Quotes—Page 14: More of What People are Saying

Here are a few more of our favorite things people have said about Speculative Grammarian over the years, collected wild on the internet, or domesticated in email.

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Q500. I have this shirt from SpecGram. I’ve had to stop wearing it because people would stop me and stare at it and ask me to explain all the time :(

l33t_sas


Q499. Good overview/visual intro to the topic for lay people.

freereflection


Q498. Und wer den “Speculative Grammarian” nicht kennt, hat wirklich was verpasst. Eine ganze Satirezeitschrift nur für/von/über Linguisten.

Jan Wohlgemuth


Q497. If you get to the bottom of the article, there’s definitely show of Tongue in Cheek. :)

paralemptor


Q496. I hope this is satirical

jsm1


Q495. They lost me at ‘Futurological’...

tuna_safe_dolphin


Q494. Went over my head / made me giggle then felt a little spooked.

paralemptor


Q493. Well, at least we do have a canonical set of tests to tell linguists from philosophers.

John Lawler


Q492. The SpecGram post also pokes fun at the Skopos theory of translation. Hilarious and worth the time.

—Saqer A


Q491. This is my favourite thing you have ever published

Madeleine McCallum


Q490. Am enjoying SpecGram’s To the Field Workers to Make Much of Time.

—Macmillan Dictionary


Q489. SpecGram’s podcasts are sharp, silly, and fun.

—Stan Carey


Q488. Haven’t delved yet, but this looks like an interesting page for linguists and other wordnerds.

—Macmillan Dictionary


Q487. I love SpecGram!

Joe Kessler


Q486. [SpecGram is] more fun than a barrel filled with n monkeys with x reflective indicators in a partial least squares path model.

Jonathan Downie


Q485. Without doubt, Speculative Grammarian is the world’s premier Satirical Linguistics journal.

Jonathan Downie


Q484. Some of us stopped submitting to SpecGram because we have to concentrate on writing that will earn.

Aya Katz


Q483. Oh baby, let’s try the nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill tonight.

Penty


Q482. I don’t know if anyone reads Speculative Grammarian (SpecGram), but I just saw this today: OdCom. It made me laugh, at least.

—Nick


Q481. Haha–I can’t wait to find time to read this!!

Jon Silpayamanant


Q480. Justin B. Rye at Speculative Grammarian has a delightful Primer in SF Xenolinguistics. Rye offers ten rules of SF and fantasy language clichés, muses briefly yet thoroughly on the ways in which alien languages might differ from human languages and the ways in which they probably won’t, and discusses potential issues with universal translators.

Plus, he’s funny. “I pity C-3PO, kept as a slave translator for biochauvinist rebels in a society where everything understands English anyway.”

—Tracy


Q479. Wenn ihr den Witz nicht versteht, macht, was der Editor gesagt habt, lest euch rein. Es ist einfach zuuuuu genial. Nasal-ingressive stimmlose velare Trills sind in der Tat... außergewöhnlich. Lach mich schlapp.

—ark4869


Q478. What will become of a linguistics major?

La vie est belle


Q477. This kills me, as the only way to get a job is when “Prof. Johnson” kicks the bucket, and my dear friend is a Prof. Johnson of linguistics hahahaha

laundryandbetrayal


Q476. The “choose your own career in linguistics” game! It’s fun, I promise! :)

—agents verbing patients


Q475. The Compleat Encyclopaedia of Compendious Historical Lexicons of Obscure and Archaic Vernacular and Nomenclature: The best dictionary on the web! So great, it knows definitions of words that don’t even exist!

Brian Slattery


Q474. This figure showing Examples of phronological Evidence is killing me! “Darth voiceless vaders”... “heimlich ejectives”... tee hee!

isitirony


Q473. This journal rules!

leoboiko


Q472. How have I never encountered this amazing website before?

Qiran


Q471. I love SpecGram. So, so much. I even have a nasal-ingressive voiceless velar trill shirt.

—Eccentroclast


Q470. I lost it multiple times.

sniperinthebushes


Q469. Thanks for introducing me to SpecGram, you bastard. I have an essay due tomorrow, you know.

leoboiko


Q468. I’m quite fond of the phonologist one myself, since I was forced to sit through a semester of very, very abstract phonology.

—niklasni1


Q467. The Lab Phonetician one made me laugh.

agissilver


Q466.You do well, and 20 years later, you are successful, happy, and productive. You make a good living, do interesting work every day, and have sharp colleagues to keep you on your toes. Your home life is tranquil and pleasant, and you have lots of time off every year to do your own thing. Life is grand!’ Damn right! Now if only ‘work hard’ was indeed a single click and not 5+ years of grueling torture.

mysticrudnin


Q465. Oh my goodness gracious, I could waste my entire life reading [SpecGram]. The choose your own adventure career game is my favorite so far though...

isitirony


Q464. I am thrilled that you have come across the title of my talk and considered it worthy of the Chiasmus award. I am an advocate of the interface of science and research with wit, style and rhetoric. I, of course, am honoured to accept the award and condone the use of my title/ abstract/ name in your publications. My Chiasmus of the Month will indeed be my month of chiasmus.

—David M T Arnold


Q463. It’s a balance you guys strike well—that rare ability to use the words “phonotactics” and “poopyhead” in the same joke.

—Ben Trawick-Smith


Q462. The “Pantheon-Based Theory of Grammar” is quite funny as well.

—Cathbad


Q461. Heh, quite funny. I’m fighting an addiction to velaric ingressives myself.

—Eddy


Q460. Nowadays we have kinda decent natural language parsers.

Nisan

In my opinion, these still have a long way to go. (Panel #3 is my personal favorite.)

Vladimir M


Q459. This is my new favorite thing, courtesy of the Speculative Grammarian.

Brian


Q458. How would a linguist translate “Dumber than a box of rocks” from the original Texan? Easy: “Dumber than a department of Sapir-Whorfians.” There’s a whole mess of useful conversions in “Texan for Linguists.”

Nancy Friedman


Q457. Qualcuno, poi, per risolvere il problema ha inventato nuovi simboli, il Quotta e il Quottiod!

—t4nec0


Q456. I, for one, welcome our new serious overlords.

David Bowie


Q455. What I learned about the relationship of coffee to adult conversation was priceless

Keith Hersch


Q454. Everything I learned about linguistics I learned from the Speculative Grammarian.

Keith Hersch


Q453. Any discussion of a Wordnik takeover of SpecGram is purely speculative.

—Erin McKean


Q452. That would be meeting the Serious Linguists on their own specious terms. You could not hope to survive. Only subvert to prosper.

—Stan Carey


Q451. Keep linguistic conflict in the abstract domain—only there can satire prevail. You might be no match for the Fist of Generativism!

—Stan Carey


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Last updated Jan. 22, 2025.