言語学に関するオンライン雑誌 Speculative Grammarian の2012年7月号が出されています。 注意：真面目な内容ではありません。

Speculative Grammarian / 言語学に関する笑えるネタや時として真面目な話を収録したオンラインの雑誌。難しいことを緩く語るのがコンセプトなのだろう。英語。

Why didn’t I know about @SpecGram? Thankfully one of my students pointed it out. Love this.

For a bit of culture/humor, read Speculative Grammarian. The more linguistics you know, the more funny it gets.

SpecGram podcasts are the best medicine for the flu!

Australian English is just a few years from becoming Perry So-so.

I like to jump head first into subjects that I have no understanding of at all. Here’s a site that meets the criteria. ... Speculative Grammarian.

For more details [on majoring in linguistics], you can read through this. It’s quite exaggerated as you’ll see, but useful nonetheless.

One last thing I’m particularly unhappy about is that [The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution] doesn’t have an Acacia Tree on the cover—which seems like a missed opportunity.

Everybody should take a look at [this]. It is full of good humor, some of it good Norse/Gothic humor...and we know what delightful people they were.

Here are some Gothic phrases that could come handy on your travels.

I really want to know who wrote this. Brilliant.

It’s actually worse than this.

Die Märzausgabe der Linguistiksatirezeitschrift Speculative Grammarian ist dieser Tage erschienen–sie befasst sich unter anderem mit den schädlichen Folgen von Sprachkontakt und mit Degenerativer Grammatik.

Well I read some of it ... and then gave up.

Let’s all just be glad we’re not learning Mid. after-Nguyen Knap.

The search ii “anthropic principle” lojban leads to Speculative Grammarian, a website devoted to satirical linguistics, and specifically to the hilarious article “Survey of Linguistic Evidence of Meta-Consciousness in Tier-19 Terran Primates,” which reads like a blasphemous cross of Noam Chomsky, G. I. Gurdjieff, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (in Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level.)

An advert not to be taken seriously: The Stylistic Writing Academy of Academic Writing Style

Linguistic Levity: Our friends and colleagues at Speculative Grammarian have published a wonderful list of ancient and wise sayings, relevant to linguists like ourselves. Read them here. [And here and here. —Eds.]

A favorite: “Give a man a parse and you give him data for a day; teach a man to parse and you give him data for a lifetime.”

Haha what a cute song! Makes me wanna sing now!

Filing this under songs I’m going to sing to my hypothetical future children.

Love, love, love these very important and informative essays.

“How to Do Fieldwork on Proto-Indo-European”: An informative article from Speculative Grammarian.

For anyone who does or did fieldwork, I’m sure they’re aware of Murphy’s Law as Applied to Field Linguistics.

Gibt’s einen Link zu SpecGrams EtymGeo™, wo man Städtenamen rauskriegen muss–absolut empfehlenswert.

Speculative Grammarian is the premier badassical scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics. Check [it] out.

Seriously, I read this and my jaw dropped. Not only at the hilarious footnotes but the incredible story of how a language came to be made up almost entirely of adverbs. A bit longish but well worth the read.

I ... initially thought it was authentic. I planned on finishing this and jump right to Wikipedia in hope of finding more information. I couldn’t believe that I had never heard of it. I thought it probably meant that it was an old disproven analysis of the language. I myself thought (a still think for that matter) that if every clause begins with “do PRONOUN shi” followed a single component, a simpler analysis would involve prounouns sharing a common “do-” prefix and verbs a common “shi-” prefix, which every semantic elements analysed as verbs, some of which translatable into “to be a X”, “to use a X”. “Do ki shikabayo shilolo” = I use-a-horse [and] run = I run on a horse = I ride a horse. However, perhaps the author did explain, with further data, that this analysis was mistaken.

I had absolutely no doubts until the author (although I should now say narrator) introduced elements of his personal life—using people or dumping his fiancée—that I thought were completely inappropriate even for an informal account of such a monumental finding. Then came the part about the 400-year-old writing and my disbelief overloaded, fell, and came to crash right on the floor.

Next time I should just read the notes under the pictures. 16 years old, seriously?

I was happy to read your honest fable for our times, as I fear the Linguistic Doomsday is causing old myth to die.

[On podcast recommendations:] Speculative Grammarian: linguistic humor digest. I don’t really grok “Linguistics Made Difficult”, their live chat/interview series, but what got me hooked were the humor pieces.

I love this. I don’t know some of them, which probably makes me a bad linguist, but it’s a clever, simple illustration of some concepts in linguistics.

This made me chortle. Particularly the ones on Grimm’s Law, markedness, and weakly vs strongly transitive verbs—“Hopper kept on insulting Thompson, so Thompson killed Hopper.” Ha.

That I find this funny probably doesn’t reflect well on my social development, but whatcha gonna do.

Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics! Hint: To win great glory, double major in physics, and work on the temporal wormhole project.

My first instinct was to try to major in econ, and I got to be rich but had a crushed spirit. Life is tough, one wrong turn and there you go.

Then I went to [SpecGram], a Journal of Satirical Linguistics, and read this very entertaining article: “Los Eres y el Erre”. I was most amused to have read it in Spanish and caught almost some of the funny parts.

Dikembe Mutombo, the 7-foot 2-inch center for the Houston Rockets and the oldest player in the NBA, authored a groundbreaking study when he was a student at Georgetown in which he assailed “one of the sillier ideas of modern linguistics... that one language is as good as another, that no language is clearly superior to any other.” His idea has been further developed with added criteria. Spanish comes out on top; English is in second place.

[Note: The actual author of the paper was not that Dikembe Mutombo, but rather another scholar of the same name and similar height. —Eds.]

... the Original English Movement, which I feel does not go back far enough.

Go forth and people the planet Suck!

Speculative Grammarian is the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics.

SpecGram has had a long, rich, and varied history, including notable classics such as Lingua Pranca and Syntactic Structures.

SpecGram has also brought us the tree diagram of love and other poetic observations involving linguistic pain and discovery. In addition, SpecGram has been home to many scientific breakthroughs.

But if this is all a bit much, they tone it done a notch with collected wisdom, Indo-European crosswords, classifieds, and book reviews.

Be sure to check out their current issue, featuring Obama’s denial, re: Romney’s accusation of his plan to eliminate verbs from the English language.

SpecGram is a fairly well-known parody linguistics journal. However, I just found out they also have twitter and it is quite entertaining.

“Is Russian pro-drop? Hell if I know, but it sure sounds foreign! Close enough.” Science at its best!

You know you’re a linguist when you see that they forgot to devoice one of the final consonants, as per the normal rules of Russian.

