The venerable network Word-TV has recently been acquired by SpecGramMedia! Contact your cable or satellite provider and demand Word-TV, or stream online, or get the Word-TV app, or just pirate the shows!
Below is a sample of some of our most popular programs!
Weekdays
2 PM: As the Word Turns. Soon to be celebrating its 40th season! The exciting story of John, Jr. and Mary II and their turbulent life of labialization, breathy voice, and illicit embedding.
4 PM: False Friends. New York City, one of the most polyglot cities in the world, is home to Tiffani
— a differently- clued American 20-something who almost speaks 4 or 5 languages — and her group of multilingual friends and acquaintances. Together they work to make their way through life, dealing with the ups and downs of work, friendship, and love, even though at least half the time none of them have any idea what the others are saying.
Monday
9 PM: The Slash. Based on the Deverbative Comics series, this superhero drama follows the story of Barry Allotone/
The Slash, a costumed superhero with the power to coin new conjunctions at superhuman speed. 10 PM: The Walking Dead Metaphor. Based on the graphic novels by Robert Creakman, this horror drama follows the adventures of sheriff’s deputy Velaric Grimes, who awakens after a month-
long comma into a world overrun by zom-/b/’s. Time is always running out for ’Ric, as everyone around him kicks the bucket.
Tuesday
9 PM: Agents of S.E.N.T.E.N.C.E. Based on the Monolingual Comics organization S.E.N.T.E.N.C.E. (Semantic Entailment, Narrow Transcription, Expletive Negation, and Communicative Events), this superhero action series follows the struggles of S.E.N.T.E.N.C.E. agents against various villains, the terrorist organization Hyperbole, and the race of superhuman Inhalations.
10 PM: ιΖεῦγμα. Based loosely on the comic book series of the same name, this horror dramedy follows Olivia “Liv” Inglanguage, who suffers brain damage at a boat party, leaving her supernaturally susceptible to semantic syllepsis. Liv frequently makes faux pas, up excuses, and a mad dash for the door to get away with her mistakes and from her troubles.
Wednesday
8:30 PM The Odd Copula. A reboot of the much-
loved original sitcom, in which Felix and Oscar try to account for Bea’s strange behavior. 9 PM American Modal. A parsing competition that seeks to discover syntactic stars from among unknown linguistic talents. Competitors must parse in many styles, including syntactic trees, sentence diagrams, balloon diagrams, and other more esoteric representations. The finale involves parsing a complex Southern American English sentence that might could oughta include triple modal stacking.
Thursday
8:30 PM The Big X-Bar Theory. This sitcom revolves around the lives of five characters: two linguists, Leonard Hofstadter and Bloomfield Cooper, who share an apartment; Pɛni, a waitress who lives across the hall from Leonard and Bloomfield (and unbeknownst to them is the daughter of hippie linguists); and Leonard and Bloomfield’s geeky friends Howard Wackernagel and Haj Koothrappali.
9 PM: Tones. This crime procedural focuses on linguistic anthropologist Temporal “Tones” Brenan and her team at the Jespersenian Institute Linguo-
Legal Lab. They take on complex prosodic cases and work with the Ph.B.I., in the person of agent Semiology Booth.
Friday
8:30 PM Brooklyn Noine-
Noine. A police sitcom in which two out-of- town cops struggle to understand the various New York dialects of those they’ve sworn to “prahtect and soive”. 9 PM: Suprasegmental. Suprasegmental tells the story of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, two brothers who travel the country looking for their missing father and battling evil prosody along the way. Their father had for years been consumed by an obsession to find the evil tone and stress patterns that caused him to mispronounce his beloved wife’s name, resulting in her tragic death. For their whole lives he trained his two sons as hunters of the suprasegmental. The brothers join forces when their father goes missing.
Saturday
9 PM: The Singulara Chronicles. Based on the best-
selling Singulara series by Terry Books, the first season of this fantasy drama roughly follows the plot of The Elf Tones of Singulara, and chronicles the journey of Hwil, Ambiguitee, Etheopia, and the last Druid, Allophon. 10 PM: The Lexical-
List. A crime thriller that follows U.S. Narratology officer turned onomaster criminal, Raymond “Self” Embeddington, who surrenders to the Federal Bureau of Infixation in exchange for a chance to work with rookie PRO-filer Elizabeth “Liz-E” Koine. Together they hunt down notorious lexicalists and anti- lexicalists.
Sunday
9 PM: Once Upon a Temporal Discourse Interpretation Principle. This fairytale drama takes place in the enchanted town of Notebrooke, Maine, whose inhabitants are characters from various fieldwork sessions, transported to the “real world” by a powerful travel grant.
10 PM: Game of Phones. Adapted from George RG Morphotoneme’s A Song of Fire and Isoglosses, this fantasy drama centers on the vicious in-fighting among a guild of conlangers who all want to be hired to create a language for a TV show.
Movies!
Every Saturday and Sunday join us when you get up at noon for The Word-TV Cinematic Showcase, produced in association with Scholartastic Films. Every week we present some of the most epic linguistic-
cinematic films ever to grace the silver screen. Some of the movies for kids in the rotation include:
- Roald Drawl’s Charlie and the Chiasmus Factory
- William Glideman’s The Privative Bride
- Howl’s Moving Consonantal, based on the novel by Diana Wynne Junctions
- Ella Enunciated, based on the novel by Gail Carson Labiovelarization
- Ergativon, based on the novel by Christopher Paolindromi
- The Phantom Trill-
Breath, based on the novel by Norton GestureFor the young adult viewer (and adults who are [+ young at heart]) we have:
- J. K. Poyjnhr’s Naggu Rotteya (“Наггу Роттэя”) Series
- J. R. R. Token’s Lord of the Orderings
- The Golden Comparativist, based on the novel by Philip Pluralman
- Endoclitic’s Game, based on the novel by Oral Script Card
- The Language Games series
— Language Games, Clefting Fire, Mockingjargon Part I, and Mockingjargon Part II — based on the novels by Suzanne Collocations - The Ditransigent films
— Ditransigent, Inchoagent, and Alliteragent — based on the novels by Veronica Rhothm And for more mature audiences:
- I Am Lengthened, based on the novel by Richard Metathesization
- Something Wernicke This Way Comes, based on the novel by Ray Barred-I
- A Clockwork Cranberry Morpheme, based on the novel by Anthony Brackets
- The Picture of Dorian Grave-
Accent, based on the novel by Oscar Whistledspeech