Linguimericks & The Lingumerickocalypse—Book १०५ SpecGram Vol CXCV, No 3 Contents Assessing the Impact of Speculative Grammarian on the Reconstitution of Nonparametric Satirical Meta-Theory—Trent Slater

Increasing Linguistic Self-Referentiality in Weird Ways

Γραμματο-Χαοτικον

As part of our ongoing mission to make the world of language a lot more interesting, we want to encourage our membersand the general language-using publicto increase the unusual self-referentiality of language. As an illustration, the word weird is a little weird, because it doesn’t follow the i-before-e rule.*

We propose that, for example, out of whack and wacky should be made slightly out of whack and slightly wacky, respectively, by pronouncing them with the opposite w-/hw- pronunciation used by your dialect everywhere else. This is particularly wacky if your dialect doesn’t even have hw- anywhere else!

The words bizarre and eerie are not quite bizarre or eerie, but they are odd and eccentric, with very uncommon -zarre and eer- spellings. Why not oddd and eksentric?

Why shouldn’t kooky be /ˈkyki/ or /ˈkɯki/, funky /ˈfɔ̃ːŋke/, and freaky a little more /fᵊˈɹiːːː˨‌˩‌˦‌˧‌˥ki/? While natural should sound /ˈnæt͡ʃəɹəl/, shouldn’t its opposite be /ʌnˈɴ̥æǃɧəɹəɬ/? For any semantically related word, the more /utˈlɒːndiʃ/ the better!

Feel free to peruse the numerous selections of the Self-Defining Linguistic Glossary from the The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics for more advanced inspiration!



* To everyone complaining that i-before-e fails for more words than it holds for, there are two reasonable responses: (A) If you are a native speaker, shut up. It’s true more often than not for words you are likely to be unsure about. No one with half a brian** questions the order of e and i in words like reintroductionre + introduction, not ri + entroduction. Duh. (2) If you are not a native speaker, the rule is indeed confusing because you learned too much English at once and it isn’t for yousee point (i) above. Sorry for any inconvenience.

** There’s no a-before-i or i-before-a rule to solve this problem. Why? Because it doesn’t work! See!

Linguimericks & The LingumerickocalypseBook १०५
Assessing the Impact of Speculative Grammarian on the Reconstitution of Nonparametric Satirical Meta-TheoryTrent Slater
SpecGram Vol CXCV, No 3 Contents