Hey, this is SpecGram.

Mmmm, juicy allomorphs. Trinidadius Functionalisticus, I personally prefer feeding on PPs.

I feel bad for having laughed at this.

If you get this, then you know you’re a serious Linguistics geek.

Speculative Grammarian has many fun elements of English linguistics. My favorite section is about the ambiguity of English.

SpecGram, satirični jezikoslovci! Najnovejša študija: Expirations in Minimalism—Zombie Linguistics.

I just ... found this hilarious article on Hippies naming their kids (and more). It brings to mind that singer, Prince, who changed his name to a symbol that had no pronunciation.

Love the awesome journal. The pod-cast is phenomenal and certainly the most amusing pod-cast I’ve ever heard! Although, as pointed out in the second pod-cast, post-structuralist literary theory would argue that it is my listener-response which creates the humor and awesomeness rather than anything inherent in the pod-cast itself.

For hopeless linguistics majors like me. They describe themselves as “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics,” and the ‘scholarly material’ they put out is hilarious. And often depressing.

Des revues un peu “différentes”.

Those are among the most deliciously pithy footnotes I’ve ever seen. But what kind of institution really has a Department of Lexicology and Glottometrics?

Thanks to you for your outstanding service for linguists!

[A] fascinating discussion on the value of umpteen.

Must remember to revisit [SpecGram] on occasion, in order to stretch my satirical linguistics abilities.

Comedy at its finest!

My favorite is the phonetic sprinkler.

Speculative Grammarian, have I mentioned I love you?

Yes, you pretty much have to be a linguist already (or well advanced towards that goal) to enjoy Speculative Grammarian: you can’t understand a satire if you don’t know what is being satirized.

It has always seemed to me that Speculative Grammarian assumes a pretty high level of familiarity with academic linguistics. The web page even bills it (satirically) as a scholarly journal. One could say that SpecGram is [+specialist, -bona fide] while the envisioned Linguistics Today would be [-specialist, +bona fide].

Heh, I love SpecGram. ‘Fifty Grades of A’

My love of satirical linguistics has now overlapped with my love of chickens.

Both parents and speech-language pathologists are sometimes guilty of over-analyzing a toddler’s speech patterns. ... Consider that even adults vary tremendously in their sentence lengths. ... One satirical study even parodied the use of sentence length in language pathology, pointing out that adults’ sentence lengths vary depending on the amount of coffee that they have had.

It might be a good idea if [everyone] were occasionally to read the online journal Speculative Grammarian. It might encourage us to be somewhat more serious about our writing, for let us not ever forget what Sophocles once said:

πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ὀμπρέλλας δεινότερον πέλει
There are many wonderful things, and nothing is more wonderful than an umbrella.

How wonderful! ... I think 98% of MLA post-panel Q&A interactions could be categorized as one of those twenty special forms.

That is silly.

Speculative Grammarian?! How did I manage to never hear of this before?! I have the feeling that my life will never be the same.

Huh! He can’t be serious, can he?

The difference between phonetic/phonemic transcription is also confusing enough that it merits its own linguistics cartoons.

Wenn ihr den Witz nicht versteht, macht, was der Editor gesagt habt, lest euch rein. Es ist einfach zuuuuu genial. Nasal-ingressive stimmlose velare Trills sind in der Tat... außergewöhnlich. Lach mich schlapp.

Twórcy Speculative Grammarian nie mogli znieść, że co i rusz okazuje się, że w słownikach brakuje słów. I tak powstała Splekulatywnego Gramatyka Komplaetna Encyklopaedia Historycznych Kompendialnych Leksykonów Rzadkich i Archaicznych Gwar i Nomenklatur. Wreszcie możemy poznać znaczenie WSZYSTKICH słów.

... a rather clever linguistics joke.

It took me a couple of minutes to be able to read it and understand the differences, in both the word balloons and the images. Heh...very clever.

Which are the rarest vowels/consonants? Definitely the nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill—so rare it hasn’t yet been added to the IPA. The proposed symbol is Double Dot Wide O.

SpecGram, my life was incomplete. Then I found you. Wow.

I’ve had no formal introduction to phonetics, but with a little trying, I figured it out... and was laughing my anatomy off for two minutes straight. Thank you for making my day!

You can very well describe some speech with the IPA to the phonetic level (rather than phonemic), but then it requires a much more precise use of the IPA along with its diacritics. The problem with that is that it’s so dense that it’s almost unreadable. My favourite image to show the difference.

If you love language and words, this is a fun, tongue-in-cheek place to spend a moment.

Thank god I was alone when I tried pronouncing that!

Wytłumaczenie wszystkich możliwych słów.

It’s really awesome—I’m going to train hard until I can pronounce this consonant accurately in my sleep!

This is the greatest thing I have ever seen.

It is quite a difficult sound to produce accurately at first. The secret is to be in a deeply relaxed state.

Thought I’d throw a shout out for [the] website of Speculative Grammarian, self-described as “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics.” I’m not affiliated, but one of my undergrad ling professors is Publisher Emeritus and I’ve found my fair share of linguistic amusement there.

Speculative Grammarian (where linguists go to laugh to death)

This may be a bit too accurate for comfort...

I loved all of them so much!

I found this googling linguistic some such one day and I’m planning to do a pre med double major. Naturally, I was moderately annoyed and a bit concerned at an icy soul sucking future. It is a joke, but damn.

No matter what I choose I end up in a soul crushing career. Poop. I guess I’ll enjoy my studies while I can!

Fries. Fries everywhere!

I picked the closest one to what I really did and it was depressingly accurate. Wish I saw this earlier!

Don’t use it.

What a lazy translator.

But, like, literally, who told them what ‘Bite my ass’ was in Lakota? Inquiring minds need to know!

I love that ‘Dothraki’ is on the list of languages.

Finally! An online translator without simple syntax errors.

Man, I wish there were a way to get my Spanish students to use this when they want a translator, so it was 100% obvious who was cheating. I mean, right now it’s about 85% obvious, but this would be awesome.

Aim your friends at it if you want to embarrass them, maybe.

This is a very obvious joke. I tried both English to German and German to English.

Well... I f***ed Claudia Black and Ben Browder. Not bad, ... not bad.

Stuff in there is eerily similar to how it actually works. That is probably the most realistic Choose Your Own sim I’ve ever played, at least in terms of possible results, even if all the paths chosen to get there are not set in stone in real life.

Hah, this is a pretty funny take on it but still gives good food for thought. In real life, I chose the one where you end up majoring in economics. Thankfully I haven’t turned into the empty shell of a man that this tool suggests is in store for me... at least not yet.

