St Mary’s Hosts the Finals of the UK Linguistics Olympiad

The finals of the UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO) will take place at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham on Sunday 24^th March. The 17 UK finalists were selected from over 6,000 school pupils who participated in the first round of the competition. The successful candidates will go on to represent their country at the International Linguistics Olympiad, to be held in Manchester in July. The UK Linguistics Olympiad is a competition for students who are still at secondary school and involves solving linguistic data problems. Similar competitions happen in a number of other countries, though it’s only recently that they’ve taken place in English-speaking countries. The UKLO has enjoyed phenomenal growth since its launch three years ago. The number of entrants doubled in 2011 and 2012 and this year numbers have trebled. This means that in 2013 over 6,000 young people from 338 participating school across the country have entered the first round of the Olympiad, with one school entering a staggering 475 pupils. During the Olympiad, competitors answer questions about not only English but about a range of languages, many of which they may never even have heard of. A typical question would ask the entrant to analyse short sentences from an unfamiliar language, which could be a relatively well-known language such as Japanese or something less familiar like the native American Papago. Having worked out the meanings of simple sentences, contestants are then invited to translate sentences from English into the new target language.  Other tasks range from traditional code-breaking to devising a computational system for spotting errors in translation.  All are designed to encourage types of thinking not required by the National Curriculum. Professor of Applied Linguistics at St Mary’s Pauline Foster said, “We are very pleased give our support to the UKLO by hosting this event. It is a wonderful showcase for the discipline of linguistics and the fun to be had in intellectual challenges.”