Written by Lucy, Year 12
This year on the 11th of February 14 students from Years 10-13 took the Advanced Section of the UK Linguistics Olympiad, run by Frau Liebrecht and Mr Lonsdale. Similar to the Maths Challenge, familiar to students across year groups, run all across the country, so the group was in good company. One Year 12 said, ‘It was really fun, so even if I hadn’t won anything, I’d still do it again next year!’
The paper is designed to challenge and develop your linguistic skills, which are largely based on pattern-recognition, logic, and persistent problem-solving. This means nobody needed to know any specific languages, or any language at all other than English to participate (in fact the papers are designed for that!). Linguistics is the study of language as a whole, rather than any specific language, which means the only thing they needed to do was some practice!
Frau Liebrecht and Mr Lonsdale ran Linguistics Club for a few months beforehand where anyone could come to do so. Students started with Foundation Level papers to build confidence, which included correcting Yoda-Speak. If that sounds interesting, or you enjoy Modern Foreign Languages, Classics, Maths, or Computer Science, you should give it a go next year.
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The results:
Eunsong (Year 12) – Bronze
Lucy (Year 12) – Bronze
Maya (Year 10) – Bronze
Nadeen (Year 12) – Silver
Izzi Millar (Year 13) – Silver
Congratulations to Eunsong, Lucy, Maya, Nadeen, and Izzi, and a huge well done to everyone who took part!