Most Popular Pages—Today

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1. Archives (7 visits)

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 ]


2. Merchandise (6 visits)

Speculative Grammarian Merchandise. Introduction. In order to lend a hand to our good friends and steadfast supporters over at the Linguist List during their 2006 fund drive, we prepared a small selection of limited edition SpecGram merchandise, including T-shirts, stickers and magnets. Originally these items were only available as prizes awarded as part of the Linguist List fund drive. In 2012, several of the SpecGram editors suffered from a rare form of collective frontal lobe damage, which made it seem like a good idea to put together a SpecGram book. The result in 2013 was The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics. In 2014, Editor Mikael Thompson entered a deep fugue ... [ more ]


3. Ockham’s “Nay, Sir!”—Advertisement (5 visits)

ADVERTISEMENT Ockham’s “Nay, Sir!”. Do you get tired of responding to ridiculous and tangential questions from friends and colleagues which your busy schedule—and frankly the sheer inanity of the questioner—prevents you from engaging with? The all new Ockham’s “Nay, sir!” device allows the busy professional to address all manner of off-topic, irrelevant and badly-phrased questions at a single push of a parsimonious button. Simply depress the Ockham button on your Ockham’s “Nay, sir!” device and it will offer up a firm “Nay, sir” to your would-be interlocutor. Choose from a range of voice settings including Kant, Hegel ... [ more ]


4. Lingua Pranca—Dates in the Month of May that Are of Interest to Linguists—James D. McCawley (5 visits)

Dates in the Month of May that Are of Interest to Linguists. James D. McCawley, University of Chicago. (Note: May, the month in which Goodspeed day is celebrated, by recently established tradition, can be seen from the following to be a linguistically auspicious month), May 2, 1919. Baudouin de Courtenay concedes defeat in his bid for the presidency of Poland. May 3, 1955. Mouton & Co. discover how American libraries order books and scheme to cash in by starting several series of books on limericks. The person given charge of this project mishears and starts several series of books on linguistics. No one ever notices the mistake. May 5, 1403. The Great English Vowel Shift begins. Giles of Tottenham calls for ale at his ... [ more ] Podcast!


5. Ministry of Propaganda (5 visits)

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. ... Read SpecGram Every Month! ... [ more ]


6. Virtual NLP Dice (5 visits)

Virtual NLP Dice. The SpecGram Überlinguistaffen. ... [Re-roll.] [Re-roll like you mean it !!] As many successful practitioners of Natural Language Processing know, the surest path to success is to come up with some complicated-looking equation and then rest on your mathematical laurels for the rest of your career—because “Math is hard, and hard things are for smart people, and smart people are just better. QED.” Or so we learned from the original ad for NLP Dice: “Local Linguist Mom Discovers One Weird Trick for Deriving NLP Equations!—Computational Linguists Hate Her!” (SpecGram ... [ more ]


7. Son of Lingua Pranca (5 visits)

Son of Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. IULC. November 1979. ... edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Son of, ^ Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... i u linguistics club, ... [ more ]


8. The Symptoms and Warning Signs of Framework Psychosis—Dr. Pill, M.D. (5 visits)

The Symptoms and Warning Signs of Framework Psychosis. By Dr. Pill, M.D.. Framework Psychosis, a new and dangerous affliction sweeping through academia like wildfire, is the unhealthy (and unfounded) belief that one’s framework, whatever it may be, is the one true framework. As a public service, I have written up a set of guidelines that will allow concerned individuals to identify those suffering from Framework Psychosis. If you are an academic, I encourage you to post this list in your lounges, labs, lecture halls, and latrines. With your help, we may yet be able to eradicate FP in our lifetime. There is no such thing as a framework free of complications. If you believe you subscribe to one, you may be a ... [ more ] Podcast!


9. Lingua Pranca (5 visits)

I U Linguistics Club. Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. June 1978. ... i u linguistics club, edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... [ more ]


10. Οrthоgrаphiс Реrрlехеr (5 visits)

Оrthоgraрhіc Perрlехer. Welcome to the Speculative Grammarian Оrthοɡrаphіс Ρerplехеr! This not-quite-pointless little tool will munge your text, randomly replacing some characters with homoglyphs that are nearly identical1—or at least quite reasonably similar to the untrained eye. Why? To make text both very hard and very easy to find via normal search (try to find “οrthoɡrарhіс реrрleхer” on this page, for example); to confuse and amaze your friends and enemies alike;6 to pass the time in a ... [ more ]


11. The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics (5 visits)

The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . For decades, Speculative Grammarian has been the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics—and now it is available in book form—both physical and electronic! We wish we were kidding,1 but no, seriously, we’ve published a large3 collection of SpecGram articles, along with just enough new material to force obsessive collectors and fans to buy it, regardless of the cost.4 From the Introduction: The past twenty-five years have witnessed many changes in linguistics, with major developments in linguistic theory, significant expansion ... [ more ]


12. Reanalysis of Spanish by Naïve Linguists—Chesterton Wilburfors Gilchrist, Jr. (5 visits)

Reanalysis of Spanish by Naïve Linguists. Chesterton Wilburfors Gilchrist, Jr. Chairman, Department of Lexicology and Glottometrics, Devonshire-upon-Glencullen University, Southampton While sitting in the Linguistics Lounge the other day, I overheard some first-year grad students discussing the day’s Spanish class. My eavesdropping turned out to be much more interesting than I had anticipated. I must interject here that several faculty members and grad students had fought against the idea of first-years fulfilling their foreign language reading requirement with Spanish. Objections ranged from the dearth of academic linguistics material published in Spanish to the commonly accepted ease of ... [ more ] Podcast! Book!


