A unique competition for schoolchildren in grades 8-11. Participants do not require any special linguistic training: the main thing is linguistic intuition and the ability to reason logically...
The competition takes place in two stages: qualifying (held online) and final, which consists of two in-person rounds. The winner is determined by the totality of the results shown in the head-to-head competition.
In-person tours take place simultaneously in different cities Russia. In each round, the participant receives 5 tasks, to solve which the information contained in the condition is sufficient. The tasks of each Olympiad use 15-20 different languages.
The most important component of the Olympiad is the analysis of problems: tasks from the first round are discussed on the eve of the second, and materials from the second round are discussed immediately before the award ceremony. Experts introduce schoolchildren to the process of solving each problem and interesting language facts related to it.
What's new
How to participate
- Register for the Olympiad. The organizers will inform you additionally about the start of registration.
- Complete the correspondence stage tasks in your personal account.
- Wait for the results in your personal account and the lists of participants in the full-time stage on the Olympiad website.
- Find the face-to-face venue closest to you and register for it. The list of venues will be published on the Olympiad website. Print the title page and forms for solving problems from your personal account.
- Come to both in-person tours.
- Wait for the results, look at the work, if you have questions about the verification, ask them to the jury.
- Come to the show of works and awards.
Foxford's student on why a linguist needs to know mathematics and why there is no need to prepare for the Linguistic Olympiad
Winner of the Moscow Traditional Olympiad in Linguistics
Interest in mathematics and foreign languages
I studied in a specialized physics and mathematics class at Gymnasium No. 1 in Novosibirsk. My favorite school subjects were mathematics and German.
German is a second foreign language that begins in our gymnasium in the fifth grade. I started teaching him back in the summer: I played children's games computer games“Baba Yaga is learning” and “Bolek and Lelek” and took an online course for beginners on the website dw.com. Then I studied German at the DSD (Deutsches Sprachdiplom) courses and in the 11th grade I passed their international German language proficiency exam DSD-II. Its results are recognized by all educational institutions in Germany. During the exam, I confirmed level C1 and received the corresponding certificate.
During my math lessons, I liked finding unexpected solutions to geometry problems. And in the tenth grade, we were taught a very interesting course on discrete mathematics - before that I had no idea about this field of science.
What is linguistics
Many people mistakenly believe that linguistics is the study foreign languages. In fact, a linguist studies language as a universal mechanism that ensures communication between people. He does not need to know the language perfectly, but he should have an idea of how different languages work. Otherwise it is impossible to do this science. Typically, linguists know from 3 to 10 languages - some they speak fluently, some they read, some they understand by ear. There are those who know more.
To study linguistics, you also need knowledge of mathematics, because mathematics is logic. It is she who helps solve problems in linguistics and think systematically.
To understand what linguistics works with, I can recommend the following materials:
Books
- V.M. Alpatov “Linguistics: From Aristotle to Computational Linguistics”
- V.A. Plungyan “Why languages are so different”
Video performances
- Boris Iomdin
- Svetlana Burlak
- Alexandra Piperski
- Maxim Krongauz
Preparation for the Olympics
I started writing list olympiads from the seventh grade. I chose humanitarian subjects: history, literature and Russian language, because at that moment I was interested in them. At the same time, I discovered the Traditional Linguistics Olympiad and it became my favorite.
WITH primary school I took part in the Russian Teddy Bear competition. In it, I was most interested in the last task, where I had to translate words from a foreign language into Russian or vice versa using logic. Later, I was happy to learn that there are many such problems in the Traditional Linguistics Olympiad.
An example of one of the problems of the Olympiad in linguistics
It’s interesting that you don’t need to prepare for this Olympiad at all - to solve problems it’s enough to use logic. But from time to time I still solved them for my own pleasure. More in the summer, since there is very little time during the school year. I took assignments from the linguistics website for schoolchildren, from previous years’ collections, and from the website of the International Linguistic Olympiad.
Most of all I like problems with numerals, the easiest for me are problems with sound correspondences.
