taken care of, let us consider why Natural Language Processing (or, its alter-ego, Computational Linguistics) has not been the resounding success regularly predicted by the NLP faithful: We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were hungry/over-ripe. Time/Fruit flies like a(n) arrow/banana. pretty little girl’s school crying computational linguist Up next: Lexicostatistics vs Glottochronology. References, Baeza-Yates, Ricardo and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto (1999). Modern Information ... [ more ] Merch! Book!


18. A Redundancy—and Revitalisation—of Competencies: Competence in Competence—Compo Tenz (3 visits)

A Redundancy— and Revitalisation— of Competencies: Competence in Competence. Compo Tenz, Professor in Competence, University of Comptance in Quompuy, Tennessee. When the undergraduate student of linguistics has finally hacked her way through the left-periphery,1 drawn more tree diagrams than there are trees in the Amazon,2 merged move with whatever move merges with, and bared the structure of her fazed soul before bare phrase structure, often all that will be left at the end may be a residual echo of some vague recollection of the flitting memory of the idea of Chomskyan competence; to wit: the ideal speaker-listener in a perfectly homogenous ... (you know the ... [ more ]


19. On Saving Endangered Languages as Part of Doing Doctoral Research—Albertrinette Q. Yue-Ramirez (3 visits)

On Saving Endangered Languages, as Part of Doing Doctoral Research. By Albertrinette Q. Yue-Ramirez, SpecGram Research Intern #934392-002YR, (Dissertation Support Program 4A). Searching for a dissertation topic gives one an abundance of time for introspection. And watching old TV programs. Personally, I get my jollies through archived episodes of The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, and Hogan’s Heroes. Those were great shows, let me tell you. Can’t get enough of them! As I said, this leads also to introspection, and I have begun to arrive at an unexpected truth, which I’m pretty sure is relevant to choosing the right dissertation topic. I’ve been searching for a ... [ more ] Podcast!


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Last updated Feb. 6, 2026.