New post on the IOL-facebook page August 03, 2018 at 01:58PM

We will be publishing the results of IOL Prague 2018 soon, please hold on a little bit longer. #IOLing
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New post on the IOL-facebook page August 02, 2018 at 06:07PM

Thank you everyone who participated and supported this years International Linguistics olympiad in Prague! Thanks to all the team leaders, organisers, jurors, problem committee members, local organisers, volunteers, board and more! Well done everyone! #IOLing
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New post on the IOL-facebook page July 30, 2018 at 03:57PM

FINAL RESULTS (IOL 2018, Prague) 1) Individual Contest Winner: Przemysław Podleśny (Poland - Biali) 95+ points 2) Best Average Team: USA Blue (Benjamin LaFond, Russell Emerine, Pranav Krishna, Mihir Singhal) 3) Team Contest (Gold Medal): USA Blue (Benjamin LaFond, Russell Emerine, Pranav Krishna, Mihir Singhal)
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New post on the IOL-facebook page July 26, 2018 at 09:34PM

The Individual Contest starts tomorrow at 9:00 AM in the yellow building (FAPPZ). There will be volunteers available in front of the Jih building at 8:30 AM to guide you there if you're not sure where to go. Make sure to pick up your lunch boxes at the canteen during the breakfast so that you have enough energy for problem solving! Good luck to all 🤖 #IOLing
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New post on the IOL-facebook page July 20, 2018 at 11:33PM

What languages do you know? This year the problem set will be available in 19 languages. However, our contestants and team leaders probably speak more languages than that! Can anyone beat our multilingual jury's competence? Let's see! Comment the languages you know. You can add in your competence level too, in CEFR (A1 - C2) or however you chose to describe how well you know it. #IOLing
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The 19 languages of this years IOL 2018 in Prague

IOL 2016 ceremony

Every year in the International Linguistics Olympiad we feature a multitude of different languages both in the problem sets themselves, and also as spoken by the contestants. The contestants are also able to receive the problem and hand in the solution in some other languages besides English. It is common for international olympiads to have the problem set in several different languages, we don't want to be biased against non-English speakers - in particular not at a linguistics contest. If you want to know more about the multilingual workings of the IOL, go here.

We won't reveal anything about the problem set before hand, of course, but we are hereby announcing the languages in which the contest will receive the problems and that they can answer in.

Languages of the IOL 2018

1. English (European & North American) 
2. Hungarian 
3. Swedish 
4. Russian 
5. Ukrainian 
6. Estonian 
7. Danish 
8. Polish 
9. French 
10. Chinese (Traditional & Simplified)
11. Portuguese (Brazilian) 
12. Japanese 
13. Czech 
14. Slovene 
15. Dutch 
16. Romanian 
17. Bulgarian 
18. Korean 
19. Nepali

All solutions and problems now up for IOL 2017!

All problems and solutions of IOL 2017 are now up, including the solution to the team contest problem (Indonesian + Emojis).

They're all here!

Well done everyone who competed! How did you do? Tells us in the comments!

Solutions IOL 2017 problems

The solutions to the problems of the individual contest have now been uploaded! How did you do? Let us know in the comments how well you did at solving the problems without having access to the solutions. The team problems will be released soon, hold on :)!

Bruno L'Astoria, author of problem #3 on Kimbundu, has kindly shared the slides of his presentation from Dublin. You can find them here. 

Kimbundu is an Altantic-Congo (Bantu) language of Angola. There were a lot of slaves taken from this region of Africa to Brazil for forced labour to produce goods for Europe. Brazilian Portuguese is different from European Portuguese, and there is a long discussion on the influence of different African languages on its development. Kimbundu is one of the languages that is believed to have had a significant influence on the development of Brazilian Portuguese.

Milena Veneva, author of problem #1 on Birom, has also kindly shared presentation slides. You can find those here.

Languages of Africa, based on Ethnologue. Niger-Congo in green
Screen grab from Langscape, © 2014 University of Maryland

Birom is also an Atlantic-Congo language, but of a different branch: Plateau and it is spoken in Nigeria. Nigeria is one of the most linguistically diverse countries on the planet, it is estimated that over 500 languages are spoken there! Atlantic-Congo* is the largest language family in the world, with over 1,400 members!

