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 ]
How Do I Love Thee?, Let Me Draw a Tree Diagram.Alex Savoy.[Author’s Note: Quite in fitting with the approach of Valentine’s Day, I submit this love poem, which, surprisingly, actually worked—though alas I am no longer dating said person anymore, which is why I am bitterly prostituting this former declaration of love, which I have suitably altered for the occasion.] How do I love thee? Let me draw a tree diagram— I was maundering, lonely as a bilabial trill, When I first heard your voice—(some breathy strange tongue), I was love-struck at once—(after all, I was young), How rounded your mouth, And iotally perfect your skin. Your eyes are like geminates, plosive and clear, ... [ more ]
Draw Me a Linguist.Aster E. O’Gnosis and Margo Llicso. Much has been made recently in certain circles of the stereotypical views children have of scientists, and how those views are changed after paying a visit to CERN—all reflected in the drawings of the children. (Drollette, 2010) The cliché says that children are our future, and the humanizing effect of the CERN visit on children’s perceptions may eventually be parlayed into an increase in the number of young people who choose to pursue science as a profession, which of course results in better enrollment in college courses, and thus more funding for science departments. We figured linguistics could probably use some of that action, too. ... [ 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 ]
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 ]
Psammeticus Press www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, Chiasmus of the Month Awards ... This somewhat irregular award is a sign of our recognition of and deep appreciation for the authors’ contribution to the upholding of decent writing standards in academic literature and to the dissemination of the finest of speech figures. Winners are selected for eachmost many issues by our Chiastic Editor and Editorial Chiasturge. The honorees to date are listed below. Chiasmus of the Month; November 2025, Todd Copeland, 2024, “A Figure of Speech and a Speechless Figure: Determinations of Identity in George Sand’s Indiana and Edith Wharton’s The House of ... [ more ]
Letters to the Editor. Dear Eds, I have a question: Is there a word for a sentence which has no lexical or grammatical errors but makes no sense? I know there’s “nonsense” or “craziness” of course. Is there a linguistic term for it? Or is it outside the realm of linguistics? Rebecca F — Dear Rebecca, “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is the canonical example. No single term for the situation seems to exist. “Grammatical-but-nonsensical” is descriptive (of both this type of example and linguistics as a whole, really). “Syntactically correct but semantically ill-formed” is more technical. Either is better than “nonsense” since ... [ more ]
Call for Volunteers. Unfortunately, SpecGram has ceased publication, so we will no longer be needing any new volunteer editors. If you’d like to help out your favorite journal of satirical linguistics, you can join us! Volunteer Editors: We’re always looking to expand the rolls of our editorial board. Duties include proofreading new issues before they are published, advising the senior editors on various projects, contributing to collaborative articles, and even suggesting ideas for articles or projects. There’s no specific required level of participation, but it’d be great if you had time to proofread most new issues during the the last week of the month. Rewards include membership in a fairly ... [ 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 ]
Ten Years of Linguistic Mischief.by Keith Slater and Trey Jones. The dialectic which is reified as Speculative Grammarian has marked more momentous milestones in its illustrious history than you can shake a stick at, and in this issue we mark the fruitionization of yet another one: the tenth1 anniversary2 of SpecGram’s online publication.3 Prior to; January 2004, linguistic satire languished in predigitalism—the scholarly Scylla and Charybdis that ironically deforested Siberia even though distribution was limited to only the self-appointed Inner Circle. Boldly, a mighty group of giants among the feeble-minded backed by a shadowy and ... [ more ]
Bilingualism in Rats: A Ten-Year Study.or.How To Employ All The Equipment In The Neurolinguistic Laboratory.Loraine Obler. Much recent work of fair sophistication has explored various neuropsychological approaches to Hebrew-English bilingualism, in hopes of shedding some light on the more general problem of the brain’s organization for language, but little thought has been put to the deeper problem of how to impressively employ all the equipment in our laboratory. It is to investigate this profound issue that we propose the following project. Little is known about the mechanisms of bilingualism, and almost no work has been done in the rich field of bilingualism in rats, which field should ... [ more ]
Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part I—Non-Configurational Languages.Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. A. Mathematician Friend1 once told me that, in mathematics, it is sometimes said that if you cannot explain the basic outline of a mathematical idea to a bright and interested 10-year-old, then you don’t really understand it yourself. That got me thinking, and I’ve come to a couple of conclusions: According to my 10-year-old niece, I don’t understand any mathematical ideas. Something similar could be said for linguistic ideas.2 It is generally accepted that math is hard (Davis & Hersh, Friend, Lakoff & ... [ more ]
