IOL logo competition!

The linguistic puzzles of this year's IOL might be over, but we have another competition left:

The IOL logo competition!

We need a logo. Submit your design before the 1st of November and you can win gifts from all over the world! More about the rules of the competition and how to submit here.

We look forward to your contributions!

Videos from IOL 2015

Home and missing the people are this years even? Or didn't go but curious? Be sure to check out the videos from this years event, all can be found here!

Here is one of them, this now features a rather spectacular arrangement with a drone!

Results and problems are all out!

RESULTS!

PROBLEM SET!

They're out, enjoy!

More updates about this year coming.

The contest and award parts of the IOL might be over, but the events are still going on as we speak! How are the people at the official IOL Excursion enjoying themselves? Read more about it here: http://ift.tt/1D1k23P

There has been an update on the Facebook page for 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad. For original post, visit: http://ift.tt/1MhFkNv.
The contest and award parts of the IOL might be over, but the events are still going on as we speak! How are the people at the official IOL Excursion enjoying themselves? Read more about it here: http://ift.tt/1D1k23P

Results | IOL 2015

http://ift.tt/1fryKGk The results are officially out! Congratulations to all winners, and enjoy the rest of your time in Bulgaria!

http://ift.tt/1fryKGk Best,

Best,
Local Organising Committee in Bulgaria of the 13th International Linguistics Olympiad (This post originates from 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad Facebook-page: http://ift.tt/1fryKGk).

Results | IOL 2015

http://ift.tt/1fryKGk Здравейте! Keep an eye on this page, pretty soon we'll start posting the results from the Individual and the Team contests LIVE!

http://ift.tt/1fryKGk Best,

Best,
Local Organising Committee in Bulgaria of the 13th International Linguistics Olympiad (This post originates from 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad Facebook-page: http://ift.tt/1fryKGk).

The BULPROS and AUBG party

And the drone video http://youtu.be/8ANM5es-cR4

http://youtu.be/8ANM5es-cR4 Best,

Best,
Local Organising Committee in Bulgaria of the 13th International Linguistics Olympiad (This post originates from 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad Facebook-page: http://youtu.be/8ANM5es-cR4).

IOL excursion contest - Photo diary Tell us about your trip to the Rila Monastery through interesting and original photos. There will be prizes for the best diaries! More info later today.

There has been an update on the Facebook page for 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad. For original post, visit: http://ift.tt/1MhFkNv.
IOL excursion contest - Photo diary Tell us about your trip to the Rila Monastery through interesting and original photos. There will be prizes for the best diaries! More info later today.

Daily Bulletin of the 13th IOL!

In addition to following this years event on Facebook and other places, you can also read the Daily Bulletin! Two days have past, the individual contest is over and tomorrow is excursions day! Be sure to stay updated and follow all the fun things going on.

And the individual contest is now under way! Good luck to everybody, and keep your fingers crossed for your country's teams, they will need all the help they can get!

There has been an update on the Facebook page for 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad. For original post, visit: http://ift.tt/1MhFkNv.
And the individual contest is now under way! Good luck to everybody, and keep your fingers crossed for your country's teams, they will need all the help they can get!

19th July | IOL 2015

Здравейте! Less than one day until the biggest IOL ever, are you excited? Stay up-to-date with the IOL events by following our daily bulletin: http://ift.tt/1OfD2w9
http://ift.tt/1OfD2w9 Best,
Local Organising Committee in Bulgaria of the 13th International Linguistics Olympiad (This post originates form 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad.

The North American teams have already made their way to AUBG. Are you next?

There has been an update on the Facebook page for 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad. For original post, visit: http://ift.tt/1MhFkNv.
The North American teams have already made their way to AUBG. Are you next?

How well do you know the 18 languages of this year's IOL? Match sentence to language!

So, following up on yesterday's posts about the 18 languages of this years International Linguistics Olympiad: how well do you know them? Here is a phrase in all of the languages, can you guys match the pairs (without googling)? I've also snuck in one extra language, 2 bonus point if you can label it. The correct answer is found at the bottom, in tiny light-yellow print (copy-paste to elsewhere to read). Happy pairing, let us know how you did in the comments!

