On Thursday 8th February, 16 BGS students from Year 10 and 2 students from Year 9 took part in the UK Linguistics Olympiad 2024, a language-analysis competition for secondary schools in which pupils solve language puzzles. The aim of this initiative is to encourage a lifelong interest in the world’s languages.

The language puzzles were presented in the following languages for the Intermediate level, which was sat by 4 teams:

1. Xhosa, or isiXhosa: one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 10 million people as their first language, and by 11 million people as an additional language, mostly in South Africa, making it the second most widely spoken language in South Africa after Zulu.

2. Tariana: an endangered language spoken in the Vaupés river area in Brazil, close to the border with Columbia. There are about 100 speakers left of Tariana, while there are a further 1,500 Tariana people who no longer speak the language.

3. The Adinkra symbols: these are symbols that represent concepts originally created by the Bono people (Ghana). They represent various concepts or proverbs and can be used to convey various morals or beliefs.

4. Kannada: a Dravidian language spoken by around 60 million people, primarily in the Karnataka state in south-west India. It is written in the Kannada script, and has a literary tradition dating back over 1000 years.

 In order to solve these puzzles, students have to use a range of skills: pattern-recognition, analysis, lateral thinking and problem solving. What’s most impressive is that competitors have to not only make these analyses mentally, but also put them into words in an explicit explanation of how the underlying system works in order to solve the challenge.

We are very proud to have such brilliant, talented linguists in our school, and we wish them the best of luck while we wait for their results. Last but not least, well done to Ashna Adhikari for coordinating all teams!

Ms Giglione, MFL Department

 

Below you can find some of the challenges from the Intermediate paper.