[This issue was supposed to feature a letter from the Editor Emeritus, but he’s old and forgetful and didn’t get around to it. As press time approached, we had a bit of a panic over what to do to fill this space. The ever resourceful Butch McBastard suggested we

“I will drown and no-one shall save me.” —a grammatically precise English prescriptivist declaring suicide

hold a “lottery” and let a peon—uh, that is, Junior Editorial Associate—have a crack at it. Skip the Intern won, and while we didn’t have time to actually read what he wrote, we’re sure he did a bang-up job. —Eds.]

This issue is Yet Another Mega Quote Issue. We had a Bodaciously Quotatious Mega Issue sometime back, before I worked here, and that went over well enough, so we thought we’d try it again. That, and we still have quotes left over from last time, which means I don’t have to do any more research. Boo-yah!

This issue is also sporting a stylin’ new bold red cover, and a picture of Eddie Sapir. The old orange cover of Number 1’s past just wasn’t cutting the mustard any more. Red is the new orange. As for Ol’ Eddie, everyone was sure he’d been on a SpecGram cover

“There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.” —Mark Twain

before—sure as could be—but they were all wrong. Of course, I had to do the research to verify that. Always with the research. Man, I hate this job.

Whatever. We got a whole heapin’ bunch of new articles in this issue, and the two I understand are pretty darn good. I’m sure the other ones are, too. They got a bunch of freakin’ smart word nerds working here, so I’m sure they only publish the best of the best of the best.

I’m supposed to write around two hundred words, which I just did. Then I have to cut-n-paste this announcement:

Reviving Lingua Pranca

For far too long, Lingua Pranca has been unavailable to the general linguistics community, only found on collectors’ shelves or in a rare library’s closed stacks.

The editors of Speculative Grammarian are very happy to announce that SpecGram has secured permission from the editors and previous publisher to reprint the classic satirical linguistics anthologies Lingua Pranca and Son of Lingua Pranca.

Now that we have completed the digitization of the SpecGram archives, these new-found treasures will be made available online at the SpecGram website over the course of 2006 and 2007.

See the archives page for more information and re-publication schedule.

Peace out!

	Letters to the Editor
	SpecGram Vol CLI, No 1 Contents