1. One language is never enough
2. Един език никога не е достатъчен   (Edin ezik nikoga ne e dostatãčen)
3. 種語言永遠不夠 [一种语言永远不够] (yīzhǒng yǔyán yǒngyuǎn bùgòu)
4. Jeden jazyk nikdy nestačí
5. Eén taal is nooit genoeg
6. Ühest keelest ei piisa kunagi
7. Une seule langue n'est jamais suffisante
8. 言語を一つは決して足りない (gengo o hitotsu wa kesshite tarinai)
9. Ar vienu valodu nekad nepietiek
10. Jeden język nigdy nie wystarcza
11. O singură limbă nu ajunge niciodată
12. Одного языка никогда не достаточно (Odnovo jazyka nikogda nedostatočno)
13. En jezik ni nikoli dovolj
14. Ett språk är aldrig nog
15. Bir dil asla yeterli değildir
16. Однієї мови ніколи не досить (Odnijeji movy nikoly ne dosyt')
17. Un idioma nunca es suficiente
18. Egy nyelv sosem elég
19. Unu lingvo neniam sufiĉas

A Estonian (Finnic, Uralic)

B English (American & British version separate) (Germanic, Indo-European)

C Swedish (Germanic, Indo-European)

D Spanish (Romance, Indo-European)

E Hungarian (Hungarian, Uralic)

F French (Romance, Indo-European)

G Bulgarian (Slavic, Indo-European)

H Romanian (Romance, Indo-European)

I Russian (Slavic, Indo-European)

J Mandarin Chinese (Sinitic, Sino-Tibetan)

K Dutch (Germanic, Indo-European)

L Slovene (Slavic, Indo-European)

M Polish (Slavic, Indo-European)

N Turkish (Oghuz, Turkic)

O Japanese (Japonic)

P Czech (Slavic, Indo-European)

Q Latvian (Baltic, Indo-European)

R Ukrainian (Slavic, Indo-European)

These sentences were taken from Omniglot, thanks Simon Ager!

Here's a map from AMCharts showing all the countries that are participating in this years contest.

******DON'T LOOK BELOW IF YOU'RE NOT DONE :)! ******

Correct answers: 1B, 2G, 3J, 4P, 5K, 6A, 7F, 8O, 9Q, 10M, 11H, 12I, 13L, 14C, 15N, 16R, 17D, 18E and 19: Esperanto!

The 18 Languages of the 13th International Linguistics Olympiad (2015, Blagoevgrad)

The International Linguistics Olympiad treasures linguistic diversity, this is why we do not require all participants to compete English or another large language, but instead we give all participating countries the opportunity to compete in their own language. We cannot, unfortunately,  accommodate all 7,000+ of the planet. This year, the 44 teams from 29 countries will be provided the problem set in 18 languages - a most impressive task on behalf of the Problem Committee and Jury, as I'm sure you will soon understand. 

The IOL problem committee (the creators of the problem set for the international contest) request that all of the different national contests that are participating in the international contest submit what language they will compete in, well before the contest. Typically this is the same as the language of their national contest. Our policy is that the national contests should be held in the language of the majority of the population or the language of education.  The Problem Committee have a special method for creating the basic problem as free from any one language as possible and later employs translators. The identity of the translators are only known to the Problem Committee, the board and the team leaders are not involved.

This year the participants will be competing in the following languages:

• Estonian (Finnic, Uralic)
• English (American & British version separate) (Germanic, Indo-European)
• Swedish (Germanic, Indo-European)
• Spanish (Romance, Indo-European)
• Hungarian (Hungarian, Uralic)
• French (Romance, Indo-European)
• Bulgarian (Slavic, Indo-European)
• Romanian (Romance, Indo-European)
• Russian (Slavic, Indo-European)
• Mandarin Chinese (Sinitic, Sino-Tibetan)
• Dutch (Germanic, Indo-European)
• Slovene (Slavic, Indo-European)
• Polish (Slavic, Indo-European)
• Turkish (Oghuz, Turkic)
• Japanese (Japonic)
• Czech (Slavic, Indo-European)
• Latvian (Baltic, Indo-European)
• Ukrainian (Slavic, Indo-European)

Most of these languages are Indo-European and they reflect where there is a strong tradition of these contest, i.e. Slavic countries. I'm a typologist (me = Hedvig), i.e. I work with systematic cross-linguistic comparison of the world-s languages, and just as a side note I'd like to remark that this sample is not at all representative of the languages of the world in terms of regions and families, Indo-European is only the fifth largest language family of the world. It is however quite representative of language with large speaker populations. For more about these kinds of things I can recommend exploring Ethnologue statistics and this post.

As I stated previously, the Problem Committee employs a special method to make the core of the problem as unbiased for any languages as possible.  If you want to read more about how that works, read this: Derzhanski, Ivan (2013) Multilingual Editing of Linguistic Problems, In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Teaching NLP and CL August 2013 Sofia, Bulgaria Association for Computational Linguistics 27–34  Ivan Derzhanski is one of the founders of the international contest, a constant member of the problem committee & jury and co-chair of the board of the IOL.

If a participant from one country wishes to compete in different language from their team mates in the individual round, this is alright as long as the language is already represented anyway. Say for example that a Swedish contestant wants to compete in Turkish, this is perfectly alright. A contestant who would like to compete in Jiddisch or Finnish for this year will unfortunately not be able to do so, even if it is their mother tongue and/or an official language of their country.

