Quotes—Page 9: 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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Q750. Those make my day. Now its finally clear as light!!!

Bisabuelo Inc.


Q749. AW THESE ARE RLY CUTE

—How Deep is the Rabbit Hole?


Q748. Languages are all beautiful, regardless how hard they are to master.

Travels Tales and Typos


Q747. Seriously reconsidering my decision to not study language.

—Michael


Q746. I must be dumb. :-(

—Silicon Valley Burnout


Q745. BOOOO. It’s an attractive system, but not particularly descriptively useful.

—ᏕᏌᎷᎷᏋᏒ ᎢᏋᏋᎢᏲ


Q744. Review of the new Speculative Grammarian book begins, “Ben Zimmer and The Harvard Lampoon have a torrid one-night affair (over a spaghetti and lasagna dinner) from which results a lovely baby.” That’s quite an image.

Ben Zimmer


Q743. Hippie Linguists? I need The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics.

Jessica Love


Q742. Must-read for satirical linguists.

Paola Bortesi


Q741. SpecGram has a book out. Linguistics dorks rejoice!

James Harbeck


Q740. Xmas list must.

Paula Chertok


Q739. I’m overwhelmed by the amount of SpecGram back catalog, and ashamed to admit I’m not incredibly familiar with it.

Brianne Hughes


Q738. Love the newest LMD, you guys are clever! The proof is in the outtakes :)

—Veronika Richtarcikova


Q737. Essential seems right.

David Spencer


Q736. Oh man I really recommend that How Linguistics Got Her Groove Back paper. <3

kaesespaetzle


Q735. Speculative Grammarian is a joke journal covering “the neglected field of satirical linguistics”. Other articles in this issue include Romney accusing Obama of planning to eliminate verbs from AmEng, and one about a secret underground group of linguists working to sabotage natural language processing. (Granted, a little while back they actually had a very good primer on coming up with “alien” conlangs for science fiction...)

Lemons


Q734. The point ... is well taken, but I think making the claim that linguists don’t use the word ‘grammar’ may be misleading.

derrybo


Q733. SpecGram is pretty much awesome so you should buy their book!

Wug Life


Q732. As with much satire, the more you know about various linguistics theories, the more you appreciate the various ways of making fun of them, so I probably wouldn’t recommend [The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics] for very beginner protolinguists (although you could perhaps gauge your learning by how many of the jokes you get?) but if you like the articles and cartoons on SpecGram in general, then this is a great collection of the best ones, which can get buried in the monthly issues on the website. And if you’re not sure if you like the articles in general, then browsing the website is a pretty easy way to find out.

All Things Linguistic


Q731. [The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics] would make a great coffeetable book to impress your ling friends.

All Things Linguistic


Q730. While I don’t know that I would call [The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics] “essential”, I will tell you that it is essentially absurd and all-encompassing. ... There are many impressive diagrams and illustrations that really shed light on the more difficult topics (they also add to the aesthetically pleasing nature of the book). I do believe that this book is an overwhelming indulgence that should not be avoided.

Laura Payne


Q729. Complete with a choose-your-own-career-in-linguistics adventure game (German-sign-language-shaped dice not included), [The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics] is the ultimate gift for the budding language student, the jaded academic or the holistic forensic linguist. And just in time for Christmas.

Sean Roberts


Q728. What does a Labio-nasal sound like? What is the laziest language on earth? How can a knowledge of linguistics help make macaroni cheese? What is the tiny phoneme hypothesis? Where can you find a book that synergises all the loose ends of linguistics into a unified, transparent theory? I don’t know. In the meanwhile, try reading The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics.

Sean Roberts


Q727. The editors and contributors obviously know their stuff, don’t take themselves (or their discipline) over-seriously, and enjoy playing with linguistics, language, and languages to create something new, amusing, and (dare we say) even educational at times. The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics provides a light-hearted romp for those unafraid to plunge into the invigorating and hilarious waters of ‘satirical linguistics.’

Don Boozer


Q726. Like satire? The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics is here!

—Stalley


Q725. The Speculative Grammarian Essential Guide to Linguistics (unabashed promotion of awesome humor!)

Wug Life


Q724. Everything you like about Speculative Grammariannow in print!!

Callum Robson


Q723. Haven’t you been wishing you had copies of Speculative Grammarian lying around the house for entertainment in those odd moments of boredom? Now you can!

Keith Slater


Q722. NEED.

—Lovers Without Wings


Q721. I think I need this. Very, very much.

David


Q720. A completely incomprehensible paragraph from SpecGram.

Laura Bailey


Q719. Long live Speculative Grammarian!

наташа короткова


Q718. [Statistical translation] is, of course, dangerous if you can’t speak the target language, since many glaring mistakes can fall through, as this nice comic shows.

Jorge Diz


Q717. Oh finally, a sensible explanation.

semancetics


Q716. Joining SpecGram has been the best thing I’ve ever done for the health of my liver.

Madalena Cruz-Ferreira


Q715. I love SpecGram so much!! [P]roto-linguists [don’t] necessarily ... get all the jokes for sure, but that’s not to say we (at least I) get a good amount of them, and whenever I see a joke I don’t get, it makes for a good research topic! SpecGram is a wonderful place to browse when you don’t feel like going through the sometimes stressfully wonderful Wikipedia, but want to learn something linguisticky :D Also it’s hilarious and really comforting when I do get a joke, because I know I’ve learned something :)

—Sunny


Q714. This fascinates me.

—Conor


Q713. Fascinant...

thequeenofthedivan


Q712. Give me all the linguistic things! Or, you know, all the linguistic things with helpful pictoral diagrams so that I can actually begin to understand what I’m asking for.

Sheath and Shear


Q711. I kind of love the conjoined quintuplets in the Spanish sentence.

aeternā mente


Q710. Linguistics is my new favourite subject :D

—Ángela López


Q709. Linguist here, can confirm it’s just the way language works.

R-Colored


Q708. I’m a regular listener and a fan. ... Thanks for being awesome.

—Veronika Richtarcikova


Q707. Thanks SpecGram—you high-brow journal, you.

Ronaldo Lorrenzo Jorge VonSperling-Dovenski


Q706. Pff. If only Speculative Grammarian weren’t venerable, only contained mediocre articles, and less instead of more, at least I’d read it then...

David Njenfalgar


Q705. This is how you make kids love linguistics: Structural Ambiguity.

Doby Banov


Q704. Just all kinds of awesomeness.

Pia Massaro


Q703. How did I miss this? In case you ever wanted to know the difference between phonetics and phonology, here’s a diagram that explains all.

Cath


Q702. Here’s a funny example of Fake Russian Accent in broad IPA.

—TheMathmanProphecies


Q701. The Oxford Comma: A Solution, brought to you by the beloved Cockney flower vendor, Eliza Doolittle.

Christine


More ...


Last updated Nov. 29, 2019.