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 ]

SpecGram Books. A number of books and book-like entities (including various monographs) have come into existence in and around Speculative Grammarian over the years. Here we’ve collected links to all of their digital and corporeal manifestations in one place for your convenience. ... The Splendid Words, by James S. Pasto,; January 2019 The tale of a man obsessed, driven by a hunger and thirst to uncover—he knows not what! Far past reason, he has hunted and hated, been haunted and humiliated. Now his search has borne fruit—discover whether it is bitter or sweet! Available to read online. ... The History of Rome, by Tim Pulju; July 2018 Speculative ... [ 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 ]

Speculative Grammarian and SpecGram.com. Our Story. The august journal Speculative Grammarian has a long, rich, and varied history, weaving an intricate and subtle tapestry from disparate strands of linguistics, philology, history, politics, science, technology, botany, pharmacokinetics, computer science, the mathematics of humor, basket weaving, archery, glass blowing, roller coaster design, and bowling, among numerous other, less obvious fields. SpecGram, as it is known to devotees and sworn enemies alike, has for centuries sought to bring together the greatest yet least understood minds of the time, embedding itself firmly in the cultural and psychological matrix of the global society while ... [ 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 ]

The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature. Welcome to Online Selections from The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature, researched, compiled, and edited by the lexicographers, etymologists, and philologists of Speculative Grammarian. The editors of Speculative Grammarian are delighted to present selections of the fifty-volume lexicographic opus, The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature, online for the first time ever. The Compleat Encyclopaedia is a one-of-a-kind resource, compiled ... [ more ]

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 ]

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 ]

Arabic Numeral to Numeri++ Converter. by Daniel Swanson & Trey Jones. Cognomen 2018 (SpecGram, CLXXX.3) in footnote ‡‡† lays out “a superior, novel solution” to extending Numeri++, his science-nerd–friendly upgrade to Roman numerals, to accommodate values beyond 5,000. Below we provide a handy converter^† for the mathematically and/or typographically challenged among you who would like to use this system — ^† It appears that our buddy Prae-Prae put a little too much faith in the Unicode Consortium. Obviously any entity with “Consortium” right there in the name is not to be trusted fully. The biggest problem is that ... [ more ]

The Speculative Grammarian AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠. On several occasions, mention has been made of the AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠ in the pages of SpecGram; in the current epoch, these references date back as early as at least 2004.¹ In the following years there have been denials,² mentions,³ more⁴ mentions,⁵ leaked internal documents,⁶ and even some early oral history⁷ (accompanied as it was by additional denials). Throughout this time the consistent official stance of the Editorial board of SpecGram has been to deny that the AutoGrammatikon™ exists, ... [ more ]

Virtual NLP Dice. The SpecGram Überlinguistaffen. ... [Re-roll.] [Re-roll like you mean it !!] As many successful practitioners of Natural Language Processing know, the surest path to success is to come up with some complicated-looking equation and then rest on your mathematical laurels for the rest of your career—because “Math is hard, and hard things are for smart people, and smart people are just better. QED.” Or so we learned from the original ad for NLP Dice: “Local Linguist Mom Discovers One Weird Trick for Deriving NLP Equations!—Computational Linguists Hate Her!” (SpecGram ... [ 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 ]

Call for Volunteers. Unfortunately, SpecGram is ceasing publication in late 2025, so we will no longer be needing any new volunteer editors. If you’d like to help out your favorite journal of satirical linguistics, you can join us! Volunteer Editors: We’re always looking to expand the rolls of our editorial board. Duties include proofreading new issues before they are published, advising the senior editors on various projects, contributing to collaborative articles, and even suggesting ideas for articles or projects. There’s no specific required level of participation, but it’d be great if you had time to proofread most new issues during the the last week of the month. Rewards include membership ... [ more ]

Vinegar Valentines. As Valentine’s Day rolls around once again, we at SpecGram recognize that not everyone has a special someone to spend the day with. Some people have no one; pity unto them. But the real losers on Valentine’s Day are those who have someone, just not someone who is particularly special. Whether it’s a creeper, a stalker, a jilted ex, or just a poor misguided soul who is a little too thick to take a hint, these Vinegar Valentines—a genre which rose to popularity in the late 19th century—will help you let them down, albeit none too gently. Click an image for higher resolution. ... [ more ]

Poetry Corner. Two Poemes from the Archivium of Homonymus Bosch. There was a young man from St. Paul, Who fell in a spring in the fall. T’would have been a sad thing Had he died in the spring; But he didn’t: he died in the fall. ... A Tutor who tooted the flute Tried to teach two young tooters to toot; “Said the two to the Tutor, “Is it harder to toot, or To tutor two tooters to toot?” Amazing Grice. by Sai and Alex Fink with apologies to Paul Grice and John Newton Amazing Grice, O maxims sound that saved my sophistry! I once just lied, but now I’ve found: best lie pragmatically. ’Twas Grice that taught me not to fear; of facts I can take leave. All baseless; not a claim ... [ more ]

Speech is an Elaborate Cover for Widespread Telepathy. Will Styler, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Vowels. Abstract. This article challenges the long-standing “Speech” theory of language: that humans communicate by flapping around bits of meat in their heads and necks, thus creating minute and highly speaker-specific patterns of vibration in air pressure, and then interpreting these vibrations, via little bones and tiny hair cells, as referent to concepts, entities, and propositions in the greater world. In place of this overly-complex and increasingly implausible theory, the author proposes a far simpler species-wide telepathic link, with “speech” serving primarily ... [ 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 ]

Quotes: What People are Saying. Here are a few of our favorite things people have said about Speculative Grammarian over the years, collected wild on the internet, or domesticated in email — Q1117. C’est sans doute un humour un peu ésotérique mais bon —Sémioticien du bisou — Q1116. Support the addition of the double-dot wide O to the IPA chart by buying some Speculative Grammarian merchandise! No, I’m not being sponsored or getting a commission from them. I just appreciate good geeky humour —Grace Teng — Q1115. Speculative Grammarian ist die erste Zeitschrift für satirische Linguistik. Kostenlos zugänglich, ein ... [ more ]

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