SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCII, Number 2 Editor-in-Chief, Trey Jones, Executive Editor, Keith Slater, Senior Editors, Mikael Thompson, Jonathan Downie, Contributing Editor;s, Pete Bleackley, Deak Kirkham; Associate Editors: Vincent Fish, Mark Mandel; Assistant Editors: Emily Davis, Luca Dinu, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Andrew Lamont, Steve Politzer-Ahles, Daniel Swanson, Katie Swanson, Comptroller General, Joey Whitford, Rescuing Phonotaxis From, the World’s Phoneytaxis; September 2022 ... [ 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 ]

Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part E—Phonetics vs. Phonology. Hilário Parenchyma, C.Phil. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. We will skip the introduction, as we have been there, done that. Once more into the breach! For this installment in our series on Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, we will turn our attention to Phonetics and Phonology and the difference between the two: Phonetics:, ... Phonology:, ... Thanks to Professor Phlogiston, of the Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn, for the opportunity of a lifetime, as a student, to, on this occasion, share with so many of my fellow linguisticians my views, as illustrated above, concerning matters, which are of such immeasurable import ... [ 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 ]

Letters to the Editor. Dear Eds, As a speaker of Naissru, I feel very sorry for those poor struggling Silghen speakers. A life without future tense must be such an awful fate! Their plight makes me feel downright blue—or, at least, light blue. I reckon those poor Silghen sods don’t even know what light blue feels like. So sad —Goluboy Siniy ... Dear Little Boy Blue, Don’t feel too bad for the Silghen speakers. Their orthography is significantly worse than any other feature of their language; in fact, they arguably have no spelling rules, only rough guidelines. Silghen is pronounced / sæksən /, for example. As a result of having to learn to spell every word individually, ... [ more ]

Systematic Suppletion: An Investigation of Ksotre Case Marking. By Lawrence R. Muddybanks, Ph.D.. Introduction Little research has been done on the Ksotre language of northern Lithuania, and that which has been done has been rather unenlightening.¹ The present paper aims to not only expand the body of research on the Ksotre language, but also to introduce a phenomenon found, thus far, in no other natural language on Earth. Without further ado, then, I present the case marking system of Ksotre. Case in Ksotre Ksotre has fourteen cases and three numbers, as shown below: Number: singular, dual, plural Grammatical Cases: nominative, accusative, partitive, genitive, dative, instrumental, Мој ... [ 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, but no, seriously, we’ve published a large collection of SpecGram articles, along with just enough new material to force obsessive collectors and fans to buy it, regardless of the cost. From the Introduction: The past twenty-five years have witnessed many changes in linguistics, with major developments in linguistic theory, significant expansion in language description, and even ... [ more ]

When I Heard the Learn’d Syntactician. W. Kruck. After Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” When I heard the learn’d syntactician, When the NP’s, the AUX’s, were ranged in trees before me, When I was shown deep and surface structures, with shift, embedding, and deletion rules, When I sitting heard the syntactician where he proved, and motivated in the lecture-room, How soon not surprisingly I became confused and bored, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off among friends, With their musical clear voices, and from time to time, Listen’d in perfect silence to their talk. When I Heard the Learn’d Phonologist. When I heard the learn’d ... [ 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 ]

Quotes: What People are Saying. Here are a few of our favorite things people have said about Speculative Grammarian over the years, collected wild on the internet, or domesticated in email — Q1118. C’est sans doute un humour un peu ésotérique mais bon —Sémioticien du bisou — Q1117. Support the addition of the double-dot wide O to the IPA chart by buying some Speculative Grammarian merchandise! No, I’m not being sponsored or getting a commission from them. I just appreciate good geeky humour —Grace Teng — Q1116. Speculative Grammarian ist die erste Zeitschrift für satirische Linguistik. Kostenlos zugänglich, ein ... [ more ]

Spring’s Springiness Springs Springingly: Putting a SpecGrammy Spring in Your Linguistic Step This Spring. By ~~Curled Up~~ Coiled Up Editors, Spree Ng and B. D. Oing. ‘Spring is here, sper-ring is here!’ warbled Tom Lehrer in one of his less repetitive lines.¹ Now, quoting a Lehrer lyric at the start of an article is always good writing practice as the prose can then only get better. However, on this occasion, the specific choice of line leads directly into the theme of today’s editorial, which we shall now spring upon you: it’s Spring! Spring is indeed here; but spring has for millennia been amongst those of us who reckon ourselves the linguistic ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Youth Research Focus is proud to bring you the finest language-related research by the world’s school-aged youth. Grey Duck or Goose?, Mapping variation in a children’s game in Minnesota. Fifth Grade Science Fair Project, by Sven Slater and Ollie Bickford, J. O. Nelson Public School, St. Cloud, Minnesota, USA. Research Question. Last year, a new kid named Tyler P. joined our fourth grade class. Tyler was from Illinois or some other southern state, and she told us that down there kids play “duck, duck, goose,” instead of “duck, duck, grey duck” like we do here in Minnesota. We thought this was strange, even for the South, but then we ... [ 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 ]

Linguimericks, Book ९२. There once was a teacher from Rome Who spoke poorly of changes at home: “Vetulus non veclus, Oculus non oclus” Much info’s been gleaned from this tome —Arcadia Arcadopoulou, Prescriptivists love nothing fewer Then running over fee held and moo-er To baldly split infinite ifs And getting into endless .tiffs, Descriptivists on th’other hand Are a rather defer-ent band. They will not tell Watt to-do But rather spend thyme watching ewe. Linguists say they are at home With the latter as a rule But twitch when people think it’s cool To play around with homophones —Col. O. Nihilist, The Historical Phonologist All day, the ... [ 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 ]

/ nuz baɪts /. Not a wire news service but still more reliable than most newspapers. Centre for Critical Kiki Studies Launched. Confronted with rising pro-bouba propaganda by otherwise sensible linguists, a team from the Higher Institute of Superior Advanced Studies has founded the first Centre for Critical Kiki Studies. The centre will look to rehabilitate kiki by showing how its classification as “the spiky one” has othered it and left it bereft of funding, friends and fans. Eventually, they hope that kiki will reach the heights of other linguistic tropes and somehow become commercialised on tote bags while linguists write long articles on whether it is a ... [ 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 ]

I U Linguistics Club. Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. June 1978. ... i u linguistics club, edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... [ more ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CXCII, Number 1 Editor-in-Chief, Trey Jones, Executive Editor, Keith Slater, Senior Editors, Mikael Thompson, Jonathan Downie, Contributing Editor;s, Pete Bleackley, Deak Kirkham; Associate Editors: Vincent Fish, Mark Mandel; Assistant Editors: Emily Davis, Luca Dinu, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Fabian Bross, Andrew Lamont, Tel Monks, Daniel Swanson, Comptroller General, Joey Whitford, The Cat Never Had, The Pajamas That We Are; June 2022 ... [ more ]

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