All-Ireland Linguistics Olympiad held at Dublin City University

More than 80 transition-year and fifth-year students took part in Ireland’s first All-Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) which was opened by DCU President, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski. The Individual competition was won by Dylan Coburn Gray, Mount Temple School, Dublin and the Team competition was Newtown School, Waterford.

The Olympiad involves face-to-face competition where teams or individuals use their ingenuity, creativity and skill to solve language-related problems, such as deciphering a rare writing system, figuring out the grammar rules for an unusual language, or matching up sentences and their translations by identifying correspondences between languages.

The AILO was organised by the SFI-funded research Centre for Next Generation Localisation as part of its Education and Outreach programme. The competition involves both individual and team rounds, with schools from all over Ireland sending teams. Researchers from the Centre visited individual schools earlier in the year to give them training, and the competition has met with an enthusiastic response.

The competition has greatest appeal to students who like not just languages but also maths, computers, and solving logic problems.

Winners of today’s competition will take part in the International Linguistics Olympiads (ILOs), which will be held in Wroclaw, Poland in July 2009. The results will be announced within one week.