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A Minim of Wine and a Minim of Confusion for Maximal Contusion. by Artemus Zebulon Pratt, Speculative Grammarian Editor-on-the-Lam. Just the other night, after treating myself to the new Anti-Kosher Burger at our local eatery (shrimp, bacon, fried egg, and cheese atop locally produced rabbit patties), I had the need to treat myself for the new Anti-Kosher Burger and so was relaxing with an unfortunate bottle of experimental wine my wife had been prevailed upon somehow to buy some time ago: “A gift just for you!” she said. I smiled, but knowing her wont it was strictly wait-and-see. She held it out further. “Asparagus wine,” I replied. She held it out even ... [ 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 ] 
Language Made Difficult, Vol. VI — The SpecGram LingNerds are joined by guest Devan Steiner for Lies, Damned Lies, and Linguistics, discuss a Boston Accent Eradication Program and the suddenly uncertain future of the Oxford Comma, enjoy more Words of Wisdom from Lady Fantod, and answer tweets from fans. ... [ listen ]
Strings and Things: A Unificational Meta-Theory for All Linguistics; by Trent Slater; From Volume CLXVII, Number 2, of Speculative Grammarian,; May 2013 — Despite the best efforts in those sciences that ignore the importance of morphological historiography, it has so far proved impossible to provide one theory to rule them all. Thus, as head of the largest group of linguistic meta-theoreticians in the Whole World, I feel that it falls to me to propose and prove a Grand Theory of Everything Linguistic. (Read by Cathal Peelo.) ... [ listen ] ... [ read the article ]
Germanic Day & The Celebration of Romance . We are making something known to you: Germanic Day!. Speculative Grammarian is happy to tell the world about our new yearly holiday—Germanic Day! What is Germanic Day? It is a day set aside to think about the Germanic roots that can still be found in English. It gives thanks for the lasting strength of Germanic words. Germanic Day happens on October 13. That was the last day before King Harold was struck down by the Norman gang led by William, and Germanic words at the heart of English began to wane. Before that, English was all Germanic; afterwards, French loanwords took over. What will we do on Germanic Day? ... [ more ]
Linguistic Cocktails Prepared and extensively taste-tested, by the SpecGram Mixologists. Interest in cocktails has had a resurgence lately, with people trying new combinations and reviving forgotten blends. We shouldn’t forget the long history the grand subfield of Mixological Linguistics has. Below is a mix of old favorites and new delights. The Newmeyer 1 martini, dry, with olive 1 gin and tonic ... Disparage the martini vigorously for ten to twenty years, arguing that no real establishment should serve it. Urge everyone to drink gin and tonic (“the one true cocktail”) instead. Redefine “gin and tonic” so that it can refer to lots of things other than a cocktail that has gin in ... [ more ] 
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Turkish Q and OEM and ΓΧ Oh My!. A Letter from the Managing Editor. Faithful readers of SpecGram will be familiar with the exploits, real and imagined, of the Γραμματο-Χαοτικον—an underground alliance of linguists, philologists, and polyglots that encourages arbitrary and capricious change both in Language and among languages. Not all of their endeavors have been successful, but we, the Editors of SpecGram, have come to appreciate their efforts. ... The organisers of the conference Distance in Language, Language of Distance, held in Munich, Germany; April 2013. Chiasmus of the Month; November ... [ more ]
⟨h⟩ the Little Grapheme Soldier. Callum Robson. Readers, to set this article up imagine the following: in films of the war genre, you tend to have one young gutsy private who endeavours to help out his unit no matter what, though usually by the end of the film his efforts are unrewarded and unspoken of as he’s outshone by the leading man with his celebrity good looks. The linguistic equivalent of this is ⟨h⟩ he’s1 overused, and underused, which usually gets him confused! Sadly, he’s not like ⟨s⟩ who gets all the privileged jobs. Everyone knows ⟨s⟩’s place: marker for plurals, third person singular marker, possessive marker and so forth; ... [ more ]
Linguistic Koans. Culled from the sacred texts by Z. En ‘Bud’ Dhist. What is the sound of one vocal cord flapping?, - — - — -, An undergrad asked the professor, “Does English lack tone?” The professor replied, “Mm hmm.” Suddenly, the student was enlightened. - — - — -, Two students in a fieldwork class were listening to a tongue flapping in an informant’s mouth. One said to the other, “The rounding of the vowels is non-contrastive.” The other replied, “The aspiration of the consonants is non-contrastive.” The professor overheard this, and said, “Not the rounding, not the aspiration; mind is ... [ more ]
New speech disorder linguists contracted discovered!. An apparently new speech disorder a linguistics department our correspondent visited was affected by has appeared. Those affected our correspondent a local grad student called could hardly understand apparently still speak fluently. The cause experts the LSA sent investigate remains elusive. Frighteningly, linguists linguists linguists sent examined are highly contagious. Physicians neurologists psychologists other linguists called for help called for help called for help didn’t help either. The disorder experts reporters SpecGram sent consulted investigated apparently is a case of pathological center embedding. Yreka Bakery (Egello College). ... [ 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 ]
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 ]
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 ]
Cartoon Theories of Linguistics, Part ж—The Trouble with NLP. Phineas Q. Phlogiston, Ph.D. Unintentional University of Lghtnbrgstn. Please review previously discussed materials as needed. Now that that is taken care of, let us consider why Natural Language Processing (or, its alter-ego, Computational Linguistics) has not been the resounding success regularly predicted by the NLP faithful: We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were hungry/over-ripe. Time/Fruit flies like a(n) arrow/banana. pretty little girl’s school crying computational linguist Up next: Lexicostatistics vs Glottochronology. References, Baeza-Yates, Ricardo and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto (1999). Modern Information ... [ 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 ]
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Last updated Jul. 9, 2025.