Dear Y’all:

I would like to correct the false impression y’all gave Ms. Selig-Silbersollig in your response to her recent letter: “Why did you spend any time in Lubbock? Drinking Dr. Pepper’s the only fun to be had there.” Speaking as a Lubbock native, I must say that that is entirely false. Even Dr. Pepper’s not nearly that good.

✢ ✢ ✢

Dear Erma,

In a particularly brutal fit of anomie, we discussed this issue among ourselves. One of our interns with unfortunate experience stated, “Dr. Pepper is best drunk with a fresh, cool breeze wafting through your hair as you sit in the shade of a spreading tree. It’s no wonder she found it such a disappointment.” Said intern, Lucy Kopfte-Pfurbahl, has thus been awarded the prestigious SG Pith Helmet for pithiness above and beyond the call of duty, and punished condignly for speaking out of turn.

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

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.

Dear Editors of SpecGram,

A recent edition of /nuz baɪts/ alluded to the fact that German Mädchen (“girl”) is grammatically neuter, while Frau (“woman”) is feminine—without spelling it out. A conservative estimate—based on my projections of SpecGram readership and the percentage of readers who are likely familiar with the incredibly obscure but apparently relevant facts about German—indicates that this caused approximately 17,842.222232 person-hours of confusion and wasted time, world-wide.

SpecGram used to be a beacon of light and learning in the field of linguistics. For shame!

P.S. That article was kind of mean, too. Economists probably have feelings too!

✢ ✢ ✢

Dear Игорь,

We often include jokes material that requires background knowledge. Part of the fun of SpecGram is realizing how few other people are laughing at with you. No, wait, is that elitist? Who cares?! Not us, we actually feel pretty neuter-al about it.

❦ ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