... the “Language Made Difficult” podcast, to fill your ears and your heart with linguistic laughter.

Read and be merry: The perennial classic, “Choose Your Own Career in Lingustics”

Lingua Pranca is also quite funny.

This ... has some hilarious ambiguities.

Not only do they have the AutoGrammatikon, they have a Com­pleat En­cy­clo­pae­dia of Com­pen­di­ous His­tor­i­cal Lex­i­cons of Ob­scure and Ar­cha­ic Ver­nac­u­lar and No­men­cla­ture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Linguistics is just TOO cool!!!

This is the best thing ever. Sounds like the best nerd party one could ever ask to go to. Now to go listen to the rest of them!

haha wow. Would you like fries with that?

Among empirically-minded linguists seeking to criticize less empirically-minded linguists, the phrase “physics envy” ... is not taking a rigorous empirical model an applying it inappropriately to fuzzy human data. Instead it borrowing unrigorous mathematical ideas to cover up for the fact that you don’t want to build an empirical model. This cartoon sums it up nicely.

Different languages have different standards for Braille. At a meeting yesterday, we wondered whether there was a standard for Klingon Braille. Turns out, the scholars at Speculative Grammarian have already investigated this question.

Life’s little pleasures: Satirical linguistics

Surprisingly touching linguist love poem

Anyway, Speculative Grammarian, the satirical linguistics magazine (yes, there is one) has a nice article about linguists at cocktail parties, in which this crops up. It shows, by means of statistics, that the diseases line plays the best. ... And it also shows that you shouldn’t conduct surveys at cocktail parties.

[I was reminded of] this hilarious piece of work. The reader might want to ponder the many links you’d have to posit for any causal chain explaining the correlation...but probably not.

The fricative may be said to be negatively associated with eating, in that it strikes the ear as an expectorant sound, that is relating to the magically powerful actions of spitting and vomit. The guttural is at work in this way in the eecchh! and urghhh! of digust. ‘Eating the Wind’, by Claude Searsplainpockets of Speculative Grammarian ... is an account of the elaborate ‘gastro-pulmonic’ system of [a] tribe called the Xoŋry, which sets out their elaborately-particularised designations and phonic enactments of compound activities of eating, speaking spitting, snorting, devouring and vomiting, including words for ‘to eat while talking’, ‘to snort up the nose while talking’, ‘to projectile vomit, while talking’.

SpecGram is great and so is their podcast

Ah, SpecGram magnet, how you hold my dog’s rabies certificate on my fridge!

Been catching up on back episodes of “Language Made Difficult” from the Speculative Grammarian podcast. Because I’m the kind of dork who finds language (and linguists) endlessly entertaining.

I’ve been listening to the SpecGram podcasts lately. They really are tremendous fun. Thanks, and keep up the awesomeness!

[What’s the difference between phonetics and phonology?] Here’s a humorous illustration I sometimes use in introductory courses.

This on-line publication is the self-proclaimed “premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics”. Nothing to add.

Ого, круто!

Этот намного лучше.

A self-helf group for an affliction that often befalls linguists: Conlangers Anonymous.

Atklāju priekš sevis (iespējams, citi to apguvuši jau pamatskolā) ko jaunu, tb tādu zvēru kā “glotohronoloģija”. :)

Speculative Grammarian, to be taken in monthly parts.

Immer wieder lesenswert: Speculative Grammarian

Speculative Grammarian (the journal of “satirical linguistics”) published a piece recently entitled The Lexicalist Agenda: Exposing the Myths. ‘It’s a hoot’, says the Sesquipeditor -- ‘3 thumbs up!’.

Hwæt! WTF?!

This may be the most closely argued piece of linguistics since Verner wrote on the voicing of Germanic fricatives, or at least since “Remarks on Nominalization”.

The latest issue includes a contribution that deftly slices away our reason for being. Or maybe jabs at it with a rusty blade. I mean the “Ask Mr. Language Person” piece answering the question [“Why do languages decay?”].

Despite the name, this prestigious prize [the Chiasmus of the Month award] apparently does not get awarded every month, so double congratulations, Stephanie and Richie!

Speaking of jargon, here’s a handy list for the layperson.

NO. WAY. SO FULL OF AWESOME. <3

It’s nothing porcine, I assure you.

Speculative Grammarian was brought up as an example of satirical linguistics but the punchlines require rather too much technical knowledge for a layperson.

Ooooh, someone is bitter :D

I worry both that this may have been already seen by those who can appreciate it, and that it might go over the heads of everyone else. If so, apologies. Nonetheless, SpecGram’s occasional salvos at formalist theoretical excesses always make my day, even when reread.

Oh Speculative Grammarian why do you always publish a new issue when I’m most behind with schoolwork? I’m dying with laughter and I don’t think my supervisor would find this article very funny if I presented it as my excuse... even though she is, like, the only other person I can share its utmost hilarity with... :(

I love SpecGram, even though it makes me sad that after 3 years of university education in linguistics, I can only understand about half of it!

I have this shirt from SpecGram. I’ve had to stop wearing it because people would stop me and stare at it and ask me to explain all the time :(

Good overview/visual intro to the topic for lay people.

Und wer den “Speculative Grammarian” nicht kennt, hat wirklich was verpasst. Eine ganze Satirezeitschrift nur für/von/über Linguisten.

If you get to the bottom of the article, there’s definitely show of Tongue in Cheek. :)

I hope this is satirical

They lost me at ‘Futurological’...

went over my head / made me giggle then felt a little spooked.

Well, at least we do have a canonical set of tests to tell linguists from philosophers.

The SpecGram post also pokes fun at the Skopos theory of translation. Hilarious and worth the time.

This is my favourite thing you have ever published

Am enjoying @SpecGram’s To the Field Workers to Make Much of Time.

SpecGram’s podcasts are sharp, silly, and fun.

Haven’t delved yet, but this looks like an interesting page for linguists and other wordnerds.

I love SpecGram!

[SpecGram is] more fun than a barrel filled with n monkeys with x reflective indicators in a partial least squares path model.

Without doubt, Speculative Grammarian is the world’s premier Satirical Linguistics journal.

Some of us stopped submitting to SpecGram because we have to concentrate on writing that will earn.

Oh baby, let’s try the nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill tonight.

I don’t know if anyone reads Speculative Grammarian (SpecGram), but I just saw this today: OdCom. It made me laugh, at least.

Haha–I can’t wait to find time to read this!!

Justin B. Rye at Speculative Grammarian has a delightful Primer in SF Xenolinguistics. Rye offers ten rules of SF and fantasy language clichés, muses briefly yet thoroughly on the ways in which alien languages might differ from human languages and the ways in which they probably won’t, and discusses potential issues with universal translators.

