Dear Eds,
Your recent transatlantic correspondent used the phrase ‘Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave’. While ostensibly a citizen of or at least resident in the United States of America, your correspondent blatantly reverses the standard order of the conjuncts in the well-
While this of course communicates, it fails to adhere to basic principles of binomials. Where would society be if we all went around asking for pepper and salt on our chips and fish (which we then endeavoured to eat with our forks and knives)? How would civilisation endure if mixed sex gatherings of businesspeople were addressed as ‘Gentlemen and ladies’ before a lecture on ‘services and goods’? Let’s get our binomials in order please.
Niamh N. Tidy and May Kenbrake ↔ May Kenbrake and Niamh N. Tidy
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Dear Stuff and Nonsense,
We accept that it’s part and parcel of the ebb and flow of editing a spic and span journal such as ours to receive fire and brimstone emails jam-
Our response is black and white: your nickel and dime letter is out and out old and grey huff and puff. If our correspondents’ only sin is an odds and ends error of style, we will leave them in peace and quiet and we’d like you to the same for us.
In summary: cease and desist with this rag, tag and bobtail jot-
Over and out!
—Eds.
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Dear Eds.,
It is unfortunate that officials ignored the warnings of my fellow ophthalmologists. For speakers of Sinitic varieties, this coronal virus makes it nearly impossible to communicate. I encourage my fellow conlang enthusiasts to make donations of auxlangs without coronal consonants.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. L. L. Białystok
Poland
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Dear Dr. Hope,
The insights of an Ocular Oracle of Ersatz Oracy such as yourself are always appreciated, but perhaps phonetics and epidemiology just aren’t your specialties? The SpecGram Linguistic Pandemic Interns™ are much more concerned about the modern and historical unchecked spread of English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and Mandarin
—Eds.
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Dear Eds,
If the ‘thoughts’ of recent contributor, Dr Francis McCrirrickson-
Of course I’m aware (or should I say, may have heard it on the grapevine) that at institutions certainly not my own, there may have been certain isolated examples of linguistics tutors who may have done that instead of delivering a course on cognitive linguistics as required. But I do think there’s a touch more to linguistics than damp y-fronts and dripping teatowels and that most disciplinary panels would agree.
Sincerely,
Professor Sir Frederick (Freddie) ‘Hunglemungle’ McCrirrickson-
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Languages
University of Camford
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Dear Drippy,
You’re a washout!
—Eds.
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Dear linguists of the speculative persuasion,
I just wanted to express my gratitude to you for your Logical Fallacies for Linguists. Family get-
Gavagai Fjordish
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Dear Collection of Undetached Glacial Inlet Parts,
The cock of the walk recoils at your mixture of expressions. We, however, are impressed by your seemingly effortless, virtuosic production of five nearly consecutive definite non-
—Eds.
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Dear Eds,
As aspiring writers of rip-
We have already written the first line of the first song for this sure-
I named a name in time gone by
Pretty good, huh? This of course is modelled on the third line of the chorus from Master of the House from the aforementioned musical.
If collaboration on this seems of interest, please feel free to complete the remaining lines of the musical and then get in touch.
Sincerely,
Les (Miss) O’Rubble; Joe ’n’ Val John
Tel: 24601
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Dear Dreamers,
We fear you may be living in a castle on a cloud.
—Eds.
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Speculative Grammarian accepts well-