Most Popular Pages—Today

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1. Q Continuum Reaches Solomon Islands—Brenda H. Boerger (10 visits)

Q Continuum Reaches Solomon Islands1. Brenda H. Boerger. I propose early, pre-24th century contact between the Q Continuum (Q-contact) and speakers of Earth languages in Solomon Islands, South Pacific, as evidenced by the presence of <q> in the orthographies of 24 of the 68 languages there, spanning the country from west to east. I describe the sounds that <q> represents in these orthographies, using these correspondences as evidence for five separate Q-contacts. The evidence suggests Q-contact elsewhere in Oceanic, as well as in other language families, as diverse as Indo-European, multiple American Indian families, and Turkic, but that this important contact factor has heretofore been ... [ more ]


2. My Name, the Performative—Virginia Bouchard (7 visits)

My Name, the Performative. Virginia Bouchard. One conventional verbal act in my home growing up was being called by my name: Vir-gin-ia! This utterance-name, as used by my angry mother, carried heightened meaning, and the tone employed was one of warning, exasperation, and promise. These qualities hint strongly that a name used consistently in a particular way can be considered a performative. In the sense that saying something is doing something, there is no doubt that the utterance-name in question is a performative. In the style of How To Do Things with Words,1 by J. L. Austin (1962), we will first “get out of ordinary language what we can” (p. 123), then reconcile ... [ more ]


3. Merchandise (5 visits)

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 ]


4. Archives (4 visits)

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 ]


5. Relaunched Journal—Municipal Journal of Language Devolution (4 visits)

RELAUNCHED JOURNAL— Municipal Journal of Language Devolution . There has been a lot of interest in environmental influences on language, including the emerging field of geophonetics. Other publishers can jump on the bandwagon; Psammeticus Press already has one of its own! (Two, if you count the 1997 Geo Prizm used by our world-infamous house band, Fauxnetikx.) One of the oldest workhorses in our stable of highly profitable journals is the Municipal Journal of Language Devolution. Once an outlet for prescriptivist screeds, its original nay-saying editors, Usain E. Trong and Grumby Kerr Mudgin, spent 46 years shouting into the winds of language change until they were hoarse. Now that they have ... [ more ]


6. To Shreds, You Say?—The Impact of Poly-Catastrophic Mountaineering on Advances in Topographic Linguistics—The “J. Farnsworths,” Hubert & Cubert (4 visits)

To Shreds, You Say?, The Impact of Poly-Catastrophic Mountaineering on Advances in Topographic Linguistics. The “J. Farnsworths,” Hubert & Cubert, (feat. Owrt-Eames N. Tadders), X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. Back in 2013, Caleb Everett unveiled reports of fieldwork indicating that glottalic airstream mechanisms correlate with elevation: that is, ejectives are found in languages spoken way up high. We at the X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies immediately found ourselves wanting to correct the more egregious errors in this research (or, at least, in the popular press’s reporting of it, as we had not actually read the original work ourselves). To ... [ more ]


7. Ministry of Propaganda (4 visits)

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 ]


8. Psammeticus Press (4 visits)

Psammeticus Press www.specgram.com/psammeticuspress/, BOOKS, SERIES, and MORE The following valuable volumes, spectacular series, and interesting items have been released with pride by Psammeticus Press, an academic publishing house founded in honor of the first and purest of linguistic inquirers: one might criticize his methods, but who could quibble with his results? Follow the links below to learn more about these fabulous books and excellent series, each destined to become a classic in the field. Retractions, Rejections and Reconstructions: The Multiply Integrated Lives of Linguistics Texts by Speculative Grammarian Retextualization Editor Reid Rafft Published 2025. 2,328 pages When it comes to texts ... [ more ]


9. Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics (3 visits)

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 ] Book!


10. HanjieLinguru—Trey Jones (3 visits)

HanjieLinguru. Trey Jones, l’École de SpecGram, Tokyo. To keep up with this insane new publication schedule, we’ve imported another batch of Puzzle Elves™ from Japan, and they’ve come up with another bit of Linguistically-Themed Pseudo-Nihonese Puzzlicity: HanjieLinguru, a linguistiky variant of the hot Japanese picture logic puzzle Hanjie. HanjieLinguru is a simple extension of the traditional Hanjie form, but keeping with SpecGram tradition, it incorporates just enough linguistikitude so that non-linguists will feel morally inferior. The rules are simple: first, replace each Greek letter with the number indicated by the clue provided. (The reference ... [ more ]