Plus, he’s funny. “I pity C-3PO, kept as a slave translator for biochauvinist rebels in a society where everything understands English anyway.”

Wenn ihr den Witz nicht versteht, macht, was der Editor gesagt habt, lest euch rein. Es ist einfach zu genial. Nasal-ingressive stimmlose velare Trills sind in der Tat... außergewöhnlich

What will become of a linguistics major?

This kills me, as the only way to get a job is when “Prof. Johnson” kicks the bucket, and my dear friend is a Prof. Johnson of linguistics hahahaha

The “choose your own career in linguistics” game! It’s fun, I promise! :)

Und wer den “Speculative Grammarian” nicht kennt, hat wirklich was verpasst. Eine ganze Satirezeitschrift nur für/von/über Linguisten

The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature: The best dictionary on the web! So great, it knows definitions of words that don’t even exist!

This figure showing Examples of phronological Evidence is killing me! “Darth voiceless vaders”... “heimlich ejectives”... tee hee!

This journal rules!

How have I never encountered this amazing website before?

I love SpecGram. So, so much. I even have a nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill shirt.

I lost it multiple times.

Thanks for introducing me to SpecGram, you bastard. I have an essay due tomorrow, you know.

I’m quite fond of the phonologist one myself, since I was forced to sit through a semester of very, very abstract phonology.

The Lab Phonetician one made me laugh.

 ‘You do well, and 20 years later, you are successful, happy, and productive. You make a good living, do interesting work every day, and have sharp colleagues to keep you on your toes. Your home life is tranquil and pleasant, and you have lots of time off every year to do your own thing. Life is grand!’ Damn right! Now if only ‘work hard’ was indeed a single click and not 5+ years of grueling torture.

Oh my goodness gracious, I could waste my entire life reading [SpecGram]. The choose your own adventure career game is my favorite so far though...

I am thrilled that you have come across the title of my talk and considered it worthy of the Chiasmus award. I am an advocate of the interface of science and research with wit, style and rhetoric. I, of course, am honoured to accept the award and condone the use of my title/ abstract/ name in your publications. My Chiasmus of the Month will indeed be my month of chiasmus.

It’s a balance you guys strike well—that rare ability to use the words “phonotactics” and “poopyhead” in the same joke.

The “Pantheon-Based Theory of Grammar” is quite funny as well.

Heh, quite funny. I’m fighting an addiction to velaric ingressives myself.

Nowadays we have kinda decent natural language parsers.

This is my new favorite thing, courtesy of the Speculative Grammarian.

How would a linguist translate “Dumber than a box of rocks” from the original Texan? Easy: “Dumber than a department of Sapir-Whorfians.” There’s a whole mess of useful conversions in “Texan for Linguists.”

Qualcuno, poi, per risolvere il problema ha inventato nuovi simboli, il Quotta e il Quottiod!

I, for one, welcome our new serious overlords.

What I learned about the relationship of coffee to adult conversation was priceless

Everything I learned about linguistics I learned from the Speculative Grammarian.

Any discussion of a Wordnik takeover of SpecGram is purely speculative.

That would be meeting the Serious Linguists on their own specious terms. You could not hope to survive. Only subvert to prosper.

Keep linguistic conflict in the abstract domain—only there can satire prevail. You might be no match for the Fist of Generativism!

Trying to explain the joy of SpecGram to non-linguists is like someone trying to explain the joy of advanced mathematics to me.

“No” to serious linguists!

I’m loving ‘Language Made Difficult’.

You guys are great, and may Speculative Grammarian last another seven centuries.

Something funny from my favorite journal ever SpecGram.

What better way to spend a day than solving @SpecGram archive linguistic puzzles?

Far and away, one of my favorite accounts to follow.

Speculative Grammarian is the one and only journal of satirical linguistics. I’m very fond of their Cartoon Theories of Linguistics series. And anyone who’s thinking of majoring in linguistics should try Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics first.

Today I read the multi-trill article in Speculative Grammarian and I decided to try the counting song. ... It wasn’t until I tried the non silent 0 variant of Trilaa that I realized that I was making a real fool of myself. For those of you that are not familiar with Speculative Grammarian you probably do not know anything about the ingressive velar voiceless trill, and if you have some linguistic background you might try to pronounce that sound, but I need to warn you: try this at home! And whatever you do, do not try this in public!

Please do not make the mistake I made and sing the counting song in the university cafeteria during lunch hours! I promise you, if people don’t think you’re a freak before that they’ll certainly think so after seeing you sit there all alone on a table making crazy trills. Does not matter whether you’re good at performing trills or not, they’ll shun you anyways...

Встретился намедни чудесный сайт «Speculative Grammarian». Местами просто забавно, местами забавно и полезно.

McLovin it.

I have a feeling I’ll be entertained for hours!

Been hilarious for many many years. I particularly enjoy their comics.

A great satirical linguistic magazine that I think all of you would enjoy.

OH GOD IT’S MY LIFE.

Trey Jones at Speculative Grammarian invites y’all to play his cute, and yet somewhat depressing, game: Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics.

Some of my favorite linguist humor—U.S. Government Linguists in Action

Чудесный сайт SpecGram: забавно про лингвистику. Местами просто забавно, местами забавно и полезно.

While I have your attention, let me thank you, the other editors and the contributors for the many hours I have misspent in laughing through the SpecGram archives. Sophomoric or sophisticated, hieratic or half-witted, it has always been a pleasure. You-all are furthering the grand millennia-plus-centuries tradition of SpecGram.

Must remember to not listen to SpecGram podcasts on the bus—I don’t need any more dirty/confused looks from undergrads.

Latest SpecGram podcast (Linguistics Wars) made my morning. So good

ahh, nothing like good nerd humor in the wee hours of the night.

Ok, half the time you guys intimidate me (and I get paid to write). Thanks for the daily education!

I stumbled into this haven [(SpecGram)]… It’s like an STD, only much, much more desirable: one that we wish would spread more widely.

Check out [SpecGram]. They have about one cool puzzle an issue, and it’s all damn funny.

Got my new edition of Speculative Grammarian in my inbox today—and what a treat! This issue is all about fantasy languages and the cliches used in it... Have a read—it’s really funny! And something to keep in mind when creating languages.

In-jokes for the linguists.

The editor emeritus (Tim Pulju) is the most popular linguistics professor at Dartmouth College, and for good reason. His classes are as entertaining as SpecGram, if not moreso. Also check out Lingua Pranca—it’s exceptionally witty. And the “choose your own career in linguistics” adventure story is worth more than a few run-throughs.

