SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

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 ]

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 ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CLXV, Number 4; October 2012, MANAGING EDITOR Trey Jones SENIOR EDITOR Keith Slater EDITOR EMERITUS Tim Pulju Speculative Grammarian, Vol CLXV, No 4 CONSULTING EDITORS David J. Peterson Bill Spruiell, ASSOCIATE EDITORS Madalena Cruz-Ferreira Daniela Müller Mikael Thompson, EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES Cem Bozsahin Florian Breit Jonathan Downie Adam Graham Tel Monks Mary Pearce Callum Robson Mary Shapiro Sheri Wells-Jensen, COMPTROLLER GENERAL Joey Whitford Stop Voicing Now! ... [ more ]

SPECULATIVE GRAMMARIAN, Volume CXCV, Number 3; February 2026, C HIEF C AT H ERDER &, A RBITER OF THE L AST W ORD, Trey Jones, O RDER OF THE, S PECULATIVE P SAMMETICOI, Keith Slater, Mikael Thompson, Tim Pulju, Bill Spruiell, Speculative Grammarian, Vol CXCV, No 3, H EAD OF L EARNING, L INGUISTICS T HROUGH, S ATIRE AND P UNS, Jonathan Downie, S YNTACTICO- P OET &, U NDER- E DITOR OF, U NDER- E DITING, Deak Kirkham, S ENIOR P UZZLING, T EST P ILOT, Vincent Fish, K EEPER OF THE, E DITORIAL T EA C ADDY, Pete Bleackley, A SSOCIATE D EPUTY, A SSISTANT S UB- M ANAGER, OF S ATIRICAL S UCCESS, Luca Dinu, O RTHOGRAPHER- A T- L ARGE, Daniel Swanson, D ILETTANTE E MERITUS, Tel ... [ 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. ... Read SpecGram Every Month! ... [ more ]

The C-Rhyme and Pun-ish-ment of St. Alvin. by Jerry Fyodor & Josef Dobrovskýevsky. It is now commonly accepted that St. Alvin was always accompanied by an assistant called Theodorus. Theodorus was a budding philosopher, with interests in Kant, Hegel and innateness in generative grammar. He was however, very rotund and was therefore known as the Deep Fat Friar. As a young monk, St Alvin left his first monastery, where he had taken a vow of silence, to found an order that believed that people were best served by creating attractive paper to put around Christmas gifts. It is for this reason that his autobiography was entitled “From Trappist to Wrappist.” The members of that order were noted for their ... [ 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 ]

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 ]

De La SpecGrammatologie . A Letter to Future Historians of Satirical Linguistics, from the Editor-in-Chief, Trey “Jacquey D” Jones. Future SpecGrammologists will debate whether this period in the history of SpecGram is “Early Modern” or “Late Moron” or even “Proto-Interplanetary”—and whether we were titans or pipsqueaks, our scribblings impactful or inconsequential. They will undoubtedly furrow their collective brow as they attempt to decipher the opaque and recalcitrant tea leaves of some future tattered remains of the SpecGram archive and hazard ill-formed guesses at our true meaning and significance. ... [ more ]

SpecGram Books. A number of books and book-like entities (including various monographs) have come into existence in and around Speculative Grammarian over the years. Here we’ve collected links to all of their digital and corporeal manifestations in one place for your convenience. ... The Splendid Words, by James S. Pasto,; January 2019 The tale of a man obsessed, driven by a hunger and thirst to uncover—he knows not what! Far past reason, he has hunted and hated, been haunted and humiliated. Now his search has borne fruit—discover whether it is bitter or sweet! Available to read online. ... The History of Rome, by Tim Pulju; July 2018 Speculative ... [ more ]

Nunavut Bans Twitter. SpecGram Wire Services. In a move that has shocked the world, the Canadian territory of Nunavut has banned the social network Twitter. A spokesperson for the Nunavut government, explaining the ban, said, “Look, we’re all in favour of free speech, but face facts. Twitter simply isn’t compatible with Inuit culture. How are we supposed to say Taimailauqsimajutuqaluulauqsimajututqalujuuiniuliq&uaiaasit,¹ or ... [ more ]

