On Thursday evening, the Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) department hosted the UK Linguistics Olympiad, marking one of the highlights of the year for languages at Bedford School.
The event was part of the new Floreat programme and was organised by Lower Sixth Former Fraser Morgan, with the invaluable support of Mrs May Head of Modern Foreign Languages and Dr Schneidemesser. The Olympiad provided a unique opportunity for boys to engage with linguistic challenges and develop their problem-solving skills.
With a strong history in this competition, it was wonderful to set a new record this year with 20 boys from the Fourth Form right through to the Lower Sixth participating.
Fraser, who first participated in the Olympiad in the Fourth Form, took charge of the event as part of his Floreat enrichment. In the run up to the event, Fraser explained, “I ran several preparation sessions with past questions and walked boys through how to solve them, worked with teachers to organise supervision, a room and food and got the word out through email and assembly notices.”
The highlight of the evening was the excited chattering in the room as boys, not necessarily studying languages, realised how to solve the problems. Boys from all year groups, with interests in Physics, Computer Science and Cryptography, worked together to tackle esoteric questions. Fraser told us, “Contrary to what it sounds like, finally cracking a Native American verb system brought me real excitement and relief, and struggling through Egyptian hieroglyphics really made me wrack my brains. The pizza was, of course, a close second.”
The Olympiad gave boys the opportunity to explore different areas of linguistics in a fun and challenging way, encouraging them to think about language systems beyond memorising verb tables and to see radically different ways of communicating.
Fraser has also designed a course on Descriptive Linguistics as part of the Floreat programme, which he will be teaching to the Prep School next half term.
What the boys said:
“Taking part in the Linguistics Olympiad was both interesting and challenging. The puzzles pushed us to think about problems in completely new ways, using logic and pattern recognition to decode languages we’d never seen before. It was surprising how much we could uncover without prior knowledge of the languages involved. The experience really highlighted the power of problem-solving and lateral thinking – something that goes beyond ‘just linguistics’. As this kind of thing isn’t really taught in our curriculum, it made it even more interesting to try and work out the various problems we were faced with – but was also more rewarding. Overall, it was a great experience, and the staff and other boys were great.”
“The Linguistics Olympiad was unlike any challenge I have come across before. It not only improves your logical reasoning, but also gives you an idea of how languages work. I found it to be extremely enjoyable and hope to participate in it many more times if I can. It is the best way that I have yet come across of gauging one’s logical reasoning.”
