adventure version of life called ‘Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics.’ Clearly I made the wrong choice when I declared my major. Thanks a lot, Speculative Grammarian.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1254)
{ document.write('“That is hysterical. I’m forwarding it around my department.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1253)
{ document.write('“My congratulations to Tim Pulju on having written a wonderful, humorous article which recently came to my attention, entitled New Directions in the Teaching of Human Languages to Non-Humans.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1252)
{ document.write('“The brilliant Speculative Grammarian website ... explores the much neglected field of satirical linguistics.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1251)
{ document.write('“It does not need to be said that all the articles for SpecGram are written for humorous value, and are a highly readable, lovely load of jovial tosh.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1250)
{ document.write('“Haha, that is awesome.”
—ekesobriquet
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1249)
{ document.write('“Trött på vanliga korsord och soduku, och vad alla de olika pusseltyperna nu heter? Speculative Grammarian har lösningen: The Polyglot’s Magic Square.”
—Orla Vigsø
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1248)
{ document.write('“Each issue surpasses the last!”
—Carolyn Andrews Schlemmer, Ph.D.
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1247)
{ document.write('“I’m a retired professor who finally has time to read every article with deep appreciation as well as understanding of 58% (± 3%) of the obvious in-jokes. With further study, I hope to work my way up to comprehension of greater than 70%. Ain’t retirement great! Eat your hearts out, working linguists!”
—Carolyn Andrews Schlemmer, Ph.D.
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1246)
{ document.write('“Your publication of December 2008 has been received. It has been read. It has been enjoyed. The enjoyment was thorough.”
—Carolyn Andrews Schlemmer, Ph.D.
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1241)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian is probably my favorite linguistic journal in existence.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1239)
{ document.write('“Possibly the most brilliant thing I’ve ever read.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1238)
{ document.write('“Be sure to check out ‘A Stratificational Approach to Making Macaroni and Cheese’. Definitely worth your time.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1237)
{ document.write('“SpecGram is the best satirical work on linguistics available world-wide.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1236)
{ document.write('“It is true that Linguists are weird. Here is proof.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1235)
{ document.write('“Don’t [read SpecGram] unless you have time to procrastinate a bit.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1234)
{ document.write('“... the self-proclaimed first (and only!) journal of satirical linguistics, Speculative Grammarian.”
—vet
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1233)
{ document.write('“Check [SpecGram] out if you’ve got the time, it’s worth some good chuckles.”
—vet
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1232)
{ document.write('“那个网站会好些语言学家、语言学研究者、爱好者写了些讽刺的、挖苦的、搞笑的文章，也有些图片，旨在用简明的方法讲述语言学。”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1227)
{ document.write('“This is why I read EVERY word of EVERY issue of Speculative Grammarian ... pure genius!”
—Carl Spies
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1226)
{ document.write('“I have ... been reading Linguistics Cartoons. They’re not that super good, especially considering the idea behind them is to illustrate linguistic concepts in such a way that a ‘bright, interested ten-year-old’ could understand them (as an undergrad linguist, I have found many of them nearly incomprehensible), but a few are good, including this one and this one.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1225)
{ document.write('“Кроме очень правильных статей про лингвистику, также присутствуют игры и кроссворды, фундаментальныне лингвистические понятия в комиксах, фонд вооружения вымирающих языков и акция по включению в международный фонетический алфавит символа, обозначающего назально–ингрессивный глухой велярный вибрирующий звук, иными словами хрюканье.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1224)
{ document.write('“это здорово!!!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1223)
{ document.write('“Sadly a lot of ‘theories’ about hypothetical connections (like the one on Basco-Berber ones) are made up that way: with loads of imagination, forced connections, unexistent words (or loanwords from third languages) and bad translations, resuling in total madness.
Some good examples of this can be found in Speculative Grammarian articles, specially those of Tim Pulju. For instance:
Reconstructed Proto-Franco-Sino-Indonesian
A Reconsideration of the Sino-Kiowan Problem (where Pilju contradicts his previous thesis to find out that Chinese is actually a pidgin of Kiowan and English)”
—Maju
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1222)
{ document.write('“Other SpecGram interesting (funny) articles may be:
A reinterpretation of some aspects of the Indoeuorpean expansion, by William C. Spruiell.
Towards a new classification of European languages, by Dr. Medved Sem... based in the word for ‘umbrella’ and resulting in a very curious map (forget about centum and satem languages!).
Linguistic Topology, by I. Juana Pelota-Grande. That results (among others) in some quite curious ‘topologies’.”
—Maju
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1221)
{ document.write('“Polecam, naprawdę świetne.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1220)
{ document.write('“‘Oo’s a KITTY-POO? I see a KITTY BOO BOO! Oh no, my PRIONS! This is lolarious!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1217)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian is the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics. Try their crossword for linguists (take THAT New York Times Sunday x-word!).”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1214)
{ document.write('“What is Linguistics Good For? Those of you who are familiar with IPA (and I know your name is Legion) will definitely enjoy this. Those of you who have any sort of familiarity with Russian will probably like it too.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1209)
{ document.write('“Those cynical chaps at Speculative Grammarian make a mockery of all that is good and holy about Computational Linguistics and Information Retrieval.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1208)
{ document.write('“Hehehe”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1207)
{ document.write('“I love recision”
—Candy Schwartz
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1206)
{ document.write('“I liked that a lot. ... I’ve wondered whether social scientists—and maybe other scientists—have a term for the percentage of “edge cases” that must be discarded as irrelevant, in order to get a nice correlation or have the results match the prediction. Maybe recision is the term.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1205)
{ document.write('“In case you never heard of “phonological ergativity” you might enjoy [this].”
—Tom H Chappell
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1203)
{ document.write('“I like SpecGram. I can’t get my daughter and other relatives to laugh at its jokes, though.”
—Tom H Chappell
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1202)
{ document.write('“Linguists w/ a sense of humor? No way!!!!”
—Vardelm
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1201)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian (a highly reassuring website for linguists)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1200)
{ document.write('“I had my first academic publication in SpecGram with the current issue. I’m not sure what that says about me, other than that I’m a linguist and a nerd.”
—fnordulicious
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1199)
{ document.write('“The next issue is coming out next month, and it promises to be positively saturated with obscure in-jokes and footnotes.”
—fnordulicious
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1198)
{ document.write('“Taalkundehumor!”
—L’Escargot
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1195)
{ document.write('“I feel right at home with SpecGram. Thank you for the regular laughs.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1194)
{ document.write('“Thank you for yet another very entertaining puzzle!”