I thought that this year I completed the tasks of the Olympiad averagely. Therefore, I was very happy when I found out that I received a first-degree diploma. When entering NSU, this gives 100 points in Russian or a foreign language if the Unified State Examination in these subjects is passed with 75 points or higher.
How the Moscow Traditional Olympiad in Linguistics is organized
The Olympics have been held since 1965. In recent years, it has been organized by the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State University for the Humanities and the Faculty of Philology of the National Research University Higher School of Economics with the support of the Moscow Center for Continuing Mathematical Education.
The Olympics consists of three rounds:
1. Qualifying, takes place online.
Its organizers want, first of all, to identify people capable of linguistics. They assess participants' ability to reason logically and apply linguistic intuition.
Knowledge of foreign languages will be required when completing the zero task. To successfully solve problems in linguistics, it is important to navigate other languages and remember that their structure can be radically different from Russian.
An example of a zero assignment in linguistics
Unified State Exam and university admission
I took the Unified State Exam in Russian, mathematics and a foreign language. These are the subjects that are needed for admission to Novosibirsk State University for the specialty “Fundamental and Applied Linguistics”.
I did not study with tutors: school preparation and independent studies was enough. Since the 9th grade, I have been purchasing courses that interest me on Foxford. For example, I really liked the course on mathematics olympiad problems by Yuri Blinkov. And this year I visited.
All of these courses had great teachers, engaging classes, and interesting homework. I watched the lessons in recordings, and solved the problems when I had time. This was very useful: Foxford courses help prepare for the Unified State Exam and many Olympiads, for example, All-Russian Olympiad schoolchildren.
I am satisfied with the results in languages: in German I have 97 points, in Russian - 98. I also just wrote the Unified State Exam in computer science and received 84 points. But I didn’t prepare for it, I just went to classes.
The other day I was happy to learn that I was enrolled at the university and will continue to study linguistics in September.
In 2013/14 academic year The XLIV Moscow Traditional Olympiad in Linguistics is held in January-March 2014.
Olympic dates
- January 19-21 (until 23:30)
: qualifying (zero) round (remote)
- February 9: I round (full-time)
- March 2: II round (full-time)
Qualifying round
Registration for qualifying round:
http://info.olimpiada.ru/news/2232
The qualifying round is conducted remotely (online) and is mandatory for participation in the I and II rounds. For more details, see the regulations and questions and answers (links below).
Participants 2013/14
Participated in the qualifying round 1835 schoolchildren.
Translated to final stage 591 people.
Participated in the first round at Moscow State University 356 schoolchildren.
Organizers and cities
In-person rounds of the Olympics are simultaneously held in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and a number of other cities. The participant selects the most convenient city(ies) to participate in the full-time round when registering for the qualifying round. The list of host cities may be changed by decision of the Organizing Committee.
For those who for some reason cannot take part in the in-person tours, the correspondence rounds I and II. To participate in the correspondence rounds, you must successfully complete the qualifying (zero) round. Correspondence tours are held outside the main competition, their participants cannot qualify for diplomas of full-time tours.
Moscow Traditional Olympiad in Linguistics- an annual Olympiad for schoolchildren, held in Moscow by two universities - Moscow State University and Russian State University for the Humanities. In 2008, two rounds took place - on November 16th and 30th. The award ceremony for the winners took place on December 21 at Moscow State University.
In 2006, the Olympiad became regional - not only residents of Moscow, but also residents of other cities and towns can take part in it.
History of the Olympics
The Olympics owe its existence to A. N. Zhurinsky. While still a 3rd year student at the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, A. N. Zhurinsky proposed holding an Olympiad in linguistics for high school students. The tradition of holding Mathematical Olympiads at Moscow State University, which had developed by that time, became something of a starting point for the Linguistic Olympiad; but linguists, unlike mathematicians, did not yet have experience in composing problems for schoolchildren. The body of problems for the first Traditional Olympiad in Linguistics and Mathematics (by calling the very first Olympiad traditional, its organizers expressed their confidence in further success) A. N. Zhurinsky prepared together with V. V. Raskin and B. Yu. Gorodetsky.