The site bills itself as the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics. With links to back issues, puzzles and games—this site is highly recommended for linguists.

I have never heard of satirical linguistics until I found [SpecGram]—and have been totally engrossed (and lost!)

Вообще, сайт достаточно забавный, нечто вроде «лингвисты шутят». Мне там еще понравился «индоевропейский кроссворд».

Интересно, почему я не набредала на эту штуку раньше: SpecGram. Например, комикс про Google Translate. Или загадка “найди семь отличий”. Или, например, как надо работать с информантом. Вообще такого прекрасного (действительно прекрасного) дикого гона я давно не видела. Плакал мой вечер :) Номера целиком тоже достойны похвалы. Ы.

hahaha! That’s brilliant, and not entirely untrue.

This wonderfully weird article claims that the “ther” is evidence that the original language of Winnie the Pooh is not English, and it was translated from Gallo-Romance or Old French, although the stories themselves are much, much older.

One of my resent favorite articles is “Draw Me A Linguist”. I do believe this represents most people’s stereotypical thoughts about linguists, not only children.

Can’t get enough of SpecGram: Turn-offs: fervent lexicalism, fervent anti-lexicalism, and claimed biological inability to perform trills

SpecGram’s puntheon of mytholingual entities.

Hilarious!

Seems more like a critique of English then anything else. This is what happens when you speak a mongrel language.

This is hilarious.

I enjoyed it somewhat.

It’s hilarious to the linguistically-minded. Phoenician syntax is gold.

Did you really think someone was going to fall for this?

great examples

Syntactic ambiguity explained with cartoons!

유서 깊은 언어학 개그의 본산 Speculative Grammarian의 트위터 계정 @SpecGram을

I did get a good chuckle from Elwin Ransom’s piece, “On the Applicability of Recent Theoretical Advances in Linguistics to the Practice of Fieldwork.” And really, what more can I demand for the price of my subscription?

I will admit that I seldom read SpecGram, as fans call it, since I don’t really enjoy its brand of humor, generally very dry, deadpan satire of academic writing and more specifically the discourse of descriptive and theoretical linguistics.

Several very nice things in this issue, anyhow, kudos.

Man, I read the issue last night, and figured that one of the SpecGram cabal must have invented the morphome for its purposes.

Some of those are too tough for me. I must be dumber than I thought. The cryptogram with the eêés is one in point.

A puzzle a day keeps the pedant away: This is for just a few of you... yes.. you—I’m looking at you.

Oh SpecGram, you make my day—every day! You’re the first thing I read in the morning, and then I feel great for the rest of the day! Rock on!

I love the about us, but really, what does it say?

As far as I can tell, SpecGram’s current list of authors is entirely made up. Which is a shame, because some time in the past, they had at least some articles written by actual linguists.

Neatness! It made me laugh.

this is awesome.

Telenovelas follow a very similar basic storyline. So the article is saying, they have a verb, where they then give loads of names in a row as objects of this verb, and each fits into the correct place in this schema of a telenovela’s character relationships.

De a SpecGram—ből többek között megtudhatjuk azt is, mi fán terem a naiv lingvisztika vagy miért lenne szükség vámpírnyelvészekre.

Egyik kedvenc cikkem szerzője a pszichoanalízis és a kognitív nyelvészet - egészen pontosan Freud és Lakoff—elméletének az összeházasítását kísérelte meg a diszfunkcionális nyelvészet jegyében.

A SpecGram, teljesebb nevén a Speculative Grammarian c. online folyóirat igazán szeretnivaló jelenség: remek a címe (hát még a címoldali mottók!), a szerzőgárdája, tudományos paródiáiban pedig nem kímél egyetlen nyelvészeti iskolát sem.

Nyelvészhumor: SpecGram

Dans la catégorie langage et linguistique ... Speculative Grammarian, “premier journal savant présentant des recherches dans le domaine négligé de la linguistique satirique.”

Fag-satire er moro!

The perennially hilarious Speculative Grammarian single-handedly makes Linguistics the most exciting science! ... I suggest you start from the beginning and read to the end. Quite possibly the most engaging linguistics journal to ever exist!

The Inebriation Hypothesis: If you’re not a linguistics nerd, you’ll have to trust me. This is hilarious.

ook mooi

I loled at the last [article].

As said, a before vowels and an otherwise. We know how/when, but not why. ... It’s interesting to know that this was a source of great debate for many years. A lot of people argued that this was anything but phonologically determined, wasting a ton of time and effort. Pay attention to phonology!

How about a mash-up of mythology, cryptozoology and linguistics? Part 1 and part 2.

LOL! Der Artikel ist ja hilariös!

This is a good example of how fracturing your thoughts can greatly misconstrue the meaning of your words.

Here is a fascinating article on why Winnie Illi Pu is not quite authentic Classical Latin as the Romans would have written it. I do not agree with the final conclusion though.

I read a satirical linguist journal sometimes.

Loving the new issue of Speculative Grammarian—perfectly timed to avoid an essay, as usual!

Speculative Grammarian is a collection of linguistic satire. There is a load of stuff there, but this set of puns caught my eye.

Oh my! Pick Astronomy! Wow! Though Ben Browder just isn’t my type. (Or Physics, even better!)

A humorous take on NLP.

That’s it. No need to synthesize. Now, you damn lazy linguist, go find one of those!

[It] reminded me of that genial linguistic magazine: Speculative Grammarian, which I had not read in years. It’s still as good as ever (for an intellectual good laugh).

In Soviet Russia consonants palatalize you! I laughed so hard at that.

“Step one: find a native speaker” Amazing!

neeerdy! yay: “How to do Fieldwork on Proto-Indo-European”.

I love Speculative Grammarian so hard: “How to do Fieldwork on Proto-Indo-European”.

There are many views on this little mark [the serial comma]. Look here to read one solution.

SpecGram is full of clever and witty articles on a wide range of linguistics topics and you could be the next illustrious author to be published!

Stay abreast of breaking research in satirical linguistics with Speculative Grammarian.

It isn’t easy studying linguistics at university. Not only do you have to keep on coming up with creative answers to the frequently asked question, “so which languages do you speak?” (pi?) but often, you can’t even find your textbooks in a library or a bookshop (linguistics books are found variably with the philosophy, modern languages, psychology, science and even new age sections). No matter how many times you explain that linguistics is “the science of language” or that it involves the study of the evolution, structure, form, history, acquisition and variation of language (among other things), you are invariably met with a look of scepticism. “That’s a real subject?”