—Sara Kessler
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1193)
{ document.write('“wtf is a nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill? I couldn’t even begin to articulate that...it makes no sense.”
—’’’
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1192)
{ document.write('“Try inhaling through your nose and make your velum vibrate. I am sure you can!”
—linguaholic
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1187)
{ document.write('“I think my favorite is still “All your morpheme are belong to us”, because it’s just so darn clever, what with morphemes being ‘bases’ of sorts. But it’s almost painfully geek-y. And I really do like “Will perform nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trills for food”, but I don’t think I can make a nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill. Maybe if I practiced. Huh. Wow. Ok. Not looking at this website any more.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1182)
{ document.write('“Seriously, I read this and my jaw dropped. Not only at the hilarious footnotes but the incredible story of how a language came to be made up almost entirely of adverbs. A bit longish but well worth the read.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1177)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian [has] this wonderful piece from Volume CLII, Number γ. In it, Sir Edmund C. Gladstone-Chamberlain, Professor Emeritus of Linguistic Science, Department of Lexicology and Glottometrics, Devonshire-upon-Glencullen University, Southampton, describes his youthful encounter with a very strange language spoken by a remote tribe deep in the Amazon Basin and his discovery of how the language worked and, eventually, of the unfortunate history behind it.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1174)
{ document.write('“I loved the footnotes.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1169)
{ document.write('“Pratchett-worthy footnotes.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1168)
{ document.write('“‘Devonshire-upon-Glencullen’ sounds like an exotic and expensive kind of Irish coffee.”
—A.J.P. Crown
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1167)
{ document.write('“A wonderful spoof!”
—marie-lucie
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1166)
{ document.write('“Much of the story sounds plausible.”—Pete
“It would only sound plausible to somebody with a name like ‘Pete’.”
—A.J.P. Crown
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1163)
{ document.write('“What a frightening place this journal must be. I had pictured some coffeehouse zombies with a printing press in the basement, but it appears they have an entire dysfunctional corporate bureaucracy.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1158)
{ document.write('“Specgram has the most tempting personal advertisements I’ve ever seen, like Single Statistical Quadratic Psycho-Discourse Analyst Seeks Single Phonologist For Heart-Shifting Fling or Single Pragmatist Seeks Same. Now, I am of a morphological persuasion myself, with a pronounced tendency towards typology and vestiges of interest in semantics and syntax, but you never know. They also have most engaging crosswords. Absolutely delightful and no doubt time-consuming. Right what I need at the moment. Indeed. ”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1153)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian had a cartoon series with some hilarious cartoons. You can find them all using the search form on the main page. Their merchandise has funny graphics as well.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1150)
{ document.write('“Vous pourrez visiter ... un article de Speculative Grammarian qui montre qu’on peut s’amuser même avec les langues anciennes.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1146)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian, that corpus of linguistic wisdom, presents a fine description of eminently practical uses of linguistics.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1143)
{ document.write('“A Language Hat post has introduced me to Speculative Grammarian, “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics,” and it is fabulous.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1141)
{ document.write('“SpecGram’s humour mostly lies in its apparent earnestness, but it is beautifully creative, for example, having invented the field of Langualogy.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1136)
{ document.write('“Believe me it’s funny ... If you’re a real linguist or just a working stiff of a translator like me who wants to be distracted, you’ll find this article worth your while to check it out.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1131)
{ document.write('“Zawsze ktos kupi takie mumbo-jumbo o gramatyce uniwersalnej, ktora pojawila sie jako mutacja genetyczna. Czary-mary, nie bylo jezyka, i oto jest jezyk. To jest moj ulubiony tekst na ten temat. Zamiast LAD wstawic UG. LAD to troche taka wczesniejsza wersja UG.”
—charioteer
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1123)
{ document.write('“If you like word play, you might also like SpecGram ... in which linguists prove why linguistics doesn’t attract a lot of interest as a major.”
—Virginia Hunter
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1120)
{ document.write('“Сатирический журнал для лингвистов.”
—Kasya
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1116)
{ document.write('“Als je het over taalregels hebt moet je eigenlijk twee soorten ‘regels’ onderscheiden: descriptieve en prescriptieve (of ‘beschrijvende’ en ‘voorschrijvende’). ... Twee plaatjes zeggen meer dan duizend woorden.”
—grol4
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1107)
{ document.write('“That’s wonderfully awesome. *snort* (..)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1102)
{ document.write('“Hvis du ikke kender Speculative Grammarian, så tag et kig på det. Det er lingvistisk satire på højt plan.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1097)
{ document.write('“Det er et tilbagevendende tema på SpecGram om nasal ingressive voiceless velar trill skal indføres i IPA-skemaet eller ej. Det foreslåede IPA-symbol er det såkaldte double-dot wide-o. Se det er noget der kan få en fonetiker til at fnise.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1093)
{ document.write('“The best satirical linguistics newsletter this side of the—well, the best one ever. It may be the only one, as well...hmm.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1088)
{ document.write('“[M]y all-time favourite SpecGram post [is] Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics, which indulges both my linguistic geekery and my nostalgia for choose your own adventure books, and which is funny ‘cause it’s true.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1085)
{ document.write('“The [CLV.ζ] issue is a bit hardcore in its pseudo-geekery and meta-meta-humour, even for me, but while I was there, I checked out the December [2008] issue and had a good chortle at How They Do It in Linguistics (“Syntacticians do it with trees,” “Neurolinguists do it with magnets,” “Phonologists do it with deviation,” ad infinitum, ad nauseam)—ah, the oldies but goodies—and a poetic duel between a “practical speller” and a “skeptical speller,” of which I am sure that George Bernard ghoti Shaw would approve (annoyingly, that reference was included at the end of the poem so I can’t claim to be clever here, although I did think of it by myself).”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1081)
{ document.write('“Sorry in advance to all our TM/computation linguistics friends but these cartoons are hilarious. The first is on automatic text alignment and the second is on computational linguistics. (Yes, I am a nerd.)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1073)
{ document.write('“Even though I anticipated the punchline, this [cartoon] still made me laugh just loud enough for everyone in the computer lab I’m currently sat in to look at me strangely.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1068)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian (highly reassuring website for linguists)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1065)
{ document.write('“Thought you guys might be amused by this—it’s a paper from the linguistic version of the Journal of Irreproducible Results, entitled “Linguistic Contributions To The Formal Theory Of Big-Game Hunting.” Much of its humor comes from knowledge of linguistic fields, but one does not have to be a linguist to understand that this is hilarious.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1060)
{ document.write('“вот так, зайдешь в интернет по маленькой надобности...и вдруг узнаёшь СТРАШНОЕ! Винни Пух-то, оказывается, ни разу не “англичанин”! Доказательство.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1054)
{ document.write('“Some of my favorite linguist humor—U.S. Government Linguists in Action”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1046)
{ document.write('“You must know about Speculative Grammarian? The online journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics? Pure gold. Try the choose your own career in linguistics game.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1043)
{ document.write('“The Probem With NLP: I just found this source while investigating Garden Path sentences, and it kind of blew my mind about how the words and phrases we use carry multiple meanings. ”
—drsmooth23
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1040)
{ document.write('“You might find this cartoon instructive.”