The history of the Olympics begins in 1965, when, by order of the rector of Moscow State University I. G. Petrovsky and with the active participation of V. A. Uspensky, the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University held the First Olympics. The timing changed several times - the Olympics were held late autumn, then in the spring. But in 1993, the Organizing Committee of the XXIV Olympiad finally decided to postpone the date to the end of November: firstly, Olympiads in school subjects are usually held in the spring, and secondly, graduate students are busy preparing for admission and often simply do not have time to come.
Six years - from 1982 to 1988. - The Olympiads were not held due to the liquidation of the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics in 1982. In the spring of 1988, the so-called zero Olympiad took place, at which schoolchildren were offered old problems. And since 1989, the Olympics have been held regularly again, every year. In 1989-1991 it is organized jointly by Moscow State University, MGIAI - Moscow State Historical and Archival Institute - and the Institute of Foreign Languages. Maurice Thorez (now MSLU). In 1991, on the basis of MGIAI, the Russian State liberal arts university(RGGU); The Faculty of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (FTiPL) emerges. Moscow State Linguistic University withdrew from participating in the organization of the Olympiad in 1991, and since that time it has been held jointly by the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University and the Faculty of Physical Education and Literature of the Russian State University for the Humanities.
Olympiad participants
Any schoolchild can participate in the Olympiad, but as a rule, these are schoolchildren from grades 6 to 11, students of technical or humanitarian specialties. All participants are divided into four categories - participants in grades 8 and below, participants in grades 9, 10 and 11.
Participation in the Olympiad does not require a preliminary application. You just need to find out the date of the first round this year (it appears on the Olympiad website closer to November, and is also announced at the Lomonosov Tournament) and the venue (usually Moscow State University).
Holding the Olympiad
The Olympiad is held in two rounds with a break of 14 days (2 weeks). First, on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., children write an Olympiad in the first humanities building of Moscow State University. They are given brochures with tasks. As a rule, 5 tasks are intended for participants from one parallel. The tasks in the brochure vary in difficulty level (the older the students, the more complex tasks they are offered), some of the problems are intended for several classes. In the second round there is also task 0 on knowledge of languages. Two weeks after the first round, on Saturday evening, the problems are analyzed, and the next day - the second round, already at the Russian State University for the Humanities. After two or three weeks, the problems of the second round are analyzed and awards are given. During the Olympics, children are offered sandwiches and tea.
Tasks
The tasks of the Olympiad belong to the type of “self-sufficient linguistic task”, which A. N. Zhurinsky wrote about. Examples:
Similar problems are used for the linguistics competition of the Lomonosov Tournament.
The languages used by participants to answer problem 0 are sometimes both languages invented by the participants themselves (then it becomes difficult to check the correctness of the solution) and programming languages (in most cases, errors occur during compilation or interpretation).
Evaluation criteria
Evaluation criteria are kept secret. It is quite difficult to say what should be in an “ideal” solution to a problem. But it is clear that answers without explanation are rated low. The solution to problems of a higher class is assessed (however, it is unclear how much this influences the results overall standings; undoubtedly, the best solutions can be presented as such). No points are awarded for solving lower-level problems.
Awards
A traditional element of the award ceremony is the reading of the minutes of the jury meeting. The award takes place in two stages. First, prizes are awarded for excellent or good solutions to individual problems (usually the authors of the problems give prizes if they are present in the hall). Participants are then rewarded for the amount of results achieved. There are four categories of total awards - commendable reviews and diplomas of three degrees. The prizes include dictionaries, language textbooks, and books on linguistics (sometimes quite rare and therefore valuable). The Solver Prize is also awarded to the author of the best problem in the opinion of the students.
Elements of mathematics in problems
Problems for mathematics as such are given implicitly, in conjunction with linguistics. For example, the numerals of a language are given and it is necessary to determine the patterns in this language, the establishment of which requires mathematics. However, it should be noted that solutions to problems sometimes need to be justified by making conclusions, proving the correctness of the solution - much like what happens when proving the solution to a mathematical problem.