13. LingDoku II—More, Better, Harder—Trey Jones (5 visits)

LingDoku II. More, Better, Harder. Trey Jones, l’École de SpecGram, Washington D.C.. In the April issue, Speculative Grammarian made a shameless attempt to cash in on the popularity of the Japanese number/logic game SuDoku by concocting a SuDoku-like activity suitable for Linguists. Our original LingDoku puzzle simplified the logical reasoning component of traditional SuDoku, and introduced a thin veneer of linguistics to create an artificial barrier to participation for non-linguists. The solution to last issue’s puzzle is given here. In all likelihood it is the correct solution, but nothing in life is certain. Well, as it turns out, the original LingDoku puzzle is ... [ more ]


14. Pseudo-Psiblings™—And Other Views of Multiply-Blended Families—Trey Jones (5 visits)

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 ]


15. Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome (5 visits)

Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome . Are you looking for a book about ancient Roman history that’s interesting, informative, and amusing? No? Oh. Well, all the same, as long as you’re on this webpage already, we’d like to recommend that you buy Tim Pulju’s The History of Rome. Easy to read, full of genuine historical facts, and adorned with amateurish hand-drawn pictures, The History of Rome is so good that even Girolamo Savonarola might hesitate to cast it into the flames. And best of all, it’s only $6.99! Buy one now! Interested, but wary of being burned by a slick advertising campaign for a product that fails to live up to the hype? Then download the free preview and read ... [ more ]


16. Biolinguistic Modelling Simulation—Nom Compik & Piraha Sanpitakuk (4 visits)

In this study we explore how the linguist interacts with a wide range of structural variability by simulating not only the behavior of the trees themselves but also the behavior of the linguist. ... [ more ]


17. The Encyclopedia of Mytholingual Creatures, Places, and Things—Part I—Jʚsɘph Cɑɱpbɛɬɭ (4 visits)

The Encyclopedia of Mytholingual Creatures, Places, and Things, Part I. Jʚsɘph Cɑɱpbɛɬɭ. Abominable Synonym: A mytholingual creature of Nepal and Tibet that causes speakers within the radius of its effect to pathologically doubt their ability to choose the right word. Al-Khemy: The mytholingual art and science of converting words from Arabic to English. Hence albatross, alchemy, alcohol, alcove, algebra, algorithm, alfalfa, etc. Big Honkers: A mainstay of cryptolinguistics, this far-northern tribe of large-nosed, loose-lipped natives speak a language that includes a labio-nasal place of articulation. They supposedly can close their noses with ... [ more ] Podcast! Book!


18. Arabic Numeral to Numeri++ Converter (4 visits)

Arabic Numeral to Numeri++ Converter. by Daniel Swanson & Trey Jones. Cognomen 2018 (SpecGram, CLXXX.3) in footnote ‡‡† lays out “a superior, novel solution” to extending Numeri++, his science-nerd–friendly upgrade to Roman numerals, to accommodate values beyond 5,000. Below we provide a handy converter† for the mathematically and/or typographically challenged among you who would like to use this system — † It appears that our buddy Prae-Prae put a little too much faith in the Unicode Consortium. Obviously any entity with “Consortium” right there in the name is not to be trusted fully. The biggest problem is that ... [ more ]


19. Lingua Pranca—Ambiguity In Action: A Bawdy Count—Norman C. Stageberg (4 visits)

Ambiguity In Action: A Bawdy Count. Norman C. Stageberg, University of Northern Iowa. One major source of humor is found in the many and various situations of everyday life, both as they occur in actuality and as they are refined and recounted in literature. A second major source of humor is language itself in its many aspects. One of these aspects is ambiguity. This is our subject for today: ambiguity in language and the pranks it plays. First, however, I believe that every gathering of people to pursue a serious subject should have a motto to give direction and purpose to their thoughts. So, I offer as a motto for us on this solemn occasion a sign that I once saw outside a dance hall near Iowa City. It goes like this: Clean ... [ more ] Podcast!


20. Legal Proceedings—A. Katz (4 visits)

THICKLEWAITE v. HORNSWORTH.. Court of Common Pleas, 1793*. This was an action in trover, brought under the following circumstances: Plaintiff was in possession of a considerable vocabulary, but was on the whole quite circumspect in the use of same, lest his neighbors acquire any portion thereof from him, whether by conversion or fraudulently, under cover of title. However, on one occasion, the wine having been unusually potent, his tongue being accidentally set loose, the following utterance escaped Plaintiff's lips, without his knowledge or consent: 'Should any of you miscreants attempt to increase your vocabulary at my expense, please be advised that I will not tolerate such latrociny!' This challenge sent his ... [ more ]


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Last updated May 17, 2026.