Well done to the students in Years 10-13, who participated in the UK Intermediate Linguistics Olympiad 2021 on 3rd February via Microsoft Teams. Our students had to solve data problems in four languages: Ditema, Filipino, Longgu and Latvian and thoroughly enjoyed the challenge.
Jake - Year 11 student and dual linguist.
What is The UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO*)?
*Pronounced /juklou/
UKLO is a fun but challenging competition for any school-age student interested in language. It is much like the Mathematics Challenge, but with all problem sets taken from language. In a typical UKLO problem, participants see data from one of the world’s 7,000 languages and need to work out how a specific aspect of this language works based on these examples. Cracking the code is good for analytical skills, but it also shows participants how fascinating languages are. Completely free to both competitors and schools, UKLO also enters at least one team each year in the International Linguistics Olympiad, and in recent years the UK teams have been very successful.
“I loved taking part in the linguistics Olympiad with my friends. I never thought I’d find myself reading Latvian or Filipino on a Wednesday afternoon, so it was an interesting turn of events when we decided to participate! It was very fun and I’d definitely recommend taking part, regardless of whether you like languages or not." Jake - Year 11 student and dual linguist.
Mrs Jennifer Leroux, Teacher of French and Spanish, and Assistant Housemistress of Swallows praised the collaborative spirit of our students:
"It was great to see over 30 students volunteer to take part on Wednesday afternoon. They worked collaboratively in teams of up to four students, and the feedback from the event was very positive. Congratulations to everyone involved."
Read more about UKLO at UKLO.org