—Athaulf
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1039)
{ document.write('“Opettelemalla muutaman gootinkielisen lauseen saa varmaakin helposti ystäviä oikeista ´gooteista.”
—sitten vaan
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1037)
{ document.write('“Numerus: Singular, Plural und auch Dual! Wer hätte das je gedacht? Ich wollte mehr darüber wissen und ... Danach fand ich diese ironisch gemeinte Website.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1035)
{ document.write('“Brilliant. I’m tempted to record myself saying each [meaning of “pretty little girl’s school”] with appropriate stress.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1031)
{ document.write('“Ahh, what can prosody not tell one about syntax?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1028)
{ document.write('“I just found this: Cartoon Theories of Linguistics”
—Ave94
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1025)
{ document.write('“I’m loving it! My favourite was Phonology vs. Phonetics.”
—Maximillian
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1023)
{ document.write('“Funny!”
—ashucky
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1020)
{ document.write('“My favourite was “syllables”.”
—rickardspaghetti
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1015)
{ document.write('“A bit of linguistic dork humor.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1012)
{ document.write('“Your site is a scream. I just came across it trying to fake my way into seeming smarter in front of my 16-year-old, who is living my academic ambitions. I look forward to reading more and to learning why people smirk briefly when I refer to philology. ”
—Mike Brown
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1009)
{ document.write('“Moram s vama da podelim jedan burleskan, duhoviti, ali u suštini kritički, kao bajagi sociolingvistički tekstić, iz jednog satiričnog lingvističkog časopisa, koji je povezan s ovom temom: „O uljudnosti prema ženama u slovenskim jezicima“, Émil Schouwiniste-Pigge”
—Ђорђе Божовић
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1007)
{ document.write('“Also, we should not forget Speculative Grammarian, the foremost journal in the field of satirical linguistics. ”
—FoiledAgain
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1005)
{ document.write('“For those ... who have a good sense of ironic humor, I would heartily recommend checking out the website of Speculative Grammarian.”
—Trudy Bentley Rech
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 1002)
{ document.write('“I urge you ... to enjoy this delightful, humorous site. Choosing your own career in linguistics is really fun. Many of the puzzles and games should elicit a smile or two as well. My favorite is the Self-Defining Puzzle.”
—Trudy Bentley Rech
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 997)
{ document.write('“Be a sport and produce this sound. ... I dare you to make this sound. If you’re feeling a little nervy about it, here’s my advice: lie down on your back, close your eyes and in just a few minutes you could be producing this sound regularly.”
—mg
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 994)
{ document.write('“The symbol (and sometimes the sound itself) is called ‘oink’. It was used in some medieval texts along ‘ash’, ‘thorn’ etc.—although much less frequently, which explains why even some experts seem not to know about it”
—vindex
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 991)
{ document.write('“Now, that was a real knee-slapper!!”
—siuniab
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 986)
{ document.write('“Не знаю, как я это раньше упустил. Если вы интересуетесь лингвистикой - вам обязательно надо читать Speculative Grammarian. Если интересуетесь поверхностно - то хотя бы вещи типа Dates in the Month of May that Are of Interest to Linguists или The Linguist’s Self-Definer (это из древнего сборника Lingua Pranca). А лингвистам - читать почти всё...”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 984)
{ document.write('“I also read SpecGram and want to be published there.”
—Jonathan Downie
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 982)
{ document.write('“I love SpecGram.”
—BuckBear
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 980)
{ document.write('“I LOVE SPECGRAM!!!! Especially “Cartoon theories of linguistics”.”
—TBvaccine
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 976)
{ document.write('“I had totally forgotten about SpecGram.”
—Seagull
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 971)
{ document.write('“That is the awesomest thing I have ever heard of (though the statistically significant olive particles from 1922 are kinda gross).”
—tjb
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 968)
{ document.write('“But you have to admit...“meta-dumplings” sounds tasty!”
—qag1964
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 964)
{ document.write('“Caution. The calculations of Bjorn-Bob Weaselflinger of the Oceanographic Institute of Nevada imply that construction of a sufficiently meta dumpling could trigger the collapse of local space into a gravitational singularity (although this may have already happened at the creation of our universe). ”
—Kublai
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 961)
{ document.write('“Very sadly it doesn’t actually add up—even assuming that half the turducken makes it into the casserole, and half the casserole makes it as sausage into the next turducken, that’s still a factor of 4 reduction each week. The stated 4,487 turduckens collectively represent a reduction by a factor of 44487 or about 102700. Assuming a turkey is mainly proteins with a molecular mass of say 2000, a turkey is about two moles (mmm, turkey mole) or 1024 molecules. That means the chances of an original molecule being in a 2008 serving is about 1 in 102676. Unless Dr Clarke is a homeopathist, he probably won’t be able to taste the original olive.”
—Peter
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 959)
{ document.write('“Hm, I wonder what kind of linguist wrote this test...”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 956)
{ document.write('“Less seriously, see this.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 951)
{ document.write('“The premier online source for linguistics humor (Yes, linguistics humor).”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 946)
{ document.write('“Weird ‘n’ wicked”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 941)
{ document.write('“Here’s a funny article from Speculative Grammarian, a satirical take on the academic field of linguistics.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 937)
{ document.write('“I suppose this illustrates my preference over experimental methods of inquiry instead of simply sitting down and theorizing on linguistic phenomena.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 932)
{ document.write('“I absolutely love SpecGram. It points out so many patent absurdities that it is surprising that it has not already become the most cited lingustics journal of all time. Hopefully, such ridicule will eventually lead to some of the stranger and crazier aspects of studies in liguistics being sorted, or at least made into funny cartoons.”
