A Sixth Form pupil at The Leys, Cambridge achieved a gold award in the first round of the UK Linguistics Olympiad Advanced Paper

The Leys, Cambridge Lower Sixth pupil Edward S achieved a gold award in the first round of the 2023 UK Linguistics Olympiad Advanced Paper and qualified for round two. Two other Leysians achieved bronze awards. In all, 14 pupils at the school sat the tough paper, solving problems in languages including Albanian, Lardil and K’iche’.

The questions demanded a high level of inferential and deductive reasoning from the pupils as they were required to translate, transliterate, identify ideophones (words that evoke a sensory image as well as having a literal meaning) and deduce pronouns in the various languages. Edward qualified to enter Round Two of the competition, along with 90 others of the original 1686 contestants.

Alex Welby, Head of Classics, says: “We had a record entry this year and the pupils further showed their commitment by applying themselves with great perseverance to what the organisers admitted was an unusually difficult paper this year. A Gold award is an exceptional achievement for Edward and I am delighted that so many other pupils were willing to take on such a tough challenge”.

The Leys. Cambridge theleys.net

Further reading: Foreign languages – the state of play

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