Olympic flame burns for young linguists
Posted on 21 March 2012
They will compete in the third UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO) in which school students compete to solve linguistic data problems.
Although UKLO is the only Humanities Olympiad, the logic factor means that it also appeals to physics and maths students
Dr Sam Hellmuth
School students enter at three levels – Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced – and Round One of the competition took place in schools last month. Over 2,000 students took part in the competition this year.
A team of independent adjudicators, including academics in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York, marked scripts for the Advanced competition. The best 16 students from across the country go through to the residential Round 2 – which York is hosting this year (23-25 March).
In 2011, All Saints School in York won the ‘School of the Year’ award and one of the school’s team, Jake Lishman, represented the UK at the 2011 International Linguistics Olympiad in Pittsburgh, USA.
One of the organisers of UKLO, Dr Sam Hellmuth, of the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at York, says: “The residential is essentially a language analysis training ‘boot camp’ – culminating in the Round 2 three-hour competition on the final morning. The winners of Round 2 will go on to represent the UK at the 2012 International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), which this year will be hosted by Slovenia.
“Linguistic science argues that all the world’s languages are equally logical under the surface. Those shared patterns are what makes it possible for UKLO competitors to decipher sentences in languages as diverse as Waorani (Ecuador) and Waanyi (Australia).
“Although UKLO is the only Humanities Olympiad, the logic factor means that it also appeals to physics and maths students.”
The UK Linguistics Olympiad is chaired by Professor Dick Hudson, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at University College, London.
Professor Hudson says: “We find that school students really enjoy grappling with the intricacies of language structure, and for the Olympiad we devise tests which stretch the very brightest, often based on languages which most of us have never heard of.
“Our puzzles give the challenge of a crossword puzzle and sudoku rolled into one, with the extra reward of having learned not only a real bit of a real language, but the skill to do the same for any other language.”
Notes to editors:
- More information about the UK Linguistics Olympiad at www.uklo.org/
- More information about the 2012 International Linguistics Olympiad at www.ioling.org/
- More information about the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York at www.york.ac.uk/language/
- Hosting of the Round 2 residential at the University of York has been made possible in part thanks to financial support from the York Annual Fund (alumni and friends of the University).
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