UKLO for competitors

This page (which was rebuilt in May 2020 by one of our competitors, Robbie Bennett) is for school students who are competing, or want to compete, in the UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO).  If you want more information about how UKLO works in general, or about this year’s competition season (round 1, round 2 and IOL), visit the site for teachers here.

New

• December 2021: Self-study training material on number systems, showing how to tackle a UKLO problem related to a language’s number system. It considers easy, middle-hard and hard problems.
• February 2021: A discussion corner for competitors (courtesy of James Gravestock Snee): Talk about the UKLO in Discord! A community for chatting about puzzles, asking questions, preparing for competitions, and any other linguistics discussion. To join, click the link and create an account.
• A quick intro to language analysis
• What to do if you want to take part in the competition
• How to prepare for the competition
  • Round 1
  • Round 2
  • The international olympiad
• What to do if you’re interested in linguistics
  • Books
  • Blogs and websites
  • Videos
  • Online courses
  • Magazines
  • Apps
  • Competitions
  • Undergraduate study

What to do

If you haven’t yet taken part in UKLO, the first thing you need to do is find out whether your school is already registered with UKLO by checking the list here.

• If it is registered, then one of the teachers must be registered as our contact person. Try to find out who that teacher is by inquiring among teachers; but if that fails, ask UKLO.
• If your school is not registered, read this page.

 And if you’re interested in linguistics …

• Books:
  • Larry Trask: Language: The Basics (for a quick, engaging read)
  • Larry Trask: Introducing Linguistics: A graphic guide (good reviews on Amazon)
  • William McGregor: Linguistics: an introduction. (a popular undergraduate textbook)
    
  • Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman: An Introduction to Language (a widely-used undergraduate textbook, with chapters on different areas of linguistics and exercises at the end which are easier than the Advanced level questions, but testing knowledge of language as opposed to thinking skills; plus answers at the back!)
  • Mark Baker: The Atoms of Language (aimed at non-specialists, with lots of talk of paradoxes and cracking codes, and introducing principles of linguistic analysis in the later chapters by comparing syntactic parameters to the periodic table).
  • Richard Hudson: Invitation to Linguistics (accessible, clear, and with a focus on linguistic puzzles)
  • David Crystal’s The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (a collection of fascinating facts about language that Crystal beautifully presents. Your school library may already have a copy; if not, ask them to get one!)
  • Personal recommendations from Babette Verhoeven, one of our main puzzle-writers:
    • David J. Peterson – The Art of Language Invention – Peterson is a “conlanger” – he constructs languages for film & TV – including Dothraki  & Valyrian for Game of Thrones. While I appreciate that many among us might be suspicious about conlangers, Peterson is a trained linguist and his book takes a newbie to linguistics through the basics of language study (phonology, lexis/semantics, morphology & syntax, diachronic change, etc.) in a very accessible (and dare I say it, fun) way.
    • Guy Deutscher’s popular linguistics books are great too:
      • Through the Looking Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages (the title is misleading – it is much more nuanced, based on recent linguistic relativity research presented in an accessible manner)
      • The Unfolding of Language: The Evolution of Mankind’s Greatest Invention (again, very accessible)
    • Daniel Everett – Language: The Cultural Tool (his most accessible and linguistically focused book, I think)
    • John McWhorter –
      • What Language Is: And What It Isn’t And What It Could Be (nice general introduction through looking at a wide range of different languages including slang)
      • The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language (again the title suggests a very strong anti-relativism stance, but the book is measured and sets out to tackle the more popular, non-expert myths about Eskimo’s different perception of snow because they have so many different words for it etc.)
• Blogs and websites:
  • Diversity Linguistics Comment – a blog about diversity and universals written by linguists for linguists.
  • Humans who read grammars, specially for and by young linguists.
  • Language Log, written by a team of leading researchers.
  • The official International Linguistics Olympiad blog for questions and answers about linguistics.
  • The Miam and Kilivila Collection, all about how languages classify objects, written by linguists at the University of Surrey for the general public.
  • Gretchen McCulloch’s lovely website
  • More from Babette Verhoeven:
    • My favourite blog and Youtube Channel is: The Ling Space which “is dedicated to bringing you varied, accessible, and up-to-date content and discussion about linguistics and other language topics.”It’s got great short videos on all sorts of linguistic topics, as well as some interviews with experts in their field. It’s run by linguists from McGill University. It does take a formalist approach mostly, but it tackles some challenging concepts in an accessible manner.
• Videos:
  • Watch a TED talk about linguistics such as:
    • Where did English come from?
    • How languages evolve
    • More recommendations from Babette Verhoeven:
      • John McWhorter has done a few.
      • Lera Boroditsky: how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think.
      • Patricia Kuhl: child language acquisition, which is a nice way into linguistics.
  • Linguistics podcast – a Youtube collection of talks about linguistics

• Online courses:
  • A very accessible ‘crash course’ in linguistics.
  • A MOOC. (In case you don’t know, a MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course, i.e. a collection of  teaching material, especially videoed lectures, which is freely available online. The ones listed below are all in English)
    • A three-lecture Introduction to Linguistics by the University of Birmingham.
    • The Virtual Linguistics Campus (a wide range of courses and individual online lectures at Marburg, Germany).  See the introductory video on Youtube, then register on the campus and sign up for the course Linguistics 101 – Fundamentals. This is a permanent MOOC so you can sign up at any point.
    • Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics (5 weeks at Leiden, The Netherlands)
    • Corpus Linguistics (i.e. the study of language using software to analyse large bodies of text)
    • Introduction to Natural Language Processing
  • Try reading the introductory linguistics course on the UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) website – quite technical, but it may suit your taste.

• Magazines:

  • See if your school subscribes to Babel (a school magazine about language). If it does, read some past copies; if not, recommend Babel  to your language teacher or your librarian.
  • Unravelling magazine: A free online magazine about language and linguistics, written by students for students; started in Singapore in 2014.
  • U-Lingua: Another free online magazine about language and linguistics, written by students for students; started in UK 2020.

• Apps:

  • Download the Quizup app (the one by Plain Vanilla Games), and go to Topics > Science > Linguistics > Ranking. You can compete in a pub-quiz style competition about linguistics either nationally or internationally (choose the button at the bottom). Good luck!
• Competitions:
  • Write an essay for a prize in:
  • the Trinity College Cambridge essay competition
  • the Babel Magazine essay competition.
• And finally:
  • Consider doing a BA in linguistics at uni.