Dear Editors,

It appears that your “journal” has been infected by the corporate hegemonic commercialisation virus. I have noted that, since you brought out your latest “book”, adverts for it have been appearing in your oeuvre most unserendipitously. Indeed, in some issues, it even seems to have infected Letters from and to the Editor. It does make me wonder whether your editorial team are hoping to cream off the profits and start up a new funding agency. The Sarcastic Printed Othered Orphans Fund, perchance?

Thusly, I would like to ask that you cease and desist from all advertisement for The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics forthwith, and seek to mention The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics only in your back pages, book review section and in copious stickers mentioning The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics.

✢ ✢ ✢

Dude!

I saw your letter, and I’ve hacked the editorial reply system so I can respond. Don’t worry, they’ll never notice. Anyway, like, I know, right? They totally oversell the hilarious and comparatively inexpensive The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics, don’t they? And, like, they’re always going on about how you can get a hardcopy for like $12 or a PDF for like $6, and I’m like, I get it, I get it, it’s awesome. Even though it really is an enormous, luxurious, tenure-sized tome, right? I feel you, bro.

But, hey, like, in the meantime you can check out the Cover Contest. There’s an autographed copy of the book floating around here somewhere and they’ve got to give it to somebody at the end of the year. You could already be a winner, dude!

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Speculative Grammarian accepts well-written letters commenting on specific articles that appear in this journal or discussing the field of linguistics in general. We also accept poorly-written letters that ramble pointlessly. We reserve the right to ridicule the poorly-written ones and publish the well-written ones... or vice versa, at our discretion.

Cari editori,

Imma about to move fromma Roma toa Difficult, Tennessee—a bella città witha the name I stilla finda harda to say. My problema isa that I hava hundreds anda hundreds ofa libri di linguistica, anda I don’ta know iffa I shoulda bringa them to America witha me. I hava moved somma the libri anda there isa so mucha dust! Anda they are soa heavy!

✢ ✢ ✢

Dear Luigi,

Aren’t allergies and hernias the best way of transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next? If you didn’t sneeze over it and hurt yourself lifting it, have you really lived it and learned it? So what if your books are in some useless language like Latin—or worse, Italian! Take them. They are yours—and if your American Dream doesn’t work out, they’ll make good kindling.

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

Editors,

I’m deeply disappointed in the inaccurate and stereotypical manner in which you have represented Italian-accented English in the previous letter. As linguists and lovers of language, you should recognise that you are not at all helping to improve the understanding of linguistics and language with such shenanigans.

✢ ✢ ✢

Lukey-Lukey,

Honestly, that letter came more or less just as you see it now—other than being written longhand and in unicorn blood. We have only the utmost respect for anyone who learns a foreign language as an adult, and recognize that getting the phonetics just right is almost impossible.

By the way, when are you getting back together with Matthew, Mark, and Ringo? Like J.B.S. Haldane, we have always had an inordinate fondness for the beetles.