Linguimericks & The Lingumerickocalypse, Book १०५. Though tempted I am to critique The French orthographic physique, When comparing with English I find naught to distinguish, So I’m saying they both have “mystique” —Roman C. S. Pelling, There truly is just a small touch Of irony, not very much, That the Teutonic sounds In Germany’s towns Aren’t called by the apt name of “Dutch” —Joost van Deutscher, Common Sense[i]s My Japanese Linguistics teacher told me, ‘Antonyms are pairs of lexemes with opposing senses; Lexeme A has sense A and lexeme B has sense not-A. Common sense, eh?’ As this definition opposed my senses, I asked, ‘Teacher, ... [ more ]

Increasing Linguistic Self-Referentiality in Weird Ways. Γραμματο-Χαοτικον. As part of our ongoing mission to make the world of language a lot more interesting, we want to encourage our members—and the general language-using public—to increase the unusual self-referentiality of language. As an illustration, the word weird is a little weird, because it doesn’t follow the i-before-e rule.^* We propose that, for example, out of whack and wacky should be made slightly out of whack and slightly wacky, respectively, by pronouncing them with the opposite ... [ more ]

Lost Media: Linguistics Rock!. The SpecGram Media Elves™. In 1974, following the success of Schoolhouse Rock!, the independent production company Lingo Lango Longo released Linguistics Rock!, a linguistics-themed animated musical educational program similar in style to Schoolhouse Rock!. Unfortunately, the style, the branding, the episode titles, the characters, and the music were all very similar to Schoolhouse Rock!—so much so that Lingo Lango Longo’s Leado Lawyero, Leo Lombardo—in a stunning act of moral courage—pulled the plug on the whole enterprise before Lingo Lango Longo could be sued into oblivion. All that ... [ more ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear Editors, I was very disappointed to see your article, “The Solution to Poor Pedantry is... More, Better Pedantry” from the Meta-Pedantry Association. Are you not aware that they are a radical nihilistic splinter group of the Γραμματο-Χαοτικον? Their generally unpublicized goal is to increase the density of meta-pedantry and other forms of so-called “self-folding pedantry” in order to create a pedantic singularity and potentially cause the collapse of the academic-pedantic continuum. I personally do not believe in the academic-pedantic continuum, nor that a singularity ... [ more ]

Pseudo-Psiblings™ And Other Views of Multiply-Blended Families. A proposal for improving and clarifying family nomenclature for the 21st century. by Trey Jones. Introduction. Language evolves—otherwise we’d all be able to read Beowulf in the original, right? Sometimes language changes in response to cultural changes. But sometimes it doesn’t change fast enough to keep up with cultural changes. This paper seeks to give English a little push in a much-needed direction. There has been a fairly radical change in Western society in the last hundred years or so. It used to be that if a woman was on her fourth husband, one automatically felt a little sorry for ... [ more ]

ADVERTISEMENT SpecGram Estates. A Retirement Community By Linguists, For Linguists¹. The second greatest day in the life of a linguist is when they become tenured—the status, the glory, the freedom! The greatest day in the life of a linguist is when they become emeritus—the status, the glory, the freedom! Come and spend your golden years with us at SpecGram Estates; we understand you like no one else does, and we have the accommodation, the community, and the amenities that are just right for you! We all know that different linguists have different expectations of the world. At SpecGram Estates we personalize your retirement experience, creating ... [ more ]

Metrical Dimorphism: An Onomastic Noun-Verb Hypothesis. by G.R.R. L’Power & Lexi Kahn, Ph.D. Candidates, Department of Onomastic Empowerment, Hervard University. There is a well-known pattern of disyllabic word pairs in English that differ primarily by stress. The table below presents a few examples:^* cóntest / contést, décrease / decréase, éxtract / extráct, ímport / impórt, ínsult / insúlt, óbject / objéct, pérmit / permít, présent / presént, récord / recórd, súspect / suspéct, In this paradigm, nouns carry initial stress, while verbs shift stress to ... [ more ]

Falsehoods About Linguistics. Compiled by N. Correct, N. Accurate, and Aaron Nius. Inspired by Patrick McKenzie’s “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names” here is a list of ideas, thoughts, and assumptions about linguists and linguistics that come up from time to time, but none of which are necessarily true. Linguists know what a language is. Linguists know what a word is. Linguists know what linguistics is. Linguists can tell you the correct way of doing linguistics. Linguists can tell you the correct way of speaking a language. All linguists know multiple, if not many, languages. All linguists love languages. All linguists enjoy learning, and learning about, different languages. Knowing how to ... [ more ]

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