—Jonathan Downie
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 929)
{ document.write('“Thank you once again for SpecGram. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry, it makes me wonder if I can cite it in my PhD.”
—Jonathan Downie
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 924)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian is a collection of linguistic satire. There is a load of stuff there, but this set of puns caught my eye.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 918)
{ document.write('“I’m a fan of the Balloon Animal State Machine approach, myself.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 916)
{ document.write('“маленький разговорник для туристов”
—temp1ar
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 914)
{ document.write('“[A] comment on length reminded me of something I came across recently.”
—Lev Michael
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 912)
{ document.write('“I love Speculative Grammarian, and I love that article.”
—melindawoodley
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 909)
{ document.write('“Stay abreast of breaking research in satirical linguistics with Speculative Grammarian.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 903)
{ document.write('“You should certainly start reading Speculative Grammarian. The back issues are archived. Also, they’ve digitized and made online-available Lingua Pranca and Son of Lingua Pranca, which were originally published before the World Wide Web became a commonplace. You would also enjoy a much more contemporary work in the same vein, Collateral Descendant of Lingua Pranca.”
—TomHChappell
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 893)
{ document.write('“In order to convince my parents that my prospective major, linguistics, wasn’t completely useless, I showed them this game: SpecGram—Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics.”
—Millancad
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 889)
{ document.write('“that’s cute.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 886)
{ document.write('“Kellogg-Reed diagram, X-bar diagram, sentence flow diagram, grammatical diagram, phrase diagram ... is your head beginning to spin? Bring a little humor in as a antidote: Modern and Historical Graphical Representations of Structural Relationships in Spoken and Written English Sentential Utterances, selected and presented, with commentary, by Nattapoŋ Yunloŋ Seuŋyoŋ.”
—mjes
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 881)
{ document.write('“Spanish linguistics fail.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 878)
{ document.write('“ ‘ “How many languages do you speak?” A good answer: π.’
Close enough.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 875)
{ document.write('“From SpecGram: Linguistics Land Nursery Rhymes and 10 New Commandments for Linguists”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 872)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian wants to help us [conlangers].”
—dhokarena56
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 867)
{ document.write('“Disappointingly, SpecGram is rarely as funny as it always seems like it should be, and this article is no exception.”
—Radius Solis
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 863)
{ document.write('“Oh but how could you have missed this article! It’s brilliant! Reminds me of time cube guy.”
—Tarasoriku
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 858)
{ document.write('“I’m in love with the article about the Bleggish language. It’s like David Foster Wallace is channeling Ferdinand de Saussure.”
—Colonel Cathcart
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 856)
{ document.write('“This article explores how syntactic and semantic ambiguity is significant to humor; it also gives humorous examples of lexical ambiguity.”
—Thomaesa Brundage
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 853)
{ document.write('“I think SpecGram has been infiltrated.”
—Arthaey Angosii
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 851)
{ document.write('“LOL. That is classic.”
—Garth Wallace
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 844)
{ document.write('“Are you sometimes, or indeed frequently gripped by the urge to create languages? Do your doodles often become new alphabets? Do you feel compelled to create worlds in which your languages and alphabets might be used? If so, help is at hand in the form of Conlangers Anonymous, an organisation founded by Francis Lodwick in 1694 and discussed in Speculative Grammarian, the premier journal of satirical linguistics. ”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 840)
{ document.write('“I am not an addict, I can stop anytime. :)”
—Polly
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 837)
{ document.write('“It is weird that “conlanging” had turned into such a bad or somehow bad thing... I never felt like it wouild endanger my life.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 827)
{ document.write('“ehehe. in the background of the cartoon, you can see “buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” diagrammed out.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 823)
{ document.write('“Whenever you need a break from X-bar-ing those trees, do check out Speculative Grammarian’s groundbreaking articles in the burgeoning field of satirical linguistics. I was particularly astounded by the theoretical implications of the discoveries described by Doggett, Cardinal, Sanders, and Ussishkin in “Double-Sided Copy Theory” (Jan. 2006).”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 819)
{ document.write('“I think this crossword puzzle is pretty linguistigeeky too.
(I admit to hoping that I can some day actually solve it.)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 816)
{ document.write('“It’s terribly exciting, there’s not only a new issue of Speculative Grammarian out (the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics), but it’s a bumper issue of linguistic puzzles, and there’s one that I can just about finish. (3 = types of N-P C in the I P A)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 808)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian is easily one of the nineteen best online linguistic humor magazines of the past three months—and you can come quote me on that.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 804)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian: For a bit of fun with linguistics, a humorous site with a linguistics theme.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 799)
{ document.write('“What a wonderful find your publication is! I am just starting to trawl through the archives and I’m sure that there will be much to amuse and inform me. ... Looking forward to enjoying many hours of reading.”
—Jeremy Wheeler
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 795)
{ document.write('“Fictional Foundations of NLP, aka “Where’s my jetpack?!” I love anything quoting Manning & Schutze...”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 792)
{ document.write('“Знаете это?”—lehoslav
“Да, читал. Забавно, но в данном случае никак не помогает.”
—shravan
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 790)
{ document.write('“маленький разговорник для туристов”
—temp1ar
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 788)
{ document.write('“SpecGram: this is awesome :)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 786)
{ document.write('“SpecGram: ingressive nasal velar trill, anyone?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 784)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian: I simply had to share this. I really needed a laugh today and this is what I found. It is hilarious. Enjoy.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 783)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian is a magazine of satirical linguistic sketches.”
—SOLAR
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 780)
{ document.write('“now I am doubting my own rigor—just finished “skimming” this.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 778)
{ document.write('“I’m in love....”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 775)
{ document.write('“Contemplation: Profound.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 773)
{ document.write('“Hey! I love languages. I’m currently a linguistics major, because I had to declare something. Once upon a time I was googling and came across a funny website that had a bunch of different scenarios—“so you are a linguistics major and pre-med”—and explained what it thought would happen—“you are flipping burgers or selling your soul to MCAT prep companies”.
But now I can’t find the website!! Is there anyone out there who knows it / has mad google skills and could find it for me?”—uwisthebest
“Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics”
—ClassicRockerDad
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 771)
{ document.write('“Both humorous and true! Excellent.”
—JamesGold
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 767)
{ document.write('“How many interpretations does the following sentence have? Pretty little girl’s school. Believe it or not, there are at least five interpretations. ... If you want an illustration, you can find it here, along with other fun linguistic stuff.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 765)
{ document.write('“What is [glottochronology] anyway?”—the_interpreter
“For a humorous approach, see here.”