For more information on how people did solving these two problems, insights from the authors etc, please see the presentation slides :)!

*There are two different names for this family, you might be more familiar with "Niger-Congo" than "Atlantic-Congo". They are different, and have different members. It all depends on how far back you believe that you can reconstruct this family. Glottolog is more conservative and uses "Atlantic-Congo", while Ethnologue is more inclusive and uses the label "Niger-Congo". One of the largest differences in the members of these two groups is whether or not to include Mande languages. "Niger-Congo" includes Mande, but "Atlantic-Congo" does not include Mande languages. Both of these labels include Bantu languages, the largest subgroup with over 600 languages.

Problems of IOL 2017 - you've got ten days to find the solutions!

The problems of IOL 2017 have been made available online! Hugh Dobbs, the chair of the Problem Committee, has given you all ten days to try and solve the problems, and then we will upload the solutions. So get craicing!

You can submit your suggested solutions down below in the comments of this blogpost if you want, that way they'll be time-stamped and we can compare them to the solutions when they are published ;)!

Solvers Choice Awards: Tae Hun Lee and the problem on Laven language and Khom script
Contrary to speculations by LNNO, the member of the Problem Committee who received the Solver's Choice awards was not Ksenia Gilyarova, but Tae Hun Lee. He received the award for problem number 4, which was about the language Laven (Jru') and the Khom script. Laven (Jru') is an Austroasiatic language spoken in Laos by approximately 28,000 people. The Khom script was used for this language from 1924 to 1936.

The Khom script was invited by Ong Kommandam and used in the rebellion by the hill Mon-Khmer groups  ("Khom") against French and Lao rule. In an article in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, linguist Paul Sidwell writes: 

The script was used by a political leader as part of his resistance effort against the colonial French, used to symbolize his power more than to communicate factual content. The script is unique in the way it has separate symbols for... <text hidden because spoiler>

Can you figure out what it is that Sidwell points out as unique with the Khom script? Let us know!

*** Update. The PDFs are now found in the regular place on the official website.

Winners of IOL 2017!

The results of the International Linguistics Olympiad 2017 contests are now available in full online!

This post has been updated so that it lists all awards (not just the gold winners).

