A linguist named Jack was ambitious,
And often too big for his britches.
His failures resounded
And colleagues all found it
Unspeakably Schadenfreudelicious.
—Pumptilian Perniquity
When linguistical thinking goes lax
And theories all harden like wax
Drops in like a stream
The SpecGram tactical team
To use their satirical ex lax.
—Col. O. Nihilist
Symbols for sciency
Affect, but manages
Somehow to capture the
facts in a bin.
—Mannfrum van Tuckett
A man who lisped said to me: “Wunθ
I wað told there’ð no rhyme for ‘month’.
I heard him θay θo,
But the chap didn’t know—
I think he wað θimply a dunθ.”
—Anonymous, the Speech Pathologist
A student linguist who just turned 19
Presented proposal version umpteen
His praise was abundant
Yet they still wouldn’t fund it
So he quit eating in the canteen.
—Gérard de Aittste-Oudénnts
There once were some vowels that were creaky—
So the vowel chart appeared to be leaky,
But the orthography was prone
To treat creak as a tone,
Which phonologists thought was quite sneaky.
—Morris Swadesh III