—confusedlinguist
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 761)
{ document.write('“Nogle morsomme uddrag af nogle studerendes besvarelser fra en prøve hvor de skulle beskrive lyden [w].”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 758)
{ document.write('“Here, you can find a nice recipe of gavagai with peppers.”
—Daniel Charms
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 755)
{ document.write('“Oh, I get it, it’s a breakdown in intertransferability of signifiers and signifieds. LOL, structural linguistics!”
—pieisexactlythree
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 752)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian: The journal of satirical linguistics. The more you know, the funnier it is, of course.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 749)
{ document.write('“um... what about the weighting of parameters?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 746)
{ document.write('“I especially enjoyed “saving French discontinuous negatives”!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 744)
{ document.write('“Written by those wacky Hoya pranksters Dikembe Mutombo and John Thompson!”
—Poisonville
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 741)
{ document.write('“Fascinating. The only problem is that one falls into Platonic-inspired terms—good, superior, better. I still find it very much ethno-centric to label them as such.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 739)
{ document.write('“Fine, but doesn’t that just mean that one language is only easier to learn or speak, vaster or simpler? Do these things truly make one superior in the grand scheme?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 736)
{ document.write('“And how is “euphoniousness” not the epitome of subjectiveness. The only way I can think of that last “measurement” as being in any way scientific is if there were some way to gauge positive mental reactions according to a variety of sounds. Perhaps this is possible, but otherwise the idea of euphoniousness is so absurdly opinion-based that it would be impossible to judge according to the different languages.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 732)
{ document.write('“To me this feels very judgmental.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 727)
{ document.write('“Your journal is awesome!”
—Laura Aldridge
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 722)
{ document.write('“Thanks for SpecGram! It’s a great read.”
—Arlen Cuss
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 719)
{ document.write('“Now that we are at the end of the semester some of you may be wondering where a career in linguistics can take you. I urge you not to rule out modelling for book covers. Alternatively, take this illuminating quiz.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 717)
{ document.write('“I take it you’ve never heard of Palinilap Cimordromic.”
—TomHChappell
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 714)
{ document.write('“Swoją drogą, przypomniał mi się najbardziej leniwy język świata z Gramatyka-Spekulanta.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 712)
{ document.write('“LOOOL. ciekawe, czy ta bibliografia jest prawdziwa.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 708)
{ document.write('“Poczytaj sobie SpecGrama to się dowiesz/domyślisz. Swoją drogą, strona ta jest po prostu genialna, jakby ktoś jeszcze jej nie znał...”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 705)
{ document.write('“everyone knows that umpteen is 61
or 29,101
or 30,505
or 47,318
or 48,020”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 700)
{ document.write('“Jag snubblade över en lite annorlunda handledning på nätet. Den ger tjugo praktiska råd, om inte i konsten att övertyga så i varje fall i konsten att inte svara på frågor. Mycket lämplig för ministrar, ledarskribenter och annat löst folk.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 690)
{ document.write('“Some of my favourite articles include:
• Why Linguistics Is Not a Science and Why Linguistics Doesn’t Care (some variation of the essay title, “linguistics is a science; discuss” was guaranteed to come up in my Ling101 exam).
• What Is Linguistics Good for, Anyway? (picking up chicks, apparently; damn. To be followed by Love Queries of a Linguist and How They Do It in Linguistics.
• Murphy’s Law as Applied to Field Linguistics (this is why Chomsky wasn’t interested in the language spoken by real people).
• Autodescriptives (this will be wholly unfunny to anyone who has no knowledge of linguistic processes but contains a list of words describing sound changes that have themselves undergone the sound change; rhotacism, for example, means “bunging in an extra r sound” so in this article, it is written as rhotarcism. This article was one of my main revision sources before my historical linguistics exam).”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 680)
{ document.write('“It isn’t easy studying linguistics at university. Not only do you have to keep on coming up with creative answers to the frequently asked question, “so which languages do you speak?” (pi?) but often, you can’t even find your textbooks in a library or a bookshop (linguistics books are found variably with the philosophy, modern languages, psychology, science and even new age sections). No matter how many times you explain that linguistics is “the science of language” or that it involves the study of the evolution, structure, form, history, acquisition and variation of language (among other things), you are invariably met with a look of scepticism. “That’s a real subject?”
There is help, however. Or, at least, company. I was in my third year at university when I discovered Speculative Grammarian (AKA SpecGram), a wonderful, hysterical, satirical, online linguistics journal. A fellow linguist (yes, linguist; linguistician is such an ugly word) pointed me in the direction of the Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics page and once I’d stopped laughing, I managed to move my mouse pointer towards some of the earlier issues of the journal and it’s been keeping me in in-jokes ever since.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 678)
{ document.write('“Stay abreast of breaking research in satirical linguistics with Speculative Grammarian.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 673)
{ document.write('“SpecGram is full of clever and witty articles on a wide range of linguistics topics and you could be the next illustrious author to be published!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 670)
{ document.write('“There are many views on this little mark [the serial comma]. Look here to read one solution.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 666)
{ document.write('“I love Speculative Grammarian so hard: “How to do Fieldwork on Proto-Indo-European”.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 663)
{ document.write('“neeerdy! yay: “How to do Fieldwork on Proto-Indo-European”.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 661)
{ document.write('““Step one: find a native speaker” Amazing!”
—F00tnotes
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 658)
{ document.write('“In Soviet Russia consonants palatalize you! I laughed so hard at that.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 656)
{ document.write('“[It] reminded me of that genial linguistic magazine: Speculative Grammarian, which I had not read in years. It’s still as good as ever (for an intellectual good laugh).”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 654)
{ document.write('“That’s it. No need to synthesize. Now, you damn lazy linguist, go find one of those!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 652)
{ document.write('“A humorous take on NLP.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 650)
{ document.write('“Oh my! Pick Astronomy! Wow! Though Ben Browder just isn’t my type. (Or Physics, even better!)”
—Sylvia Sotomayor
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 646)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian is a collection of linguistic satire. There is a load of stuff there, but this set of puns caught my eye.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 641)
{ document.write('“Loving the new issue of Speculative Grammarian—perfectly timed to avoid an essay, as usual!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 638)
{ document.write('“I read a satirical linguist journal sometimes.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 635)
{ document.write('“Here is a fascinating article on why Winnie Illi Pu is not quite authentic Classical Latin as the Romans would have written it. I do not agree with the final conclusion though.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 633)
{ document.write('“This is a good example of how fracturing your thoughts can greatly misconstrue the meaning of your words.”