There is help, however. Or, at least, company. I was in my third year at university when I discovered Speculative Grammarian (AKA SpecGram), a wonderful, hysterical, satirical, online linguistics journal. A fellow linguist (yes, linguist; linguistician is such an ugly word) pointed me in the direction of the Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics page and once I’d stopped laughing, I managed to move my mouse pointer towards some of the earlier issues of the journal and it’s been keeping me in in-jokes ever since.

Some of my favourite articles include:
• Why Linguistics Is Not a Science and Why Linguistics Doesn’t Care (some variation of the essay title, “linguistics is a science; discuss” was guaranteed to come up in my Ling101 exam).
• What Is Linguistics Good for, Anyway? (picking up chicks, apparently; damn. To be followed by Love Queries of a Linguist and How They Do It in Linguistics.
• Murphy’s Law as Applied to Field Linguistics (this is why Chomsky wasn’t interested in the language spoken by real people).
• Autodescriptives (this will be wholly unfunny to anyone who has no knowledge of linguistic processes but contains a list of words describing sound changes that have themselves undergone the sound change; rhotacism, for example, means “bunging in an extra r sound” so in this article, it is written as rhotarcism. This article was one of my main revision sources before my historical linguistics exam).

Jag snubblade över en lite annorlunda handledning på nätet. Den ger tjugo praktiska råd, om inte i konsten att övertyga så i varje fall i konsten att inte svara på frågor. Mycket lämplig för ministrar, ledarskribenter och annat löst folk.

everyone knows that umpteen is 61

or 29,101

or 30,505

or 47,318

or 48,020

Poczytaj sobie SpecGrama to się dowiesz/domyślisz. Swoją drogą, strona ta jest po prostu genialna, jakby ktoś jeszcze jej nie znał...

LOOOL. ciekawe, czy ta bibliografia jest prawdziwa.

Swoją drogą, przypomniał mi się najbardziej leniwy język świata z Gramatyka-Spekulanta.

I take it you’ve never heard of Palinilap Cimordromic.

Now that we are at the end of the semester some of you may be wondering where a career in linguistics can take you. I urge you not to rule out modelling for book covers. Alternatively, take this illuminating quiz.

Thanks for SpecGram! It’s a great read.

Your journal is awesome!

To me this feels very judgmental.

And how is “euphoniousness” not the epitome of subjectiveness. The only way I can think of that last “measurement” as being in any way scientific is if there were some way to gauge positive mental reactions according to a variety of sounds. Perhaps this is possible, but otherwise the idea of euphoniousness is so absurdly opinion-based that it would be impossible to judge according to the different languages.

Fine, but doesn’t that just mean that one language is only easier to learn or speak, vaster or simpler? Do these things truly make one superior in the grand scheme?

Fascinating. The only problem is that one falls into Platonic-inspired terms—good, superior, better. I still find it very much ethno-centric to label them as such.

Written by those wacky Hoya pranksters Dikembe Mutombo and John Thompson!

I especially enjoyed “saving French discontinuous negatives”!

um... what about the weighting of parameters?

Speculative Grammarian: The journal of satirical linguistics. The more you know, the funnier it is, of course.

Oh, I get it, it’s a breakdown in intertransferability of signifiers and signifieds. LOL, structural linguistics!

Here, you can find a nice recipe of gavagai with peppers.

Nogle morsomme uddrag af nogle studerendes besvarelser fra en prøve hvor de skulle beskrive lyden [w].

What is [glottochronology] anyway?

How many interpretations does the following sentence have? Pretty little girl’s school. Believe it or not, there are at least five interpretations. ... If you want an illustration, you can find it here, along with other fun linguistic stuff.

Both humorous and true! Excellent.

Hey! I love languages. I’m currently a linguistics major, because I had to declare something. Once upon a time I was googling and came across a funny website that had a bunch of different scenarios—“so you are a linguistics major and pre-med”—and explained what it thought would happen—“you are flipping burgers or selling your soul to MCAT prep companies”.

But now I can’t find the website!! Is there anyone out there who knows it / has mad google skills and could find it for me?

Contemplation: Profound.

I’m in love....

now I am doubting my own rigor—just finished “skimming” this.

Speculative Grammarian is a magazine of satirical linguistic sketches.

Speculative Grammarian: I simply had to share this. I really needed a laugh today and this is what I found. It is hilarious. Enjoy.

SpecGram: ingressive nasal velar trill, anyone?

SpecGram: this is awesome :)

маленький разговорник для туристов

Знаете это?

Fictional Foundations of NLP, aka “Where’s my jetpack?!” I love anything quoting Manning & Schutze...

What a wonderful find your publication is! I am just starting to trawl through the archives and I’m sure that there will be much to amuse and inform me. ... Looking forward to enjoying many hours of reading.

Speculative Grammarian: For a bit of fun with linguistics, a humorous site with a linguistics theme.

Speculative Grammarian is easily one of the nineteen best online linguistic humor magazines of the past three months—and you can come quote me on that.

It’s terribly exciting, there’s not only a new issue of Speculative Grammarian out (the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics), but it’s a bumper issue of linguistic puzzles, and there’s one that I can just about finish. (3 = types of N-P C in the I P A)

I think this crossword puzzle is pretty linguistigeeky too.

(I admit to hoping that I can some day actually solve it.)

Whenever you need a break from X-bar-ing those trees, do check out Speculative Grammarian’s groundbreaking articles in the burgeoning field of satirical linguistics. I was particularly astounded by the theoretical implications of the discoveries described by Doggett, Cardinal, Sanders, and Ussishkin in “Double-Sided Copy Theory” (Jan. 2006).

ehehe. in the background of the cartoon, you can see “buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo” diagrammed out.

It is weird that “conlanging” had turned into such a bad or somehow bad thing... I never felt like it wouild endanger my life.

I am not an addict, I can stop anytime. :)

Are you sometimes, or indeed frequently gripped by the urge to create languages? Do your doodles often become new alphabets? Do you feel compelled to create worlds in which your languages and alphabets might be used? If so, help is at hand in the form of Conlangers Anonymous, an organisation founded by Francis Lodwick in 1694 and discussed in Speculative Grammarian, the premier journal of satirical linguistics.

LOL. That is classic.

I think SpecGram has been infiltrated.

This article explores how syntactic and semantic ambiguity is significant to humor; it also gives humorous examples of lexical ambiguity.

I’m in love with the article about the Bleggish language. It’s like David Foster Wallace is channeling Ferdinand de Saussure.

Oh but how could you have missed this article! It’s brilliant! Reminds me of time cube guy.

Disappointingly, SpecGram is rarely as funny as it always seems like it should be, and this article is no exception.

Speculative Grammarian wants to help us [conlangers].