11. Son of Lingua Pranca (3 visits)

Son of Lingua Pranca. T. Ernst & E. Smith, Editors. Indiana University. IULC. November 1979. ... edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging edging, ... Son of, ^ Lingua, ... Pranca, ... fleur ... T. Ernst & E. Smith, eds. ... indiana university, ... i u linguistics club, ... [ more ]


12. Reviews in Linguistic Historiography: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein—Хөөмийн Гийлгүүлэгч (3 visits)

Reviews in Linguistic Historiography: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. by, Хөөмийн Гийлгүүлэгч Associate Professor, Department of the History of Science. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been famous ever since its publication in 1818 as a vividly related medical-scientific case study, so much so that its significance in the history of medicine has far overshadowed its importance in linguistics. Indeed, its crucial role in medical history has led to its extremely wide currency in popular portrayals of medical research,1 while its neglect by linguistic historiographers is only matched by its ... [ more ]


13. The C-Rhyme and Pun-ish-ment of St. Alvin—Jerry Fyodor & Josef Dobrovskýevsky (3 visits)

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 ]


14. How Do I Love Thee?—Let Me Draw a Tree Diagram—Alex Savoy (3 visits)

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 ] Podcast! Book!


15. The SpecGram Quiz to End All Quizzes (3 visits)

The SpecGram Quiz to End All Quizzes. ... Everyone makes Internet quizzes—even your three richest widowed aunts use their mite, if not their might, to bedazzle the gullible and amass those sweet, sweet clicks. So stand aside, ladies, SpecGram is on the make move! There’s a new quiz powerhouse in town, and since we don’t believe in planned obsolescence, you’ll never need nor want another!, Just answer these 17 handy-dandy mutually orthogonal questions to get the answers to all (or at least the 7 most important) of your burning questions. ... [ more ]


16. A Sample of Self-Definers—Rhetorical & Poetic Devices and Figures of Speech: Part II—The SpecGram Book Elves™ (3 visits)

A Sample of Self-Definers— Rhetorical & Poetic Devices and Figures of Speech: Part II. The SpecGram Book Elves™. Here is a seventeenth hand-curated selection from “Appendix A: A Self-Defining Linguistic Glossary” a.k.a. “The only truly reliable cram sheet for your Linguistics 101 final” from The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics. litotes is not uncommon, A good theory of metaphor is the Holy Grail of linguistics. onomoanopoeia, non-contradictory oxymoron, Peppering a paragraph with parachesis is an uppity, pitiable, and pathetic practice. This paradoxical statement is false. If I am using this paraprosdokian ... [ more ]


17. The Cartography of the Derivation: A Brief History of the Louis and Clärque Expedition—Carlos L. P. Rizziani (3 visits)

The Cartography of the Derivation: A Brief History of the Louis and Clärque Expedition. by Carlos L. P. Rizziani. This map, the first and most impressive of its kind, is the result of an arduous, unrelenting 40-year expedition across ungovernable expanses, swaths of rich morphology, unaccusative prairies, dangerous constraints, and inhospitable aspectual projections that constitute the known expanses of The Derivation. Prior to this vast undertaking, which cost the lives of more than 28 brave men and women (and at least nine children), efforts to properly govern the peoples of The Derivation were mostly ineffective. The very nature of political borders and binding domains were often in dispute, while secessions of ... [ more ]


18. Lingua Pranca (3 visits)

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 ]


19. Latin to 与工以口-尺口爪凡以 Converter (3 visits)

Anybody and everybody uses Roman script. 山巨 刀巨与巨尺立巨 仍巨十十巨尺。 What we need is something more distinctive. 与工以口-尺口爪凡以 亡口爪仍工以巨与 十廿巨 仍巨与十 口斤 巨凡与十 凡以刀 山巨与十。 Elegant, refined, and beautiful! 凹与巨 与工以口-尺口爪凡以！ ... [ more ]


20. Rosetta Stein—German Language Delivery System—Advertisement (3 visits)

ADVERTISEMENT Rosetta Stein, German Language Delivery System. Learn German the most natural way: by drinking beer! ... Beer is not included. The Rosetta Stein program provides the motivation you need to learn German. The next lesson is always just a Stein away: our patented Lehrnen Stein reveals a new lesson each time you drain it dry. Ready for Lesson 3? Bottoms up! Rosetta Stein is available in premium (shown) or basic versions. Both provide the motivation you need to learn German like a native. Rosetta Stein , ... [ more ]


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Last updated Feb. 28, 2025.