Rules and Practicalities

This letter from the local organisers is posted (Jan 2007) by the Education Committee of the LAGB in the hope that, one day, language education in Britain will reach the stage where our students can participate ….

Fifth International Linguistics Olympiad for Secondary School Students

First Call for Participation

Dear colleagues,

We are happy to announce the Fifth International Linguistics Olympiad for secondary school students that is to take place from July, 31 to August, 4, 2007 in St.Petersburg, Russia.

The First International Olympiad in Linguistics was held in Borovetz, Bulgaria in September 2003 with 8 teams participating (for more information see https://www.philol.msu.ru/~otipl/new/main/mol/sum-2003-en.php?page=0). The Second Olympiad was held in Moscow, the capital of Russia, in August 2004 (https://www.philol.msu.ru/~otipl/new/main/mol/index-en.php), the Third Olympiad in Leiden, the Netherlands, in August 2005 and the Fourth – in Tartu, Estonia last August (www.olympiaadid.ut.ee/ilo4/ ). Each year the number of the teams grows; this year we’re expecting something about 15 of them to come.

Invited for participation are teams consisting of one team leader and four contestants who at the time of the Fifth International Olympiad must be secondary school students or must have graduated from secondary school in 2007. Teams may represent individual countries as well as cities (one team per city; the Organising Committee also reserves the right to impose a limit on the number of teams allowed from one country).

Teams and their leaders are expected to be provided with free accomadation and meals during the Olympiad; we also hope to organise some excursions.
Those requiring a visa to enter Russia will receive assistance with the formalities.

Competitors will need no special knowledge to solve the problem sets presented at the International Olympiad. There will be two contests: an individual and a team one. Individual contest usually takes longer and represents a list of about 5 problems to be solved during 5 or 6 hours; team contest is naturally being solved by the whole team together and takes less time.

A selection of problems from past events is available at

https://www.philol.msu.ru/~otipl/new/main/mol/samples-2003-en.php

in Russian at
https://ling.narod.ru/problems.html

in Dutch at
https://www.olympiade.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?m=4&c=11&garb=0.3607800028496

in Estonian at
https://www.ttkool.ut.ee/ling/

Official web-site for the 5th Olympiad is now under construction and will soon be available, links to it will be able to be found at https://www.olympics.spb.ru

Please send your letters of interest to participate in the International Olympiad to St.-Petersburg team leader Elena Riekhakainen (reha@inbox.ru) or to the Chair of the organising committee Stanislav Gurevich (olevi26@gmail.com) by March 31, 2007. The team leader must submit a final application by May 31, 2007; it must contain a list of team members, indicating their languages of preference for the problem sets of the individual contest, as well as the language of preference for the team contest.

Yours sincerely,

Stanislav Gurevich,
Chair of the Organising Committee

Elena Kazakova,
St.Petersburg “Philological Olympiad” Project Manager