From SpecGram: Linguistics Land Nursery Rhymes and 10 New Commandments for Linguists

 ‘ “How many languages do you speak?” A good answer: π.’

Close enough.

Spanish linguistics fail.

Kellogg-Reed diagram, X-bar diagram, sentence flow diagram, grammatical diagram, phrase diagram ... is your head beginning to spin? Bring a little humor in as a antidote: Modern and Historical Graphical Representations of Structural Relationships in Spoken and Written English Sentential Utterances, selected and presented, with commentary, by Nattapoŋ Yunloŋ Seuŋyoŋ.

that’s cute.

In order to convince my parents that my prospective major, linguistics, wasn’t completely useless, I showed them this game: SpecGram—Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics.

You should certainly start reading Speculative Grammarian. The back issues are archived. Also, they’ve digitized and made online-available Lingua Pranca and Son of Lingua Pranca, which were originally published before the World Wide Web became a commonplace. You would also enjoy a much more contemporary work in the same vein, Collateral Descendant of Lingua Pranca.

Stay abreast of breaking research in satirical linguistics with Speculative Grammarian.

I love Speculative Grammarian, and I love that article.

[A] comment on length reminded me of something I came across recently.

маленький разговорник для туристов

I’m a fan of the Balloon Animal State Machine approach, myself.

Speculative Grammarian is a collection of linguistic satire. There is a load of stuff there, but this set of puns caught my eye.

Thank you once again for SpecGram. It makes me laugh, it makes me cry, it makes me wonder if I can cite it in my PhD.

I absolutely love SpecGram. It points out so many patent absurdities that it is surprising that it has not already become the most cited lingustics journal of all time. Hopefully, such ridicule will eventually lead to some of the stranger and crazier aspects of studies in liguistics being sorted, or at least made into funny cartoons.

I suppose this illustrates my preference over experimental methods of inquiry instead of simply sitting down and theorizing on linguistic phenomena.

Here’s a funny article from Speculative Grammarian, a satirical take on the academic field of linguistics.

Weird ‘n’ wicked

The premier online source for linguistics humor (Yes, linguistics humor).

Less seriously, see this.

Hm, I wonder what kind of linguist wrote this test...

Very sadly it doesn’t actually add up—even assuming that half the turducken makes it into the casserole, and half the casserole makes it as sausage into the next turducken, that’s still a factor of 4 reduction each week. The stated 4,487 turduckens collectively represent a reduction by a factor of 4⁴⁴⁸⁷ or about 10²⁷⁰⁰. Assuming a turkey is mainly proteins with a molecular mass of say 2000, a turkey is about two moles (mmm, turkey mole) or 10²⁴ molecules. That means the chances of an original molecule being in a 2008 serving is about 1 in 10²⁶⁷⁶. Unless Dr Clarke is a homeopathist, he probably won’t be able to taste the original olive.

Caution. The calculations of Bjorn-Bob Weaselflinger of the Oceanographic Institute of Nevada imply that construction of a sufficiently meta dumpling could trigger the collapse of local space into a gravitational singularity (although this may have already happened at the creation of our universe).

But you have to admit...“meta-dumplings” sounds tasty!

That is the awesomest thing I have ever heard of (though the statistically significant olive particles from 1922 are kinda gross).

I had totally forgotten about SpecGram.

I LOVE SPECGRAM!!!! Especially “Cartoon theories of linguistics”.

I love SpecGram.

I also read SpecGram and want to be published there.

Не знаю, как я это раньше упустил. Если вы интересуетесь лингвистикой - вам обязательно надо читать Speculative Grammarian. Если интересуетесь поверхностно - то хотя бы вещи типа Dates in the Month of May that Are of Interest to Linguists или The Linguist’s Self-Definer (это из древнего сборника Lingua Pranca). А лингвистам - читать почти всё...

Now, that was a real knee-slapper!!

The symbol (and sometimes the sound itself) is called ‘oink’. It was used in some medieval texts along ‘ash’, ‘thorn’ etc.—although much less frequently, which explains why even some experts seem not to know about it

Be a sport and produce this sound. ... I dare you to make this sound. If you’re feeling a little nervy about it, here’s my advice: lie down on your back, close your eyes and in just a few minutes you could be producing this sound regularly.

I urge you ... to enjoy this delightful, humorous site. Choosing your own career in linguistics is really fun. Many of the puzzles and games should elicit a smile or two as well. My favorite is the Self-Defining Puzzle.

For those ... who have a good sense of ironic humor, I would heartily recommend checking out the website of Speculative Grammarian.

Also, we should not forget Speculative Grammarian, the foremost journal in the field of satirical linguistics.

Moram s vama da podelim jedan burleskan, duhoviti, ali u suštini kritički, kao bajagi sociolingvistički tekstić, iz jednog satiričnog lingvističkog časopisa, koji je povezan s ovom temom: „O uljudnosti prema ženama u slovenskim jezicima“, Émil Schouwiniste-Pigge

Your site is a scream. I just came across it trying to fake my way into seeming smarter in front of my 16-year-old, who is living my academic ambitions. I look forward to reading more and to learning why people smirk briefly when I refer to philology.

A bit of linguistic dork humor.

My favourite was “syllables”.

Funny!

I’m loving it! My favourite was Phonology vs. Phonetics.

I just found this: Cartoon Theories of Linguistics

Ahh, what can prosody not tell one about syntax?

Brilliant. I’m tempted to record myself saying each [meaning of “pretty little girl’s school”] with appropriate stress.

Numerus: Singular, Plural und auch Dual! Wer hätte das je gedacht? Ich wollte mehr darüber wissen und ... Danach fand ich diese ironisch gemeinte Website.

Opettelemalla muutaman gootinkielisen lauseen saa varmaakin helposti ystäviä oikeista ´gooteista.

You might find this cartoon instructive.

The Probem With NLP: I just found this source while investigating Garden Path sentences, and it kind of blew my mind about how the words and phrases we use carry multiple meanings.

You must know about Speculative Grammarian? The online journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics? Pure gold. Try the choose your own career in linguistics game.

Some of my favorite linguist humor—U.S. Government Linguists in Action

вот так, зайдешь в интернет по маленькой надобности...и вдруг узнаёшь СТРАШНОЕ! Винни Пух-то, оказывается, ни разу не “англичанин”! Доказательство.

Thought you guys might be amused by this—it’s a paper from the linguistic version of the Journal of Irreproducible Results, entitled “Linguistic Contributions To The Formal Theory Of Big-Game Hunting.” Much of its humor comes from knowledge of linguistic fields, but one does not have to be a linguist to understand that this is hilarious.