Composing tasks
Problems are written throughout the year. Typically the task path is:
1. To the author of the problem, who notices interesting fact(or several such facts) in some language (or languages), the idea comes to write a problem. He, collecting material (doing research, checking grammars and dictionaries, working with native speakers), writes a draft of the problem.
2. If the author of the draft is not a member of the task commission of the Olympiad (ZK), then he sends the draft to one of its members (for example, I. B. Itkin). A member of the ZK may not accept the task (if he understands that the task is impossible in principle with this material, or if a similar phenomenon has already been “puzzled”), he can edit it or send it to the author for revision, expressing his comments and suggestions, or he can immediately send to the ZK’s “portfolio” if the task in his opinion is good.
3. If the task is in the “portfolio” of the ZK, this means that the task will be considered at the meeting(s) of the ZK, at which several members of the ZK will jointly edit it (if they decide that the task “has the right to life”). As a result, the ZK decides what the final version of the problem will look like, which Olympiad the problem will be submitted to (in addition to the Moscow Olympiad itself, the problem can be sent to the International Olympiad, to the Olympiad of the Summer Linguistic School, to the linguistics competition of the Lomonosov Tournament or to the “Russian Bear Cub” competition) and for which classes it will be intended.
4. A month or two before the Olympiad, the chairman of the committee or one of its members draws up layouts of brochures with the tasks of this Olympiad.
LLS Olympics
A similar Olympiad in linguistics is also held at the Summer Linguistic School. The Olympiad receives an intermediate number (in July 2008, the LLSH had its 38.5th Olympiad; in November-December 2008, the Moscow Olympiad had the 39th serial number). The composition of the organizers of both Olympiads is very similar. Among the differences, it is necessary to mention the excellent division into classes (grades 10-11 solve the same problems, the student’s class is determined by the class that the student completed before school), the distribution of problems on A4 sheets (unlike brochures at the main Olympiad), the presence of only one round, a small the deadline for checking the problems (the Olympiad is held in the middle of the school, the awards are held at the end, and the school session lasts 9-11 days).
Olympics in St. Petersburg
At the same time as the Moscow Olympiad, the Olympiad is being held in St. Petersburg on almost the same tasks.
See also
Links and notes
| Subject Olympiads | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In Russia | |||||||||
| All-Russian School Olympiad |
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| Other |
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| International | |||||||||
| International School Olympiads |
International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) International Chemistry Olympiad (IChO) International Biological Olympiad (IBO) International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) International Philosophical Olympiad (IPO) | ||||||||
The most popular competition is the competition-game “Russian Teddy Bear -linguistics for everyone”, it is held every year in November on the same day throughout Russia (and now also in 20 other countries) for schoolchildren in grades 2-11. Participants are offered sets of 30 test problems with five possible answers. The problems are quite small, but not all of them are easy to solve: the first 10 are really simple (they are worth 3 points), the next 10 are more difficult and are worth 4 points, and the last 10 five-point problems have a real Olympiad complexity, only the most prepared can solve them and smart. Mostly problems are in Russian, but in each version, as a rule, there are one or two logical problems in other languages that do not require knowledge of these languages to be solved.
The next most popular is the linguistic competition of the Tournament named after. M. V. Lomonosova, which is held in Moscow, and in recent years in more than 30 cities at the end of September—
early October for schoolchildren in grades 8-11 (but seventh and sixth graders often come). The problems for this competition are not test ones, like for the Little Bear, but of a completely different type.—
so-called self-sufficient tasks. At the Tournament, the tasks are not very difficult, since the goal of the competition is—
to attract schoolchildren to linguistics, to show them what linguistic tasks are. Those schoolchildren who liked solving such problems then come to linguistic clubs and the Traditional Olympiad in Linguistics, which is held a month and a half after the Tournament. The organizers are considering the linguistic competition of the Tournamentthem. M.V. Lomonosov as a preliminary, zero round of the Traditional Olympiad in Linguistics.
