New Children’s Programming from SpecGram TV
Are you worried that the current crop of kids’ TV is leading your progeny towards building, engineering, and driving trains? Are you concerned that there are not enough shows about the wonderful world of data collection? In our latest season, SpecGram TV has just what you have been looking for. Here are some of our newest titles.
The Acoustic Company—In this show, a variety of fun sketch comedy acts are used to teach young listeners how to read spectrographs in a fun, low-pressure environment.
Bill Eye the Dialect Guy—Bill I., bowtie-wearing dialectologist, explores the sociolinguistics of prestige and prescriptivism, and the effects of the dominance of standard varieties of language on less formal (but no less intelligent!) speakers.
Captain Cranberryroo—Join the Captain as he leads kids in discovering that cran and roo represent a rare type of morpheme which has limited combinatorial possibilities.
Clifford the Young Red Big Excitable Dog—The gigantic dog Clifford and his owner, M.L.E. Elizabeth, explore the royal order of adjectives and try to learn the right order for all the descriptors people want to ascribe to Clifford.
Clipper the Dog—Clipper and his friends—Tig, Jaʔ, Arn, and Pig Latin—have slightly exciting adventures at the gym, at the pub, on the phone, and in the fridge, all while wearing their jammies.
Dora the Etymologer—Kids will love helping Dora uncover etymologies and prevent the nefarious “Swiper” from exporting vocabulary. Say it along with Dora: “Swiper, no borrowing!”
Fred the Funding Engine—Thrill as Fred carries an entire department on his shoulders every time there is an evaluation.
The Linguistic School Bus—In each episode, Ms. Piffle takes her undergraduate class on a magical adventure in her fantastical school bus, and they learn about languages, linguists, and lexicography.
Many-2-1 Contact—Teen hosts help teach fieldwork principles and their applications with engaging and rarely fatal attempts to make first contact with lost tribes in South America, Central Africa, and New Guinea—though sometimes diseases decimate the indigenous peoples, and sometimes the North Sentinel Islanders get off a good shot.
Mister Rogers’ Phonological Neighborhood—Mr. Rogers and friends explore similar sounding words—lodgers, ragers, rockers, raj’s, rogered—and discover how they affect Mr. Roger’s mental representation of his own name.
The Ought to Nots—These brave fellows save endangered parts of speech in every episode, from the English adverb to the word whom.
Sam the Syntactician—Can he parse it? Yes, he can!
Says Me, Straight!—So many different ways of saying things! And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!
Sibilant Street—Join the Sibilant Street squad as they sing, sweep the street, and substitute sibilants for other sounds.
Smuggington—When W, the department chair, tries to train these naughty critters, they always find conferences to attend. But how long can they keep it up?
Veggie Traces—In this dinner-table show, picky young eaters inspect their dinner plates and discover where objectionable vegetables may once have been. Nothing gets by these budding young analysts—even if it’s totally invisible.
The Very Tubbies—If your children don’t know what a diet of ramen and buffet food do to a researcher’s waistline, this adorable show will teach them.
Where in the Word is Carmen Sandiego?—This fun and exciting game show features pre-teen “newbie philologists” answering linguistic questions to uncover clues that lead them to discover the layer of linguistic abstraction in which the criminal philologist Carmen Sandiego is hiding.
All this and more from SpecGram TV—Edutainment from a field that can hardly spell the word. (But we can tell you about its etymology.)