Speculative Grammarian (highly reassuring website for linguists)

Even though I anticipated the punchline, this [cartoon] still made me laugh just loud enough for everyone in the computer lab I’m currently sat in to look at me strangely.

Sorry in advance to all our TM/computation linguistics friends but these cartoons are hilarious. The first is on automatic text alignment and the second is on computational linguistics. (Yes, I am a nerd.)

The [CLV.ζ] issue is a bit hardcore in its pseudo-geekery and meta-meta-humour, even for me, but while I was there, I checked out the December [2008] issue and had a good chortle at How They Do It in Linguistics (“Syntacticians do it with trees,” “Neurolinguists do it with magnets,” “Phonologists do it with deviation,” ad infinitum, ad nauseam)—ah, the oldies but goodies—and a poetic duel between a “practical speller” and a “skeptical speller,” of which I am sure that George Bernard ghoti Shaw would approve (annoyingly, that reference was included at the end of the poem so I can’t claim to be clever here, although I did think of it by myself).

[M]y all-time favourite SpecGram post [is] Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics, which indulges both my linguistic geekery and my nostalgia for choose your own adventure books, and which is funny ‘cause it’s true.

The best satirical linguistics newsletter this side of the—well, the best one ever. It may be the only one, as well...hmm.

Det er et tilbagevendende tema på SpecGram om nasal ingressive voiceless velar trill skal indføres i IPA-skemaet eller ej. Det foreslåede IPA-symbol er det såkaldte double-dot wide-o. Se det er noget der kan få en fonetiker til at fnise.

Hvis du ikke kender Speculative Grammarian, så tag et kig på det. Det er lingvistisk satire på højt plan.

That’s wonderfully awesome. *snort* (..)

Als je het over taalregels hebt moet je eigenlijk twee soorten ‘regels’ onderscheiden: descriptieve en prescriptieve (of ‘beschrijvende’ en ‘voorschrijvende’). ... Twee plaatjes zeggen meer dan duizend woorden.

Сатирический журнал для лингвистов.

If you like word play, you might also like SpecGram ... in which linguists prove why linguistics doesn’t attract a lot of interest as a major.

Zawsze ktos kupi takie mumbo-jumbo o gramatyce uniwersalnej, ktora pojawila sie jako mutacja genetyczna. Czary-mary, nie bylo jezyka, i oto jest jezyk. To jest moj ulubiony tekst na ten temat. Zamiast LAD wstawic UG. LAD to troche taka wczesniejsza wersja UG.

Believe me it’s funny ... If you’re a real linguist or just a working stiff of a translator like me who wants to be distracted, you’ll find this article worth your while to check it out.

SpecGram’s humour mostly lies in its apparent earnestness, but it is beautifully creative, for example, having invented the field of Langualogy.

A Language Hat post has introduced me to Speculative Grammarian, “the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics,” and it is fabulous.

Speculative Grammarian, that corpus of linguistic wisdom, presents a fine description of eminently practical uses of linguistics.

Vous pourrez visiter ... un article de Speculative Grammarian qui montre qu’on peut s’amuser même avec les langues anciennes.

Speculative Grammarian had a cartoon series with some hilarious cartoons. You can find them all using the search form on the main page. Their merchandise has funny graphics as well.

Specgram has the most tempting personal advertisements I’ve ever seen, like Single Statistical Quadratic Psycho-Discourse Analyst Seeks Single Phonologist For Heart-Shifting Fling or Single Pragmatist Seeks Same. Now, I am of a morphological persuasion myself, with a pronounced tendency towards typology and vestiges of interest in semantics and syntax, but you never know. They also have most engaging crosswords. Absolutely delightful and no doubt time-consuming. Right what I need at the moment. Indeed.

What a frightening place this journal must be. I had pictured some coffeehouse zombies with a printing press in the basement, but it appears they have an entire dysfunctional corporate bureaucracy.

Much of the story sounds plausible.

A wonderful spoof!

‘Devonshire-upon-Glencullen’ sounds like an exotic and expensive kind of Irish coffee.

Pratchett-worthy footnotes.

I loved the footnotes.

Speculative Grammarian [has] this wonderful piece from Volume CLII, Number γ. In it, Sir Edmund C. Gladstone-Chamberlain, Professor Emeritus of Linguistic Science, Department of Lexicology and Glottometrics, Devonshire-upon-Glencullen University, Southampton, describes his youthful encounter with a very strange language spoken by a remote tribe deep in the Amazon Basin and his discovery of how the language worked and, eventually, of the unfortunate history behind it.

Seriously, I read this and my jaw dropped. Not only at the hilarious footnotes but the incredible story of how a language came to be made up almost entirely of adverbs. A bit longish but well worth the read.

I think my favorite is still “All your morpheme are belong to us”, because it’s just so darn clever, what with morphemes being ‘bases’ of sorts. But it’s almost painfully geek-y. And I really do like “Will perform nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trills for food”, but I don’t think I can make a nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill. Maybe if I practiced. Huh. Wow. Ok. Not looking at this website any more.

Try inhaling through your nose and make your velum vibrate. I am sure you can!

wtf is a nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill? I couldn’t even begin to articulate that...it makes no sense.

Thank you for yet another very entertaining puzzle!

I feel right at home with SpecGram. Thank you for the regular laughs.

Taalkundehumor!

The next issue is coming out next month, and it promises to be positively saturated with obscure in-jokes and footnotes.

I had my first academic publication in SpecGram with the current issue. I’m not sure what that says about me, other than that I’m a linguist and a nerd.

Speculative Grammarian (a highly reassuring website for linguists)

Linguists w/ a sense of humor? No way!!!!

I like SpecGram. I can’t get my daughter and other relatives to laugh at its jokes, though.

In case you never heard of “phonological ergativity” you might enjoy [this].

I liked that a lot. ... I’ve wondered whether social scientists—and maybe other scientists—have a term for the percentage of “edge cases” that must be discarded as irrelevant, in order to get a nice correlation or have the results match the prediction. Maybe recision is the term.

I love recision

Hehehe

Those cynical chaps at Speculative Grammarian make a mockery of all that is good and holy about Computational Linguistics and Information Retrieval.

What is Linguistics Good For? Those of you who are familiar with IPA (and I know your name is Legion) will definitely enjoy this. Those of you who have any sort of familiarity with Russian will probably like it too.

Speculative Grammarian is the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics. Try their crossword for linguists (take THAT New York Times Sunday x-word!).

‘Oo’s a KITTY-POO? I see a KITTY BOO BOO! Oh no, my PRIONS! This is lolarious!

Polecam, naprawdę świetne.

Other SpecGram interesting (funny) articles may be: