Philologer’s Kvetchwhinge 33

Mordred Ilktost
Φιλόλογος Second Class, Fellowship of the Phoenician Ox-House
Kvetchwhinger First Class, Order of the Most Squeaky Wheel

Though this meditation will not be as poetic as the masterful #32 (by the esteemed Athanasious Schadenpoodle, 2013, SpecGram CLXVI.4), it is just as important, and thus officially recognized by the Kvetchwhinger’s Order of the Most Squeaky Wheel.

Through my connection with certain shadowy forces and/or powerful lobbies, I came to hear about SpecGram’s intent to publish a “Tenth Digiversary Issue”. While I suppose it is within your rights to celebrate your contribution to the impending collapse of civilization (see the comments of the wise Fædrus Ϙ. Χ. Plaid’oh, 2009, Collateral Descendant of Lingua Pranca), you should at least have the etymological decency to do so in a dignified manner. Or is SpecGram secretly in league with the anarchic Γραμματο-Χαοτικον?

Of course, it is usually wiser to assume poorly concealed incompetence rather than cleverly hidden malice in most things. (The execrable Butch McBastard notwithstanding, of course.) With that charitable thought in mind, I would like to gently chide the Editorial Board of SpecGram for choosing “digiversary” when “webiversary” would do, and do better.

As should be plain to see, the World Wide Web does not encompass all things digital, though arguably all things on the web are at least in some sense digital. One can easily overlook the fact that back issues of SpecGram (as well as the celebrated Journal of the Linguistic Society of South-Central New Caledonia, Babel, and Psammeticus Quarterly) appeared online before 2004 and see the present celebration as commemorating the anniversary of new issues being published.

Of course, the Late Modern SpecGram Era—which most scholars agree was in full swing with the publication of new issues online in 2004—was digital. But has not the entire Modern SpecGram Era (from the 1990’s onward) always been digital? Were Early Modern SpecGram issues copied on parchment using hand-made inks and feather quills? Of course not. The tools were primitive—clunky electronic Neanderthals without a gigabyte of anything to call their own—but they were digital primitives nonetheless.

What you are celebrating is the anniversary of the full-throated webification of Speculative Grammarian (pace Plaid’oh), not the digitalization of anything (though one does enjoy the “digitisation” of those students’ pearls of wisdom—now there’s something to celebrate).

Obligatory congratulations are hereby proffered, but, really, we expect better from you.

SpecGram—Behind the Scenes



Intern housing at the annual editorial retreat.

	Sundry Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know—Madalena Cruz-Ferreira
	From the Archives!—The SpecGram Rare Book Collection—The SpecGram Archive Elves™
	SpecGram Vol CLXIX, No 2 Contents