Poetry Corner.Philologer’s Kvetchwhinge 32. by Athanasious Schadenpoodle Eldsprung, earthbound utterance—grown, articulate, rich, particulate— did frolic, prolix, fore and aft. Now lie, not various (nevermore to harry us), stand patterned, matter’d, flat, and staid: Still. From entities, an identity—if one entangled, sore, a-frayed— of our inquisitions, adpositions be blended, blanded, blunted: Made. O Socio, Socio! Wherefore art thou Socio?. by Thomas Basil Callan Bernstein-Hodson All alone on the fourth floor, Unsure I can take much more. My sense of self come undone— Aware of my many tongues. I observe my sociolect— paradoxic’ly ... [ more ]
SpecGram, Quarterly.A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief.[Note: Due to a scheduling error 0 and tight deadline, we were unable to cull a small percentage of the Editor-in-Chief’s extensive and extraneous footnotes. Our usual modus operandi is to allow him to annotate and divagate to his tiny black heart’s approximation of contentment, and then mercilessly cut the dead weight with a red pencil-cum-machete. In this case, we were only able to remove and repair the subsequent rhetorical and narrative damage for approximately 86.7% (by weight) of the Editor-in-Chief’s most egregious footnotery. We apologize for the unavoidable ... [ more ]
Linguimericks, Book ६. There once was an X from place B, Who satisfied predicate P, The X did thing A, In an adjective way, Resulting in circumstance C —Anonymous, the Formal Semanticist, In Glaswegian stops oft are heard And young ladies are often called “burd” But across in the East Far from Ayr and Dumfries “Like” is the phrase-final word —Col. O. Nihilist, Polyglots have the cure to it all, Hurry up and become multilingual! It enhances your brain You find jobs with no pain And you’re envied because you are special —Cailín na Luimní There once was a scurrilous gnome Who both near and far took to roam. Woe spread as he’d stroll, Yet he said, ... [ more ]
Infinity and Beyond: A Prolegomena.by, Bjorn-Bob Weaselflinger, Oceanographic Institute of Nevada--Kairo.Introduction In linguistics, as in many fields, great advances are not always recognized as such; the key to entirely new ways of conceptualizing a field may be hidden away in the paragraphs of an article which, while quite evidently solid in its own right, does not draw explicit attention to the groundbreaking implications of one of its supporting arguments. This principle, I will argue, is admirably illustrated by Hoekstra and Kooij's (1988) article on the Innateness Hypothesis. After a lengthy discussion of apparent violations of the subjacency condition, and various ways of explaining the violations away, the ... [ more ]
A Braille Orthography for tlhIngan.Stovepipe Wells-Jensen.Origin of the System. In the Klingon Empire, charity and social programs, thought to be essentials of civilization in Federation space, are rare indeed. The dependent and weak-willed products of that softer society might thus be surprised to learn that education of blind Klingons has been a matter of course in the Empire for millennia. Klingons know that if their spirits are not broken by coddling, blind youngsters mature into self-sufficient citizens and skillful and deadly combatants. It is unwise to anger these warriors lest one find oneself suddenly alone in a darkened corridor with a very serious problem. A tactile writing system was thus a ... [ more ]
“Language” Characteristics in Certain Higher Primates (Professors of Education).Charles Bishop. Scientists have long recognized that the average professor of education is remarkably close to man himself in brain capacity and physiology, and we have all marvelled at how human they sometimes appear. Yet these creatures—far more intelligent than the chimpanzees with whom they are often compared—seem unable to use language, and until recently it was assumed that they were incapable of learning any form of true human language. This is puzzling, for their sophisticated vocal apparatus allows these professors to produce a great range of sound. Most curious of all is the fact that ... [ more ]
Meeting Regulations for the, International Ambiguity Society/, Société d’Ambigüité Internationale. A meeting will be presided over by the president and the chairperson or the scrimshander. No member may bring motions or call for voting without the express permission of the presiding officer. To comply with standards, meetings will be held in a room with unlockable doors, and members will wear inflammable shoes with untieable laces. The scribe shall submit a summary of all statements made at the end of the meeting. Every member has the right to sit in one chair. All members are not allowed to take personal phone calls during meetings. The presiding officer may only berate members who are absent. The ... [ more ]
Ockhamian Etymologies: The Mysteries of English Unraveled with William of Ockham.Diddles McGraw, the Viscount Average, Lecturer in Okhamian Poetics. Item #213: OK There are a multiplicity of etymologies out there for that most international of English words, OK. Some trace it to okey-dokey, others to the state of Oklahoma. The most likely etymology, however, is down to our familiar Franciscan friend, William of Ockham. In his desire to keep language as parsimonious as possible, William of Ockham periodically reduced all the lexemes in his idiolect to one sole form Ockham. If people asked him where he was from, he’d proudly reply “Ockham.” However, when the abbot asked him ... [ more ]
