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The Perplexed Linguist’s Guide to English Departments. Now with Footnotes! Athanasious Schadenpoodle. So, Dear Reader, you have completed your Ph.D. in Linguistics (yay you!), run headlong into the grim realities of the modern job market (poor you!), broadened your ideas about possible teaching contexts (smart you!) and landed a gig in an English department (lucky you?). You’ve potentially got the base of the Maslovian pyramid covered for at least a semester, but you’re in a rather alien environment, surrounded by people who talk funny in a way that Dialectology 501 never prepared you for and who have some markedly odd folkways. Some culture shock is inevitable, but a little knowledge can go a long ... [ more ]
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 ] 
Improving L2 Performance with Pirahã Shigudo, and Simple English. The effects of syntactic and semantic priming on successful L2 communication. Jeannot Van Tricasse, Jules Verne University, Paris, France. As is well known, students of foreign languages are often frustrated by their lack of ability to express thoughts of normal complexity in the language they are studying.1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 This frustration can easily turn into a bitterness that leaves the student unable or unwilling to continue their language studies, even after a year or more of study.11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20 This is an unfortunate state of affairs for many reasons. Bilingualism has been implicated in ... [ more ]
Orthographically-Conditioned Morphology. CJ Quines. Motivation. The other day1 I received through personal correspondence2 the following note: “BTW, we have a fairly extensive PR from someone to i18nize something.” From my extensive experience with sociolinguistics,3 I instantly understood some of the abbreviations used in this sentence, such as BTW meaning By The Way, or PR meaning Pull Request, something we trust the computational linguists in the audience are intimately familiar with. But the interesting piece of data here is “i18nize”. The numeronym4 stands for internationalization, with the number 18 as there are 18 ... [ more ]
A New Study of Linguistic Synesthesia. by Ott Harfondle, Independent Scholar1. Synesthesia is a peculiar psychological phenomenon in which one sensory stimulus causes a response of a different sense. A prototypical example of synesthesia is sensing color when hearing certain tones. Thus, the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff recalled an occasion when he and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff encountered Alexander Scriabin, who associated colors with musical keys. To Rachmaninoff’s surprise, Rimsky-Korsakoff agreed with Scriabin in general, though they disagreed on several of the associations. The two agreed on the key of D major as yellow, but when Rachmaninoff expressed his disbelief, Rimsky-Korsakoff ... [ more ]
Оrthоgraрhіc Perрlехer. The Speculative Grammarian Оrthοɡrаphіс Ρerplехеr is a not-quite-pointless little tool that will munge your text, randomly replacing some characters with homoglyphs that are nearly identical1—or at least quite reasonably similar to the untrained eye. Why? To make digital text both very hard and very easy to find via normal search (try to find “οrthoɡrарhіс реrрleхer” on this page, for example); to confuse and amaze your friends and enemies alike;6 to pass the time in a ... [ 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 ]
ADVERTISEMENT SpecGram Language Placement Services. As any sociolinguist can tell you, language vitality is all about status. And frankly, most languages don’t have it. Does yours?1 Most languages haven’t even taken the basic step of hiring a part-time publicist. Nor can most attract a truly talented linguist (or an unscrupulously devious one) whose tireless publication efforts can usher them into international prominence. Fortunately, SpecGram is here to help. SpecGram Language Placement Services offers your language the fame it deserves, at a price for any budget. Available Packages. “Back from the Brink” Language Tune-Up. Script consultation ... [ 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 ]
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 ]
BREAKING NEWS French Sues English. SpecGram Wire Services. Paris, France—The Académie Française filed a lawsuit today at the European Court of Language Slights in Brussels against the English language, claiming 650 million euros in compensation. The suit against the English language describes “the intentional misappropriation of core elements of French and imitation of its distinctive sound.” The Académie seeks damages and an injunction that, if granted, would prevent English from being spoken until the case has been resolved. The Académie spokesman, Eustole Mesmots, PhD, RSVP, in a written statement, declared: “English has long claimed to be ... [ more ] 
