1. 1 The UK Linguistics Olympiad Some facts and figures Dick Hudson LAGB September 2011

2. 2 International History 1965: First Linguistics Olympiad in Moscow, run by Uspensky, Kibrik, Polivanova, Zalizniak, and Zhurinsky. 2003: First International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), in Bulgaria. 2009: USA launched the English Language Computational Linguistics Olympiad, a consortium of English-speaking countries which share test material. 2011: Ninth IOL in Pittsburgh, USA, with 102 contestants representing 19 countries. Website: www.ioling.org/

3. 3 UK History 2009: Two UK schools competed as guests of the All-Irish olympiad (AILO), and one team represented the UK at the IOL. 2010: UKLO founded as a sub-committee of the Committee for Linguistics in Education. Since 2009, the UK has won –3 bronze medals –1 best-solution prize (Nathan Somers) –3 honorable mentions at the IOL. 2013: the UK will host the IOL

4. 4 UK infrastructure UKLO committee: –10 linguists –3 school teachers A team of volunteer markers (http://bit.ly/uklo_markers)http://bit.ly/uklo_markers A team of problem builders (bit.ly/uklo_problemsetters)bit.ly/uklo_problemsetters 13 sponsoring organisations A patron (Christine Ohuruogu, MBE)

5. 5 UK organisation Early February: Round 1 –taken in schools –three levels of difficulty: Foundation, Intermediate, Advanced –Advanced papers are marked centrally, the others by the school Late March: Round 2 –residential, in a University (2012: York, 2013: ?) –three resident tutors

6. 6 UK take-up 201020112012 schools entering3857170 state/independent1.311.4 pupils competing6031226 Advanced/Foundation2.062.13 Advanced: male/female1.40.86

7. 7 Age distribution (2011) Y7Y8Y9Y10Y11Y12Y13 Foundation322914011947299 Advanced0349101179355144 Compare the Maths Challenge: 600,000 per year!

8. 8 A sample problem: Japaneasy By Harold Somers Japanese is written using a variety of scripts including Chinese characters. But for the purposes of learning to read, and in the case of unusual words, it is quite common to use a phonetic system, hiragana. Shown below on the left are eight examples of simple Japanese words, with their pronunciation in a random order on the right. English meanings are also given but for information only – they play no part in solving this problem. Q1. (4 marks) Use the table in the answer sheet to show how the words on the left correspond to the pronunciations on the right.

9. 9 The data 1. あか A. kita ‘north’ 2. さと B. kao ‘face’ 3. でんき C. denki ‘electricity’ 4. あさ D. tsudo ‘every time’ 5. かつどん E. asa ‘morning’ 6. かお F. katsudon ‘pork and rice’ 7. きた G. aka ‘red’ 8. つど H. sato ‘village’

10. 10 More questions Q2. (3 marks) How would you pronounce the following Japanese words? (a) おでき ‘eruption’ (b) だん ‘group’ Q3. (3 marks) How would you write the following words in hiragana? (a)satsu ‘banknote’ (b)kanten ‘point of view’

11. 11 Volunteers needed for marking (5/10 hours in February) for building problems ?? for training teachers ?? My email address: dick@ling.ucl.ac.uk