Linguimericks—Book ६५ SpecGram Vol CLXXXV, No 2 Contents Fables of Linguistics—The Para-Mimetic Tale of Poss -’s—The Tale Teller of Tollerton Town

Amazing Language Facts You Won’t Believe

The SpecGram Pop Culture Elves™

Language is an amazing thing and there are lots of languagey things you don’t knowincluding many you don’t even know you don’t know. From lingual lineages to lost linguistic theories, there are a lot of things you don’t know about language!

  1. Chomsky’s perfect proof of Universal Grammar was eaten by a Pirahã.

  2. Dutch started when a speaker of Old Saxon got their feet wet in a marsh and came down with a bad cold.

  3. Hawaiian was actually made up during a game of Chubby Bunnies, but it sounded so cool that people kept speaking like that.

  4. English started as a joke between an Old Saxon, a Dane and a Frankish soldier, after they got drunk on ale. That certainly explains the orthography.

  5. Russian is just backwards German.

  6. Contrary to popular belief, documentary linguists don’t study the output of the Discovery Channel.

  7. All field linguists start out as that annoying kid in the playground who says, “What did you say about my mate?”

  8. Whenever a linguist is asked, “How many languages do you speak?”, a polyglot gets their wings.

  9. Nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trills make you more attractive.

  10. Scientists at Rice University are really sick of people throwing the entire university into a bowl and using it to try to dry out mobile phones.

  11. Linguists don’t die; they just become philologists.

  12. The Danish number system was created when a bunch of Berlitz writers crashed a party put on by the Oxford University number theory and cryptography department.

  13. There’s as much evidence for these facts as there is for an average theory of linguistics.

LinguimericksBook ६५
Fables of LinguisticsThe Para-Mimetic Tale of Poss -’sThe Tale Teller of Tollerton Town
SpecGram Vol CLXXXV, No 2 Contents