Spring’s Springiness Springs Springingly: Putting a SpecGrammy Spring in Your Linguistic Step This Spring. By Curled Up Coiled Up Editors, Spree Ng and B. D. Oing. ‘Spring is here, sper-ring is here!’ warbled Tom Lehrer in one of his less repetitive lines.1 Now, quoting a Lehrer lyric at the start of an article is always good writing practice as the prose can then only get better. However, on this occasion, the specific choice of line leads directly into the theme of today’s editorial, which we shall now spring upon you: it’s Spring! Spring is indeed here; but spring has for millennia been amongst those of us who reckon ourselves the linguistic ... [ more ]
Q Continuum Reaches Solomon Islands1. Brenda H. Boerger. I propose early, pre-24th century contact between the Q Continuum (Q-contact) and speakers of Earth languages in Solomon Islands, South Pacific, as evidenced by the presence of <q> in the orthographies of 24 of the 68 languages there, spanning the country from west to east. I describe the sounds that <q> represents in these orthographies, using these correspondences as evidence for five separate Q-contacts. The evidence suggests Q-contact elsewhere in Oceanic, as well as in other language families, as diverse as Indo-European, multiple American Indian families, and Turkic, but that this important contact factor has heretofore been ... [ more ]
Letters to the Editor. Dear SpecGram Publishers, I must admit to being rather disappointed by the regularity of your publishing schedule for the last year or so. Back in the day, sending in your subscription payment was an exciting gamble—perhaps you’d get 6 issues in 4 months, maybe you’d get nothing for the year. It used to be like battling an intermittent fire hose. Now I get regular emails alerting me to new online issues. I don’t even have to pay to read them. Where is the adventure in that? Willard B. Winkleham, Cuttycon, Connecticut — Wee Willy, I’ve spoken to our webmaster, and your email address has been purged from our database, so there will be no more pesky reminder ... [ 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 ]
On Revising And Extending Wh-Movement. D. Terence Nuclear, Institute for Advanced Study, in Strangeness. I assume here familiarity with Chomsky (1977), and the entire literature, published and unpublished, written and unwritten, upon which it is based. Chomsky has been criticized, unfairly in my opinion, for attempting to reduce all of grammar to wh-movement. Rather, if he is open to criticism at all, it is because he has failed to appreciate how wide the domain of wh-movement really is. In his paper, Chomsky lists the following general characteristics of wh-movement. 1. It leaves a gap. 2. Where there is a bridge, there is an apparent violation of subjacency, PIC, and SSC. 3. It observes CPNC. 4. ... [ more ]
Orbital Linguistics— A Report on the State of the Starfield. by Hu B. Ble and Al Zweistein, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. Orbital Linguistics—recently spun off independently from the long-existing field of planetary phonology1—has entered a period of confusion. Once comprising simply parametric bipolarities circular/ovoid, lunar/planetary and fast/slow, OL has been limitlessly expanded by the addition of the multipolar parameter icy/rocky/gassy and the oddly non-parametric value cometic,2 which appears to have a positive but no negative value. The former have been demonstrated to be relevant to fricatives, but as ... [ more ]
From Our Back Burners to Our After Burners. A Letter from Mergers and Acquisitions Editor Scopperloit Scobblelotcher. In a recent editorial we solicited our readership’s non-financial help to keep the moth-eaten wolf of inapt metaphors away from our door and somewhere off on the way across the river and through the woods, since we’d not want him to miss his rendezvous with whatever Freudian or girl-power metaphor currently favored in the academy he’ll get done in by this time. The outpouring of support in our time of need was deafening.1 While we appreciate the thought, we do not need clippings of the joke column from back issues of your local church circular2 or a ... [ 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 ]
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 ]
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Last updated Jan. 24, 2026.