Participants cannot get the problem set in more than one language, and for the team contest each team can only have the problem set in one language. Having the problem in more than one language is usually an advantage, this is why it is not allowed.

Remember, the contestants do not only receive the problem set in different languages, they also submit (in handwriting, mind you) their solutions in their respective different languages. The jury is not divided into different groups according to languages, but by problems. This means that one or several jury members grade all solutions for one problem, in all languages (no doubt with the help of those with more expertise in specific languages, but still). This is pretty impressive, to say the least, and something that we in the IOL are very, very proud of. If you meet a member of the Problem Committee, be sure to thank them and be very friendly to them. While the participants are all out on the excursions etc they are slaving away correcting solutions to several very complicated and hard problems in 18 languages, submitted in handwriting.

THANK YOU PROBLEM COMMITTEE AND JURY!

It is now 3 days left until this years contest starts. All the best of luck to everyone.

POST-EDIT: Just to be perfectly clear, the IOL is not a contest in competence of language - i.e. we are not assessing how well the contestants know different languages. We are testing their skill at figuring out linguistic puzzles, and we appreciate their linguistic diversity. To see samples of the problems they are facing, click here.

Soon it's time: IOL 2015!! #ioling - greetings to all from board member in Australia

It's now 5 days left until this years International Olympiad in Linguistics! Students, team leaders, organisers and jury members are soon starting their journeys to Blagoevgrad in Bulgaria, in fact many have already started! People are flying in from all the way from Australia, Japan, Estonia, Isle of Man and many more places. There will be 44 teams from 29 countries, competing in 18 languages on fantastic linguistic problems concocted by our wonderful problem committee and to be graded by the fantastic jury. (If you want to know more about the languages of the IOL, click here.)

If I may, I'd just like to introduce myself and address all people currently on their way or already at this year's event. My name is Hedvig Skirgård, I'm a member of the IOL board and I work with our public outreach together with Simona Klemenčič. (I am also part of the organisation of the Swedish contest, but nowadays I live in Australia where I'm doing my PhD in linguistics.) This will be the first time in 7 years that I cannot attend, and I just want to wish all participants the very best via this our blog since I cannot be there. Good luck everyone! I hope you do well in the contest, but also in making friends. The IOL is a great opportunity to connect with other likeminded young people from all over the world, I hope you all will have a great time and meet many fun new friends!

Linguistics is a great discipline, and it's getting more and more exciting every year. There's lots happening and we're very glad to get to know young enthusiastic people and engage with you. Don't be scare to ask us organisers and team leaders questions about linguistics and academic life. You can also, if you want pose questions here on this blog I run about linguistic diversity and description.

There are many people working to bring this all together: Aleksandar Velinov and his team of local organiser, the IOL board, the problem committee, the organisers of the contests in each country, team leaders, sponsors and more. I want to wish all of them the very best, and hope that this will be fun for them as well. If you are a participant reading this, be sure to be terribly nice to all of these people, as usual :)!

Also: don't forget to use the hashtag #IOLING when sharing photos and posts on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc)!

All the best wishes to everyone from Hedvig in Canberra - 15,364 km away

Want to find our more about the IOL? Visit these sites!

General website for IOL

Website for this years event: 13th IOL in Bulgaria 

Old Problems from the IOL

Rules of the IOL

Contact form

Follow us, engage with other interested people and get updates!

The 13th IOL (2015) on Facebook-page

Facebook-group for participants 2015

General twitter for IOL

General Facebook page for IOL (i.e. all years)

General Blogger for IOL

General tumblr for IOL

And don't forget: Един език никога не е достатъчен!

Късмет!

Довиждане!

Solving your way through languages & codes: the International Linguistics Olympiad

New post at the Facebook page 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad:
We want to recommend this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fu44oJqDjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fu44oJqDjI As the IOL draws nearer, here is a neat video from last year about the competition and linguistics as a whole! What kind of problems do you expect on the Olympiad this year?
Best,
Local Organising Committee in Bulgaria of the 13th International Linguistics Olympiad

Schedule | IOL 2015

New post at the Facebook page 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad:
We want to recommend this: http://ift.tt/1gsChFf http://ift.tt/1gsChFf There are exactly 10 days left until the biggest IOL so far!! This should give you just enough time for some last minute planning, so if you haven't already, click below and get familiar with the final schedule of the event!
Best,
Local Organising Committee in Bulgaria of the 13th International Linguistics Olympiad

Why You Need To Go To Bulgaria

New post at the Facebook group for this years IOL:
Здравейте! http://ift.tt/1gf6Uho Most of you are coming to Bulgaria nonetheless, but still, here is a nice list of reasons you SHOULD visit our country :)
This post originates from 13-th International Linguistics Olympiad http://ift.tt/1gf6Uho, for latest news and version please visit it.