SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCIV, Number 4 Antepenultimate Issue Editor-in-Chief: Trey Jones; Executive Editors: Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson; Senior Editors: Jonathan Downie, Deak Kirkham; Contributing Editors: Pete Bleackley, Vincent Fish, Luca Dinu; Associate Editors: Yuval Wigderson, Daniel Swanson; Editorial Associates: Emily Davis, Carin Marais, Tel Monks; Comptroller General: Joey Whitford; Putting the /d͡ʒʌŋk/ in “Conjunctions”; July 2025, ... [ more ]

The SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. Welcome to the SpecGram Ministry of Propaganda. The SpecGram Archive Elves™ have undertaken a project to digitize and share a sheaf of early 20th century SpecGram propaganda posters, which were used during the Great Linguistic War and the Second Linguistic War to encourage linguists everywhere to keep a stiff upper lip and a sense of humor during those trying times. We provide the digitized posters here for you to enjoy, retrospect on, and share. Select a poster to see a higher quality image, and for links to share on social media, to email friends, and to view or download the highest quality version of the image. If you have ideas for other messages that need ... [ more ]

SpecGram Archives. A word from our Senior Archivist, Holger Delbrück: While bringing aging media to the web and hence the world is truly a labor of love, SpecGram tries the passion of even the most ardent admirer. Needless to say, we’ve fallen behind schedule. At every turn, the authors found in the pages of this hallowed journal stretch credibility with their gratuitous font mongering—first it was the IPA, then a few non-standard transcription systems, then Greek, and not just the alphabet, but the entire diacritical mess, and now I’ve got some god-forsaken Old Church Slavonic glyph sitting on my desk that no one can even name, and which would give the Unicode Consortium ... [ more ]

The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics . For decades, Speculative Grammarian has been the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics—and now it is available in book form—both physical and electronic! We wish we were kidding,¹ but no, seriously, we’ve published a large³ collection of SpecGram articles, along with just enough new material to force obsessive collectors and fans to buy it, regardless of the cost.⁴ From the Introduction: The past twenty-five years have witnessed many changes in linguistics, with major developments in linguistic theory, significant expansion ... [ more ]

A Proposal for Introducing the Progressive, Ancient JGHAR Practice to Increase Mental Stability and Productivity within the Linguistics Community. by Prof. P. Grimes XXVII, with invaluable unsolicited advice from Dr J. Doe . Much has been written¹ about the problems surrounding workplace stress, work/life balance, and productivity² across various industries. However, research around the need for change within the Linguistics Community have been severely lacking; a result of the vast majority of linguists not showing much interest in the corners of the internet filled with the so-called “PBIs”³, and therefore not realising that they are in need of ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian and SpecGram.com. Our Story. The august journal Speculative Grammarian has a long, rich, and varied history, weaving an intricate and subtle tapestry from disparate strands of linguistics, philology, history, politics, science, technology, botany, pharmacokinetics, computer science, the mathematics of humor, basket weaving, archery, glass blowing, roller coaster design, and bowling, among numerous other, less obvious fields. SpecGram, as it is known to devotees and sworn enemies alike, has for centuries sought to bring together the greatest yet least understood minds of the time, embedding itself firmly in the cultural and psychological matrix of the global society while ... [ more ]

“Double-Dot Wide O / Nasal-Ingressive Voiceless Velar Trill” by J–––– J––––––. From Speculative Grammarian CLI.3; July 2006. Reviewed by Jonathan van der Meer. ... Double-Dot Wide O, Spoiler Alert !. It’s been more than eight years, so I’m going to go ahead and let you in on a little secret: the nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill is a pig snort, and the double-dot wide O looks like a pig snout. (Some phoneticians will argue that they themselves produce a uvular trill. They probably do—especially when reading journals less interesting than SpecGram—but ... [ more ]

Rasmus Rask Parallel Puzzle XVII. by Lila Rosa Grau. This is the seventeenth Rasmus Rask puzzle, devoted to the original Mr. Charming Scandinavian Linguist. The puzzle is similar to a crossword puzzle, in that there is a grid for filling in words and phrases, and clues for the ACROSS and DOWN directions. However, all the squares in a Rasmus Rask puzzle are filled with letters, and the answers to the clues may (but are not required to) overlap. Clues for a particular row or column are given together, in the order they appear in the grid. No indication of the amount of overlap between clues is given. Letters spelling out RASMUS RASK along two parallel diagonals are given to provide a framework for filling ... [ more ]

In the Club. M. M. Not Cool K. feat. Shrillex. [K] Been busy all week readin’ papers by the stack Now it’s late on Friday, we about to get wack So I dress up in a blazer, slick my hair back real nice Some bling round my neck and a splash of Old Spice I’m drippin’ with style, yeah I got mad rizz I’m headin’ out to where all the action is As I strut through the door you know I droppin’ them jaws The ladies and the fellas gonna holla with applause, We in the club We in the club, yeah We in the club Linguistics journal club, All my homies grab a beer, but you know we be ballin’ Those losers chug that swill while Shrillz and I Cristallin’ I plug in my computer and grab ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Merchandise. Introduction. In order to lend a hand to our good friends and steadfast supporters over at the Linguist List during their 2006 fund drive, we prepared a small selection of limited edition SpecGram merchandise, including T-shirts, stickers and magnets. Originally these items were only available as prizes awarded as part of the Linguist List fund drive. In 2012, several of the SpecGram editors suffered from a rare form of collective frontal lobe damage, which made it seem like a good idea to put together a SpecGram book. The result in 2013 was The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics. In 2014, Editor Mikael Thompson entered a deep fugue ... [ more ]

Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics. by Trey Jones. As a service to our young and impressionable readers who are considering pursuing a career in linguistics, Speculative Grammarian is pleased to provide the following Gedankenexperiment to help you understand the possibilities and consequences of doing so. For our old and bitter readers who are too far along in their careers to have any real hope of changing the eventual outcome, we provide the following as a cruel reminder of what might have been. Let the adventure begin ... [ more ]

Linguimericks, Book १०२—Letters & Leftovers. Letters How curiously spelt is English! Its users will oftentimes wish That one sound, one letter Might be somewhat better Than a script that spells pisces as ⟨ghoti⟩ —Constance K. Phonetik, So ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨sh⟩ (there’s more!) And ⟨th⟩ and ⟨ph⟩ (that’s phour!) Should be all monographs. Yes, ŝurely so, ĉaps, As the great Ludoviko foresaw —Esther-Esmerelda D’Esperanza D’Esperanto, It’s a mad, crazee linear mix And to learn it takes ages—and sucks. A to Z Latinate: Orthographical fate. And why, God, oh why 26? ... [ more ]

The Speculative Grammarian AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠. On several occasions, mention has been made of the AutoGrammatikon™ Quasi-Universal Translator℠ in the pages of SpecGram; in the current epoch, these references date back as early as at least 2004.¹ In the following years there have been denials,² mentions,³ more⁴ mentions,⁵ leaked internal documents,⁶ and even some early oral history⁷ (accompanied as it was by additional denials). Throughout this time the consistent official stance of the Editorial board of SpecGram has been to deny that the AutoGrammatikon™ exists, ... [ more ]

PAID ADVERTISEMENT — http://SpecGram.com/PaniniPress New from Panini Press!, Extended Preview!. Mechanical Metaphors We Don’t Live By... But Should! ❦पा by Jennifer Ecks, Ph.D. Dept. of Mechanical Linguistics and Civil Anthropology Hoam Squillette University Published 2025. 237 pg. Lakoff & Johnson’s groundbreaking 1980 book, Metaphors We Live By, descriptively illuminated the metaphorical mental models humans instinctively use to make sense of and communicate with abstract concepts. Panini Press is proud to present this instant classic by Prof. Jen Ecks, a spiritual successor to Lakoff & Johnson that takes the tack of inverting its analysis along ... [ more ]

Everything Is Syntax. Count Rex Amplin. “Everything is syntax”. Thus begins the classic text Non-Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky (1961 edition). Many people prefer the 1959 version.¹ 1a. As for myself, I prefer the later work with 1200 dense pages of text. 1b. * As for herself, she prefers the later work with 1200 dense pages of text. It is a long-standing puzzle of generative linguistics that sentence (1a) works in context² but sentence (1b) does not. Consider the following example: 2a. You lookin’ at me? 2b. * She lookin’ at him? When (2a) was shouted at me on the D train, I wanted to lighten the mood and educate my angry interlocutor by demonstrating that ... [ more ]

Оrthоgraрhіc Perрlехer. Welcome to the Speculative Grammarian Оrthοɡrаphіс Ρerplехеr! This not-quite-pointless little tool will munge your text, randomly replacing some characters with homoglyphs that are nearly identical¹—or at least quite reasonably similar to the untrained eye. Why? To make text both very hard and very easy to find via normal search (try to find “οrthoɡrарhіс реrрleхer” on this page, for example); to confuse and amaze your friends and enemies alike;⁶ to pass the time in a ... [ more ]

The Letter of Law and the Law of the Letter. From Orthographic Editor Orville Graff. In the torrential e-maelstrom that is 21st-century online communication, where e-mails fly whither and hence and hyperlinks redefine the very essence of text, it is easy for the average, run-of-the-mill, caught-up-in-his-or-her-own-world everyday-regular global citizen to forget any one or more of at least three things: What they had for breakfast Why they bothered getting married and having kids The letter Let (1) and (2) be for the philosophers—do your worst, guys! (3), however, will occupy both us and Wall Street for, well, a few more letters. Note them, reader. ... [ more ]

Greek Particles. Two facts well-known to linguists for many years are that Ancient Greek orthography represented speech much more closely than does modern English orthography, or practically any other modern European orthography, and that speech, unlike writing, is full of hesitations, false starts, and meaningless expletive utterances which are not recorded in writing. For instance, In English, a typical spoken text might be: Well, it’s the, umm... you know, the one that, uh, you got from the store across the street. We can make a number of interesting observations about the meaningless expletives in the above and in similar texts, of which the interested reader can collect many more examples, if he is so inclined. The ... [ more ]

Plumbing the Orthographic Depths with Djacq-Jhacq Kū-Stowe. [The following is the transcript of the narration of a never-aired 1968 nature program by famed deep-sea explorer and documentarian linguist Djacq-Jhacq Kū-Stowe, presented here for posterity —Eds.] Ah, the vast European sea, a mesmerizing expanse where languages float, sink, and shimmer in the orthographic currents. As we prepare for our descent, we can see deteriorating bits of Esperanto bobbing at the surface—an artificial raft of letters lashed together with pluck, idealism, and ugly diacritics. Its crystal clear transparency is too perfect, erasing, as it does, the subtle beauty found in the texture of ... [ more ]

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