SpecGram—Most Popular Pages

Saving Endangered Languages with Prescriptivism. Neil de Veratte, Director of Fieldwork Studies, Winter Academy of Language. All over the world, languages are being lost at an alarming rate. Field linguists do their best to preserve these languages, but find their speaker communities apathetic. “Why should I learn Wotʃa -Korlitt?” they ask, “It’s Spanish I need to get a job.” We need to look at successful languages, whose speakers are engaged with their language, to see what endangered languages can learn from them. When we do, we inevitably find that the most successful languages are those which possess a tradition of prescriptivist grammar. English has an army of armchair pedants who ... [ more ]

The Physics of Linguistics. Φυσικές Επιστήμες Jayeon Gwahak, and Природ О’Ведение X. Quizzit Korps Center for Advanced Collaborative Studies. In recent years, many linguists have been heard lamenting the influx of physicists into our discipline. However, rather than fearing this trend, should we not welcome the fresh insights they can bring to many linguistics problems? Consider the hysteresis curve that results when an alternating magnetic field is applied to a ferromagnetic material. A simple examination of this reveals the unmistakable profile ... [ 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 ]

Speculative Grammarian Volume CLXXXIX, Number 3 Trey Jones, Editor-in-Chief; Keith Slater, Executive Editor; Mikael Thompson, Senior Editor; Jonathan Downie, Senior Editor, Pete Bleackley, Contributing Editor, Deak Kirkham, Contributing Editor; Associate Editors: Vincent Fish, Mark Mandel; Assistant Editors: Emily Davis, Yuval Wigderson; Editorial Associates: Egan Chernoff, Luca Dinu, Joe McAvoy, Daniel Swanson; Joey Whitford, Comptroller General; Impenetrably Vapid; February 2021 ... [ 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 ]

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 ]

ADVERTISEMENT Seeking Short-Term Provost/PA to the Provost. The Provost of the Catterton Left-Handed Institute of Linguistics (CLHIL), Professor Dame Marjorie ‘Packet of Hobnobs’ Crumplefrusket, is scheduled to take a 6-month sabbatical in the Maldives. This will allow her to complete her fifth book—Phoneytactics: The Intrigue, Lies and Scandals at the Heart of the West’s Teaching of the Combinatorial Properties of Phonemes—as well as to acquire complete left-handedness, in line with a recent decision by the Senate. Alongside this, the secondment of the PA to the Provost, Mr Timothy ‘Pick That Up!’ Trimblefrisket, to a short-term ... [ more ]

ANNOUNCEMENT Cancellation Notice: Philosophical Fight of the Century Postponed Indefinitely. Following the recent highly successful and positively reviewed¹ issue on Okhamian thought in language, SpecGram Events Inc had taken the initiative of initiating initial contact with both William of Ockham and his mortal enemy and eternal nemesis, John Duns Scotus, with the aim of setting up an evening of debate and discussion on the problem of universals in relation to language. At the suggestion of Boethius, this was to take to the form of a 30-minute wrestling match between the two esteemed mediaeval scholars, followed by a five-song karaoke contest and then, following an intermission where light snacks would ... [ 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 ]

A New Study of Linguistic Synesthesia. by Ott Harfondle, Independent Scholar¹. Synesthesia is a peculiar psychological phenomenon in which one sensory stimulus causes a response of a different sense. A prototypical example of synesthesia is sensing color when hearing certain tones. Thus, the composer Sergei Rachmaninoff recalled an occasion when he and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakoff encountered Alexander Scriabin, who associated colors with musical keys. To Rachmaninoff’s surprise, Rimsky-Korsakoff agreed with Scriabin in general, though they disagreed on several of the associations. The two agreed on the key of D major as yellow, but when Rachmaninoff expressed his disbelief, Rimsky-Korsakoff ... [ more ]

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