—drsmooth23
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 629)
{ document.write('“LOL! Der Artikel ist ja hilariös!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 624)
{ document.write('“How about a mash-up of mythology, cryptozoology and linguistics? Part 1 and part 2.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 620)
{ document.write('“As said, a before vowels and an otherwise. We know how/when, but not why. ... It’s interesting to know that this was a source of great debate for many years. A lot of people argued that this was anything but phonologically determined, wasting a ton of time and effort. Pay attention to phonology!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 618)
{ document.write('“I loled at the last [article]. ”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 616)
{ document.write('“ook mooi”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 613)
{ document.write('“The Inebriation Hypothesis: If you’re not a linguistics nerd, you’ll have to trust me. This is hilarious.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 608)
{ document.write('“The perennially hilarious Speculative Grammarian single-handedly makes Linguistics the most exciting science! ... I suggest you start from the beginning and read to the end. Quite possibly the most engaging linguistics journal to ever exist!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 605)
{ document.write('“Fag-satire er moro!”
—Tom Vidar
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 602)
{ document.write('“Dans la catégorie langage et linguistique ... Speculative Grammarian, “premier journal savant présentant des recherches dans le domaine négligé de la linguistique satirique.””
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 599)
{ document.write('“Nyelvészhumor: SpecGram”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 596)
{ document.write('“A SpecGram, teljesebb nevén a Speculative Grammarian c. online folyóirat igazán szeretnivaló jelenség: remek a címe (hát még a címoldali mottók!), a szerzőgárdája, tudományos paródiáiban pedig nem kímél egyetlen nyelvészeti iskolát sem.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 593)
{ document.write('“Egyik kedvenc cikkem szerzője a pszichoanalízis és a kognitív nyelvészet - egészen pontosan Freud és Lakoff—elméletének az összeházasítását kísérelte meg a diszfunkcionális nyelvészet jegyében.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 590)
{ document.write('“De a SpecGram—ből többek között megtudhatjuk azt is, mi fán terem a naiv lingvisztika vagy miért lenne szükség vámpírnyelvészekre.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 588)
{ document.write('“Telenovelas follow a very similar basic storyline. So the article is saying, they have a verb, where they then give loads of names in a row as objects of this verb, and each fits into the correct place in this schema of a telenovela’s character relationships.”
—candrodor
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 586)
{ document.write('“this is awesome.”
—boy #12
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 583)
{ document.write('“Neatness! It made me laugh.”
—SelMessitihildi
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 580)
{ document.write('“As far as I can tell, SpecGram’s current list of authors is entirely made up. Which is a shame, because some time in the past, they had at least some articles written by actual linguists.”
—psygnisfive
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 578)
{ document.write('“I love the about us, but really, what does it say?”
—Moira Croley
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 573)
{ document.write('“Oh SpecGram, you make my day—every day! You’re the first thing I read in the morning, and then I feel great for the rest of the day! Rock on!”
—Ingeborg Sophie
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 571)
{ document.write('“A puzzle a day keeps the pedant away: This is for just a few of you... yes.. you—I’m looking at you.”
—jee
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 569)
{ document.write('“Some of those are too tough for me. I must be dumber than I thought. The cryptogram with the eêés is one in point.”
—Tribble
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 566)
{ document.write('“Man, I read the issue last night, and figured that one of the SpecGram cabal must have invented the morphome for its purposes.”
—Alex Fink
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 564)
{ document.write('“Several very nice things in this issue, anyhow, kudos.”
—Alex Fink
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 561)
{ document.write('“I will admit that I seldom read SpecGram, as fans call it, since I don’t really enjoy its brand of humor, generally very dry, deadpan satire of academic writing and more specifically the discourse of descriptive and theoretical linguistics.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 558)
{ document.write('“I did get a good chuckle from Elwin Ransom’s piece, “On the Applicability of Recent Theoretical Advances in Linguistics to the Practice of Fieldwork.” And really, what more can I demand for the price of my subscription?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 553)
{ document.write('“유서 깊은 언어학 개그의 본산 Speculative Grammarian의 트위터 계정 @SpecGram을”
—tzxi
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 550)
{ document.write('“Syntactic ambiguity explained with cartoons!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 548)
{ document.write('“great examples”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 543)
{ document.write('“Did you really think someone was going to fall for this?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 538)
{ document.write('“It’s hilarious to the linguistically-minded. Phoenician syntax is gold.”
—Tubberella Phillips
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 534)
{ document.write('“I enjoyed it somewhat.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 531)
{ document.write('“This is hilarious.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 528)
{ document.write('“Seems more like a critique of English then anything else. This is what happens when you speak a mongrel language.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 524)
{ document.write('“Hilarious!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 519)
{ document.write('“SpecGram’s puntheon of mytholingual entities.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 516)
{ document.write('“Can’t get enough of SpecGram: Turn-offs: fervent lexicalism, fervent anti-lexicalism, and claimed biological inability to perform trills”
—Ingeborg Sophie
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 512)
{ document.write('“One of my resent favorite articles is “Draw Me A Linguist”. I do believe this represents most people’s stereotypical thoughts about linguists, not only children.”
—Margaret Fuller-Slack
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 508)
{ document.write('“This wonderfully weird article claims that the “ther” is evidence that the original language of Winnie the Pooh is not English, and it was translated from Gallo-Romance or Old French, although the stories themselves are much, much older.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 505)
{ document.write('“hahaha! That’s brilliant, and not entirely untrue.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 500)
{ document.write('“Интересно, почему я не набредала на эту штуку раньше: SpecGram. Например, комикс про Google Translate. Или загадка “найди семь отличий”. Или, например, как надо работать с информантом. Вообще такого прекрасного (действительно прекрасного) дикого гона я давно не видела. Плакал мой вечер :) Номера целиком тоже достойны похвалы. Ы.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 496)
{ document.write('“Вообще, сайт достаточно забавный, нечто вроде «лингвисты шутят». Мне там еще понравился «индоевропейский кроссворд».”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 493)
{ document.write('“I have never heard of satirical linguistics until I found [SpecGram]—and have been totally engrossed (and lost!)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 489)
{ document.write('“The site bills itself as the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics. With links to back issues, puzzles and games—this site is highly recommended for linguists.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 482)
{ document.write('“The editor emeritus (Tim Pulju) is the most popular linguistics professor at Dartmouth College, and for good reason. His classes are as entertaining as SpecGram, if not moreso. Also check out Lingua Pranca—it’s exceptionally witty. And the “choose your own career in linguistics” adventure story is worth more than a few run-throughs.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 479)
{ document.write('“In-jokes for the linguists.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 475)
{ document.write('“Got my new edition of Speculative Grammarian in my inbox today—and what a treat! This issue is all about fantasy languages and the cliches used in it... Have a read—it’s really funny! And something to keep in mind when creating languages.”
