De La SpecGram­matologie

A Letter to Future Historians of Satirical Linguistics
from the Editor-in-Chief, Trey “Jacquey D” Jones

Future SpecGrammologists will debate whether this period in the history of SpecGram is “Early Modern” or “Late Moron” or even “Proto-Interplanetary”—and whether we were titans or pipsqueaks, our scribblings impactful or inconsequential.

Double-Dot Wide O

They will undoubtedly furrow their collective brow as they attempt to decipher the opaque and recalcitrant tea leaves of some future tattered remains of the SpecGram archive and hazard ill-formed guesses at our true meaning and significance.

Was our footnotification inspired and inspiring, or baroque and b^əroken? Did we punch up more than down? (Will our future socio-descriptive overlords forgive us or will they have forgotten us?)

More than two decades ago, I dared brag that the then newly virtual nature of the Speculative Grammarian editorial board “transmogrified this journal from a hard target in the real world to an electronic ghost,” out of reach of the once feared and “far-reaching conspiracy among lesser linguistics journals.”

Unfortunately, a new shadowy cabal has arisen—and not the good kind, either—one that can threaten us on the internet (despite M.A.Y.N.A.R.D.’s best efforts). There are about 10¹⁰⁰ tech bro oligarchs and an infestation of elongated muskrats arrayed against us.

It’s Claude vs. Claude, Chomsky vs. Chornsky in a dog-eat-dog world.

Rasmus Rask

Also, I must admit, the creeping hands of time, the inevitability of entropy, new highly contagious diseases, the je ne sais quois of untranslatability, the modern deterioration of discourse, the ups and downs of the Roman Empire, shoggoths_, and the pretentious utility of the Oxford Comma—all keep me up at night and grind me down.

But not all hope is lost! No matter our fate, we will live on in the hearts and minds of our readers, contributors, and editors—and in the flogging scars of our interns. Perhaps in physical scraps, a few secret handwritten manuscripts preserved by monks through a future Dark Age, digital scraps, a recalcitrant layer in an LLM transformer, a mere echo in the glint of a budding linguo-meme-ologist’s eye.

Should every trace of SpecGram be wiped from the earth—or even from the cosmos—fear not, dear friends. For every time a larval linguist realizes that “Rasmus Rask” is the funnest name for a philologist, a grad student introduces an unsuspecting undergrad to the nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill, a Plüжelйstrẽmndч dares to ponder syntax, a woefully unprepared linguistics student mutters a desperate prayer to Lhareth before an exam, a lazy “linguist” does “fieldwork” by video call, a lonely old stratificationalist makes mac’n’cheese, a linguistics professor is befuddled by their students’ woeful lack of comprehension, or a middle schooler argues to an English teacher that “funnest is too a word” and gets detention—we will be there.

To the future SpecGrammologists who may or may not read this… ultimately, the judgement we receive from you—who are unknowable—means nothing to us—who are but dust.

For us, this is Now, and for now, this is The End.

	Letters to the Editor
	SpecGram Vol CXCV, No 3 Contents