Individual Competition

Samuel Ahmed	UK	GOLD
Przemysław Podleśny	Poland	GOLD	Best Sol. #1	Best Sol. #4
Liam McKnight	UK	GOLD
Ruei Hung Alex Lee	Taiwan	GOLD	Best Sol. #2
Zdravko Ivanov	Bulgaria	GOLD
Simeon Hellsten	UK	GOLD
Brian Xiao	USA	GOLD	Best Sol. #3
Valentin Dimov	Bulgaria	GOLD
Elena Keskinova	Bulgaria	GOLD
Theodor Cucu	Romania	GOLD
Andrew Tockman	USA	SILVER
Takumi Yoshino	Japan	SILVER
Joonas Jürgen Kisel	Estonia	SILVER	Best Sol. #4
Jan Petr	Czech Republic	SILVER
Harry Taylor	UK	SILVER
Anja Zdovc	Slovenia	SILVER
Eliška Freibergerová	Czech Republic	SILVER
Paweł Piekarz	Poland	SILVER
Tereza Maláčová	Czech Republic	SILVER
Ben Morris	UK	SILVER
Joseph Feffer	USA	SILVER
Ziyan Lei	USA	SILVER
Chih-Lun Julian Liu	Taiwan	SILVER
Assel Ismoldayeva	Bulgaria	SILVER
Chinmaya Kausik	India	SILVER
Daniel Vedeneev	Russia	SILVER	Best Sol. #5
Szymon Stolarczyk	Poland	SILVER
YAO, YUNG-JUI	Taiwan	SILVER
Ekaterina Voloshinova	Russia	BRONZE
Emil Indzhev	Bulgaria	BRONZE
Chirag C. D	India	BRONZE
Iga Jaworska	Poland	BRONZE
Ziche Chen	China	BRONZE
Aleksei Starchenko	Russia	BRONZE
Ana Meta Dolinar	Slovenia	BRONZE	Best Sol. #1
Siye Zhu	USA	BRONZE
Emilian Toma	Romania	BRONZE
Can Yeşildere	Turkey	BRONZE
Sonia Reilly	USA	BRONZE
Alicja Maksymiuk	Poland	BRONZE
Emil Ingelsten	Sweden	BRONZE
Tanya Romanova	Russia	BRONZE
Ștefan Răzvan Bălăucă	Romania	BRONZE
Tina Vladimirova	Bulgaria	BRONZE
Matei Costin Banu	Romania	BRONZE
Yuito Yoneyama	Japan	BRONZE
Yuyang Liu	China	BRONZE
Nazar Semkiv	Ukraine	BRONZE
Aleksej Jurca	Slovenia	BRONZE
Martin Nikolov	Bulgaria	BRONZE
Vlada Petrusenko	Ukraine	Hononourable Mention
PAN TUNG-LE	Taiwan	Hononourable Mention
Ryuhoh Ide	Japan	Hononourable Mention
Nicole Hedblom	Sweden	Hononourable Mention
Michaela Svatošová	Czech Republic	Hononourable Mention
Loona Volke	Estonia	Hononourable Mention
Gustavo Palote da Silva Martins	Brazil	Hononourable Mention
Islambek Tanabay	Kazakhstan	Hononourable Mention
Alexandra Souly	Hungary	Hononourable Mention
Thomas Chen	Netherlands	Hononourable Mention
Linghui Zheng	China	Hononourable Mention
Filip Karcz	Poland	Hononourable Mention
Viktor Baltin	Bulgaria	Hononourable Mention
Angikar Ghosal	India	Hononourable Mention	Best Sol. #1
Junnosuke Kajita	Japan	Hononourable Mention
Arsenii Oleinik	Russia Belka	Hononourable Mention
Willie Jeng	Taiwan	Hononourable Mention
Martijn Bij de Vaate	Netherlands	Hononourable Mention
Maria Ershova	Russia	Hononourable Mention
Svetlana Baranova	Russia	Hononourable Mention
Bálint Mazzag	Hungary	Hononourable Mention
Jakub Famulski	Poland	Hononourable Mention
Weronika Motkowska	Poland	Hononourable Mention
Jae Hee Kuh	Rep. of Korea	Hononourable Mention
Yelyzaveta Stoliarchuk	Ukraine	Hononourable Mention
Richard Luhtaru	Estonia	Hononourable Mention
Shardul Chiplunkar	India	Hononourable Mention
Angellika Vojevodina	Latvia	Hononourable Mention
Alina Yan	Ukraine	Hononourable Mention
Rujul Gandhi	India	Hononourable Mention
Sagnik Anupam	India	Hononourable Mention
Seonmin Lee	Rep. of Korea	Hononourable Mention
Oleh Kuzyk	Ukraine	Hononourable Mention

Best Team Average in the Individual Competition

UK K team

Samuel Ahmed, Simeon Hellsten, Harry Taylor, Kamran Sharifi

Solvers’ Choice Award

Tae Hun Lee (#4)

Team Competition (Thursday)

Gold

Chih-Lun Julian Liu	TaiTWO Taiwan
PAN TUNG-LE	TaiTWO Taiwan
Ruei Hung Alex Lee	TaiTWO Taiwan
Tseng, Yuan	TaiTWO Taiwan

Silver

Iga Jaworska	Poland Ą
Jakub Famulski	Poland Ą
Paweł Piekarz	Poland Ą
Przemysław Podleśny	Poland Ą

Bronze

Aleksej Jurca		Slovenia
Ana Meta Dolinar		Slovenia
Anja Zdovc		Slovenia
Maja Bošnjaković		Slovenia

Congratulations to everyone who participated, well done! We hope you have enjoyed your stay in Ireland and wish all delegations a safe trip back home!