—Marsh
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 470)
{ document.write('“Check out [SpecGram]. They have about one cool puzzle an issue, and it’s all damn funny.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 466)
{ document.write('“I stumbled into this haven [(SpecGram)]… It’s like an STD, only much, much more desirable: one that we wish would spread more widely.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 458)
{ document.write('“Ok, half the time you guys intimidate me (and I get paid to write). Thanks for the daily education!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 455)
{ document.write('“ahh, nothing like good nerd humor in the wee hours of the night.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 445)
{ document.write('“Latest SpecGram podcast (Linguistics Wars) made my morning. So good”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 435)
{ document.write('“Must remember to not listen to SpecGram podcasts on the bus—I don’t need any more dirty/confused looks from undergrads.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 425)
{ document.write('“While I have your attention, let me thank you, the other editors and the contributors for the many hours I have misspent in laughing through the SpecGram archives. Sophomoric or sophisticated, hieratic or half-witted, it has always been a pleasure. You-all are furthering the grand millennia-plus-centuries tradition of SpecGram.”
—Rick Bryan
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 417)
{ document.write('“Чудесный сайт SpecGram: забавно про лингвистику. Местами просто забавно, местами забавно и полезно.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 413)
{ document.write('“Some of my favorite linguist humor—U.S. Government Linguists in Action”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 410)
{ document.write('“Trey Jones at Speculative Grammarian invites y’all to play his cute, and yet somewhat depressing, game: Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 406)
{ document.write('“OH GOD IT’S MY LIFE.”
—nromenuvote
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 401)
{ document.write('“A great satirical linguistic magazine that I think all of you would enjoy.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 396)
{ document.write('“Been hilarious for many many years. I particularly enjoy their comics.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 391)
{ document.write('“I have a feeling I’ll be entertained for hours!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 388)
{ document.write('“McLovin it.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 385)
{ document.write('“Встретился намедни чудесный сайт «Speculative Grammarian». Местами просто забавно, местами забавно и полезно.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 380)
{ document.write('“Please do not make the mistake I made and sing the counting song in the university cafeteria during lunch hours! I promise you, if people don’t think you’re a freak before that they’ll certainly think so after seeing you sit there all alone on a table making crazy trills. Does not matter whether you’re good at performing trills or not, they’ll shun you anyways...”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 375)
{ document.write('“Today I read the multi-trill article in Speculative Grammarian and I decided to try the counting song. ... It wasn’t until I tried the non silent 0 variant of Trilaa that I realized that I was making a real fool of myself. For those of you that are not familiar with Speculative Grammarian you probably do not know anything about the ingressive velar voiceless trill, and if you have some linguistic background you might try to pronounce that sound, but I need to warn you: try this at home! And whatever you do, do not try this in public!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 370)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian is the one and only journal of satirical linguistics. I’m very fond of their Cartoon Theories of Linguistics series. And anyone who’s thinking of majoring in linguistics should try Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics first.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 367)
{ document.write('“Far and away, one of my favorite accounts to follow.”
—Dan
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 364)
{ document.write('“What better way to spend a day than solving @SpecGram archive linguistic puzzles?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 359)
{ document.write('“Something funny from my favorite journal ever SpecGram.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 355)
{ document.write('“You guys are great, and may Speculative Grammarian last another seven centuries.”
—Filip Skwarski
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 350)
{ document.write('“I’m loving ‘Language Made Difficult’.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 347)
{ document.write('““No” to serious linguists!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 344)
{ document.write('“Trying to explain the joy of SpecGram to non-linguists is like someone trying to explain the joy of advanced mathematics to me.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 341)
{ document.write('“Keep linguistic conflict in the abstract domain—only there can satire prevail. You might be no match for the Fist of Generativism!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 338)
{ document.write('“That would be meeting the Serious Linguists on their own specious terms. You could not hope to survive. Only subvert to prosper.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 336)
{ document.write('“Any discussion of a Wordnik takeover of SpecGram is purely speculative.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 333)
{ document.write('“Everything I learned about linguistics I learned from the Speculative Grammarian.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 329)
{ document.write('“What I learned about the relationship of coffee to adult conversation was priceless”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 327)
{ document.write('“I, for one, welcome our new serious overlords.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 323)
{ document.write('“Qualcuno, poi, per risolvere il problema ha inventato nuovi simboli, il Quotta e il Quottiod!”
—t4nec0
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 318)
{ document.write('“How would a linguist translate “Dumber than a box of rocks” from the original Texan? Easy: “Dumber than a department of Sapir-Whorfians.” There’s a whole mess of useful conversions in “Texan for Linguists.””
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 313)
{ document.write('“This is my new favorite thing, courtesy of the Speculative Grammarian.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 308)
{ document.write('“Nowadays we have kinda decent natural language parsers.”
“In my opinion, these still have a long way to go. (Panel #3 is my personal favorite.)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 305)
{ document.write('“Heh, quite funny. I’m fighting an addiction to velaric ingressives myself.”
—Eddy
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 302)
{ document.write('“The “Pantheon-Based Theory of Grammar” is quite funny as well.”
—Cathbad
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 299)
{ document.write('“It’s interesting to know that this was a source of great debate for many years. A lot of people argued that this was anything but phonologically determined, wasting a ton of time and effort. Pay attention to phonology!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 295)
{ document.write('“It’s a balance you guys strike well—that rare ability to use the words “phonotactics” and “poopyhead” in the same joke.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 290)
{ document.write('“I am thrilled that you have come across the title of my talk and considered it worthy of the Chiasmus award. I am an advocate of the interface of science and research with wit, style and rhetoric. I, of course, am honoured to accept the award and condone the use of my title/ abstract/ name in your publications. My Chiasmus of the Month will indeed be my month of chiasmus.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 285)
{ document.write('“Oh my goodness gracious, I could waste my entire life reading [SpecGram]. The choose your own adventure career game is my favorite so far though...”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 280)
{ document.write('“ ‘You do well, and 20 years later, you are successful, happy, and productive. You make a good living, do interesting work every day, and have sharp colleagues to keep you on your toes. Your home life is tranquil and pleasant, and you have lots of time off every year to do your own thing. Life is grand!’ Damn right! Now if only ‘work hard’ was indeed a single click and not 5+ years of grueling torture.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 277)
{ document.write('“The Lab Phonetician one made me laugh.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 273)
{ document.write('“I’m quite fond of the phonologist one myself, since I was forced to sit through a semester of very, very abstract phonology.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 263)
{ document.write('“Thanks for introducing me to SpecGram, you bastard. I have an essay due tomorrow, you know.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 258)
{ document.write('“I lost it multiple times.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 251)
{ document.write('“I love SpecGram. So, so much. I even have a nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill shirt.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 241)
{ document.write('“How have I never encountered this amazing website before?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 238)
{ document.write('“This journal rules!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 233)
{ document.write('“This figure showing Examples of phronological Evidence is killing me! “Darth voiceless vaders”... “heimlich ejectives”... tee hee!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 228)
{ document.write('“The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature: The best dictionary on the web! So great, it knows definitions of words that don’t even exist!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 223)
{ document.write('“Und wer den “Speculative Grammarian” nicht kennt, hat wirklich was verpasst. Eine ganze Satirezeitschrift nur für/von/über Linguisten”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 219)
{ document.write('“The “choose your own career in linguistics” game! It’s fun, I promise! :)”
—agents verbing patients
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 215)
{ document.write('“This kills me, as the only way to get a job is when “Prof. Johnson” kicks the bucket, and my dear friend is a Prof. Johnson of linguistics hahahaha”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 211)
{ document.write('“What will become of a linguistics major?”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 206)
{ document.write('“Wenn ihr den Witz nicht versteht, macht, was der Editor gesagt habt, lest euch rein. Es ist einfach zu genial. Nasal-ingressive stimmlose velare Trills sind in der Tat... außergewöhnlich”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 200)
{ document.write('“Justin B. Rye at Speculative Grammarian has a delightful Primer in SF Xenolinguistics. Rye offers ten rules of SF and fantasy language clichés, muses briefly yet thoroughly on the ways in which alien languages might differ from human languages and the ways in which they probably won’t, and discusses potential issues with universal translators.
Plus, he’s funny. “I pity C-3PO, kept as a slave translator for biochauvinist rebels in a society where everything understands English anyway.””
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 197)
{ document.write('“Haha–I can’t wait to find time to read this!!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 194)
{ document.write('“I don’t know if anyone reads Speculative Grammarian (SpecGram), but I just saw this today: OdCom. It made me laugh, at least.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 186)
{ document.write('“Oh baby, let’s try the nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill tonight.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 176)
{ document.write('“Some of us stopped submitting to SpecGram because we have to concentrate on writing that will earn.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 168)
{ document.write('“Without doubt, Speculative Grammarian is the world’s premier Satirical Linguistics journal.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 160)
{ document.write('“[SpecGram is] more fun than a barrel filled with n monkeys with x reflective indicators in a partial least squares path model.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 155)
{ document.write('“I love SpecGram!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 145)
{ document.write('“Haven’t delved yet, but this looks like an interesting page for linguists and other wordnerds.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 135)
{ document.write('“SpecGram’s podcasts are sharp, silly, and fun.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 125)
{ document.write('“Am enjoying @SpecGram’s To the Field Workers to Make Much of Time.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 120)
{ document.write('“This is my favourite thing you have ever published”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 115)
{ document.write('“The SpecGram post also pokes fun at the Skopos theory of translation. Hilarious and worth the time.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 105)
{ document.write('“Well, at least we do have a canonical set of tests to tell linguists from philosophers.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 102)
{ document.write('“went over my head / made me giggle then felt a little spooked.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 100)
{ document.write('“They lost me at ‘Futurological’...”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 98)
{ document.write('“I hope this is satirical”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 96)
{ document.write('“If you get to the bottom of the article, there’s definitely show of Tongue in Cheek. :)”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 91)
{ document.write('“Und wer den “Speculative Grammarian” nicht kennt, hat wirklich was verpasst. Eine ganze Satirezeitschrift nur für/von/über Linguisten.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 88)
{ document.write('“Good overview/visual intro to the topic for lay people.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 83)
{ document.write('“I have this shirt from SpecGram. I’ve had to stop wearing it because people would stop me and stare at it and ask me to explain all the time :(”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 73)
{ document.write('“I love SpecGram, even though it makes me sad that after 3 years of university education in linguistics, I can only understand about half of it!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 65)
{ document.write('“Oh Speculative Grammarian why do you always publish a new issue when I’m most behind with schoolwork? I’m dying with laughter and I don’t think my supervisor would find this article very funny if I presented it as my excuse... even though she is, like, the only other person I can share its utmost hilarity with... :(”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 60)
{ document.write('“I worry both that this may have been already seen by those who can appreciate it, and that it might go over the heads of everyone else. If so, apologies. Nonetheless, SpecGram’s occasional salvos at formalist theoretical excesses always make my day, even when reread.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 55)
{ document.write('“Ooooh, someone is bitter :D”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 50)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian was brought up as an example of satirical linguistics but the punchlines require rather too much technical knowledge for a layperson.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 45)
{ document.write('“It’s nothing porcine, I assure you.”
—Ouagadougou
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 41)
{ document.write('“NO. WAY. SO FULL OF AWESOME. <3”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 38)
{ document.write('“Speaking of jargon, here’s a handy list for the layperson.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 35)
{ document.write('“Despite the name, this prestigious prize [the Chiasmus of the Month award] apparently does not get awarded every month, so double congratulations, Stephanie and Richie!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 30)
{ document.write('“[T]he latest issue includes a contribution that deftly slices away our reason for being. Or maybe jabs at it with a rusty blade. I mean the “Ask Mr. Language Person” piece answering the question [“Why do languages decay?”].”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 25)
{ document.write('“This may be the most closely argued piece of linguistics since Verner wrote on the voicing of Germanic fricatives, or at least since “Remarks on Nominalization”.”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 20)
{ document.write('“Hwæt! WTF?!”
'); }
else if (quotrand > bit * 10)
{ document.write('“Speculative Grammarian (the journal of “satirical linguistics”) published a piece recently entitled The Lexicalist Agenda: Exposing the Myths. ‘It’s a hoot’, says the Sesquipeditor -- ‘3 thumbs up!’.”
'); }
else
{ document.write('“Immer wieder lesenswert: Speculative Grammarian”
'); }
}