SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

From Mwahaha to Bwahaha: Some Observations on Evil Laughter. By Lady Esmerelda Rose Beeton-Frasier. Evil laughter is present across the globe and can be observed in all cultures and languages.¹ At first it would appear that “Evil Laughter” or “EL” as it will be referred to, may take on various different phonetic forms, and I propose, after much research² that EL falls somewhere between “Glee”³ and “Hysterics”.⁴ EL might start out as Gleeful Laughter (GL), may progress to EL before either ceasing, or escalating rapidly to Hysterical Laughter (HL).⁵ Those who are well schooled in the art of EL may skip GL and proceed ... [ 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 ]

The SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. Welcome to the SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. The SpecGram Archive Elves™ have undertaken a project to digitize and share a sheaf of early 20th century SpecGram propaganda posters, which were used during the Great Linguistic War and the Second Linguistic War to encourage linguists everywhere to keep a stiff upper lip and a sense of humor during those trying times. We provide the digitized posters here for you to enjoy, retrospect on, and share. Select a poster to see a higher quality image, and for links to share on social media, to email friends, and to view or download the highest quality version of the image. If you have ideas for other messages that need ... [ more ]

Quotes: What People are Saying. Here are a few of our favorite things people have said about Speculative Grammarian over the years, collected wild on the internet, or domesticated in email — Q1117. C’est sans doute un humour un peu ésotérique mais bon —Sémioticien du bisou — Q1116. Support the addition of the double-dot wide O to the IPA chart by buying some Speculative Grammarian merchandise! No, I’m not being sponsored or getting a commission from them. I just appreciate good geeky humour —Grace Teng — Q1115. Speculative Grammarian ist die erste Zeitschrift für satirische Linguistik. Kostenlos zugänglich, ein ... [ more ]

A Love/Hate Relationship: Pesky Antonyms. Jessie Sams, Stephen F. Austin State University. When students get to college, the majority of them have never thought about antonyms as being anything more than “opposites.” So big is the opposite of small, just like buyer is the opposite of seller. Then, all of a sudden, students are forced into a linguistics course with a professor who tells them that they have to learn to differentiate among different types of antonyms. Student’s minds are nearly exploding with information as they have to learn definitions of terms like ‘converse’ and ‘gradable’ and ‘complementary’ in the world of ... [ more ]

The Chadic Substratum in English. Nemo Thanneven, Chief Researcher, Munich University Deep Diachronic Linguistics Experiment. The languages of the British Isles are typologically unusual members of the Indo-European family. Previous research has investigated the possibility of Semitic influences on Insular Celtic. However, it is not widely realised that English, too, has an Afro-Asiatic substratum, in this case derived from the Chadic branch. As I demonstrate below, several key features of English that would not be expected for a Germanic language with Romance influences can be readily explained by this hypothesis. 1. Pronouns inflected for TAM. English has lost most of the verbal marking that would be ... [ more ]

Mix & Match †. by Max & Mitch Ninelette. The goal of this Mix & Match puzzle is to reconstitute a set of nine 9-letter words that have each had two trigrams removed. Below are two separate puzzles. Each includes a table to fill out and a set of trigrams with which to fill it up. Using each trigram once, fill the blanks in the table to form various nine-letter words. When you are done, three additional words will be revealed in the vertical direction for each puzzle. If you think you’ve figured out all the answers—that’s 24 nine-letter words!—submit your solution to the editors of SpecGram by February 15, 2016, and you could win a prize.^* Solutions ... [ more ]

The /bɪɡɪnɪŋ/ of the /ɛnd/, A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief. Automagically Transcribed℠ by the, LingTechCo Dictaphonemizer 3.1™. T.J.: (yelling) Mr. Ó McBar van der Fitzez del Abבןsønовичόπουλescu ǃ Mr. Ó McBar van der Fitzez del Abבןsønовичόπουλescu ǃ I can’t figure out how to get this new-fangled Dictaphonemizer to turn on. I already wrangled a one-month extension and I still don’t have anything for my editorial, which ... [ more ]

Thirteen Untranslatable Words. by Michael Covarrubias. I’m a language lover. I have been since I was a kid. Just about eleven months after being born, I started saying words and I’ve been using them ever since. I probably use words every day and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. After a while, we language lovers have a hard time learning more about our native language. That’s why we branch out to memorize other languages. It can be hard though, because a lot of foreign languages have words in them that we just can’t translate into English. Maybe it’s because we don’t have the concept in English, and that makes it impossible to make up a label for the concept. Or, more interestingly, ... [ more ]

Language Made Difficult, Vol. XXVIII — The SpecGram LingNerds go it alone once again. After some Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics, the LingNerds discuss some problems with (the) French, and reveal their least favorite subdisciplines of linguistics. ... [ listen ]

Pseudo-Psiblings™ And Other Views of Multiply-Blended Families. A proposal for improving and clarifying family nomenclature for the 21st century. by Trey Jones. Introduction. Language evolves—otherwise we’d all be able to read Beowulf in the original, right? Sometimes language changes in response to cultural changes. But sometimes it doesn’t change fast enough to keep up with cultural changes. This paper seeks to give English a little push in a much-needed direction. There has been a fairly radical change in Western society in the last hundred years or so. It used to be that if a woman was on her fourth husband, one automatically felt a little sorry for ... [ 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 ]

Shifty Linguistics. John Cagey and Wiley-Kai O’Tae, X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. In addition to the Great Bowel Shift (mentioned in SpecGram in issues CLXXXV.4, CLXXXIX.4, and CXCII.4, and again below), we found several others, summarized briefly below. A mass movement of nocturnal predatory birds, known as the Great Owl Shift (Strig I. Formes, 1970, Journal of Fowlkind, LXXV.3). A change in Christian monastic fashion, known as the Great Cowl Shift (William of Ockham, 2000, Sacred Sartorial Studies, CLXXIX.1). The momentous development of new bathroom textiles, known as the Great Towel Shift (Þwahaną L’Avabo, 2021, The W.C. Chronicle, ... [ more ]

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