The International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) is one of the

International Science Olympiad The International Science Olympiads are a group of worldwide annual competitions in various areas of the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. The competitions are designed for the 4-6 best high school students from each partic ...

s for secondary school students. Its abbreviation IOL is deliberately chosen not to correspond to the name of the organization in any particular language, and member organizations are free to choose for themselves how to designate the competition in their own language. This olympiad furthers the fields of mathematical, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics.

Format

The setup differs from most of the other Science Olympiads, in that the olympiad contains both individual and team contests. The individual contest consists of 5 problems, covering the main fields of theoretical, mathematical and applied linguistics –

phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

, morphology,

semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of ...

, etc. – which must be solved in six hours. The team contest has consisted of one extremely difficult and time-consuming problem since the 2nd IOL. Teams, which generally consist of four students, are given three to four hours to solve this problem. Like nearly all

s, its problems are translated and completed in several languages and as such must be written free of any native language constraints. However, unlike other olympiads, the translations are provided by the multilingual Problem Committee, a body of experts independent of the delegates' team leaders. Because competitors could gain some advantage if they are familiar with one or more of the language groups which are the subject of some of the assignments, problems are increasingly based on some of the world's lesser known languages. Fortunately, with more than 6,000 languages spoken world-wide (not including so-called dead languages) there are plenty to choose from. The committee has a policy of not using

artificial Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotations Artificiality ...

fictional language Fictional languages are the subset of constructed languages (conlangs) that have been created as part of a fictional setting (e.g. for use in a book, movie, television show, or video game). Typically they are the creation of one individual, while ...

s for its problems. The presence of an independent Problem Committee and Jury means that team leaders do not have to be experts in the field (though most are): they can (and often do) work closely with their teams providing last-minute coaching throughout the week of the competition. In any case, the most helpful ability is analytic and deductive thinking, as all solutions must include clear reasoning and justification.

History

The concept of self-sufficient linguistics problems was formulated in the 1960s, in the intellectual environment of the recently-founded Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (OTiPL) of the

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

. In 1963,

Andrey Zaliznyak Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak ( rus, Андре́й Анато́льевич Зализня́к, p=zəlʲɪˈzʲnʲak; 29 April 1935 – 24 December 2017) was a Soviet and Russian linguist, an expert in historical linguistics, accentology, diale ...

published a book with some problems on that style and, following that, the then student proposed to the professor Vladimir Uspensky the creation of a high-school olympiad using such problems. Thus, in 1965 the first edition of the Moscow's ''Traditional Olympiad on Linguistics and Mathematics'' was held, with an Organizing Committee composed by Uspensky (president), Igor Miloslavsky, Alexander Kibrik and . The Problem Committee was composed by Zhurinsky (the author of most of the problems) and Zaliznyak, plus Boris Gorodetsky (president), Alexandra Raskina and

Victor Raskin Victor Raskin (born April 17, 1944) is a distinguished professor of linguistics at Purdue University. He is the author of ''Semantic Mechanisms of Humor'' and ''Ontological Semantics'' and founding editor (now editor-at-large) of ''Humor'', the jo ...

. The Moscow Olympiad was held regularly until 1982 and resumed again in 1988, being still held nowadays. In the next decades, olympiads using the format of self-sufficient linguistics problems started to appear in different regions: * In 1984, professor Ruslan Mitkov founded the ''Bulgarian Olympiad of Mathematical Linguistics'', open for high-school students of the whole

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedo ...

. In this olympiad, each school could participate with 4 students, thus inspiring the format of the future IOL. From 2001, the Bulgarian Olympiad also started to feature a team competition. * From 1988 to 2000, professor Thomas E. Payne, from the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc Nike, Inc. ( or ) is a ...

organized a program with linguistics problems for high-school students in the city of

Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast. As of the 2020 United States Census, ...

, USA. The format was very similar to the Moscow Olympiad, with which he had contact in 1986, when visiting the OTiPL in Moscow. From 2001 to 2006, the competition evolved into an online format, the ''Linguistics Challenge'', which stimulated local linguistics competitions in different U.S. cities. This movement culminated, in 2007, with the creation of the

North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition The North American Computational Linguistics Open competition (NACLO), formerly called the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad before January 1, 2020, is a computational linguistics competition for high school students in the United ...

. * In 1995, a group of professors from the

Saint Petersburg State University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the ...

started to organize the ''Traditional Olympiad of Linguistics and Mathematics of Saint Petersburg'', following a format very similar to that of the Moscow Olympiad. Decades later, in the 2010s, the olympiads of Moscow and Saint Petersburg merged to form a Russian National Linguistics Olympiad. * In 2001, a group connected to the

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city o ...

, including Ruslan Mitkov, the founder of the Bulgarian Olympiad, and two other former participants of the Moscow Olympiad ( Alexander Lubotsky participated from 1973 to 1976; Leonid Kulikov participated from 1981 to 1988), founded a Linguistics Olympiad for the Netherlands. After the foundation of the Bulgarian olympiad, teams of winners of the Moscow Linguistic Olympiad successfully competed in Bulgaria and vice versa, demonstrating good potential for international cooperation in the field. With the multiplication of initiatives, the organizers of the different olympiads decided to organize, in 2003, the ''First International Olympiad in Theoretical, Mathematical and Applied Linguistics'', with six participating countries: *

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

, with one team from the Moscow Olympiad and another from the Saint Petersburg Olympiad; *

, also with two teams, both from the Bulgarian Olympiad; *

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, with a team selected from its newly formed olympiad; *

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, an ...

, with a team from the olympiad organized in the same year by Renate Pajusalu and other professors from

Tartu University The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

; *

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

, with a team of students from

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the ...

's Secondary School No 40, the former school of Alexander Berdichevsky, then a master student at the OTiPL. *

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

, with a guest team.

Venues, year by year

IOL 2003

The first edition of IOL then was realized from September 6 to 12, 2003, in the mountain resort Borovetz, Bulgaria, chaired by Alexander Kibrik from

(MSU) and with the participation of six countries:

, Czech Republic,

, Latvia,

and

. The first International Jury was composed of Ivan Derzhanski (president) ( Institute for Mathematics and Informatics of

Bulgarian Academy of Sciences The Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (abbreviated BAS; bg, Българска академия на науките, ''Balgarska akademiya na naukite'', abbreviated ''БАН'') is the National Academy of Bulgaria, established in 1869. The Academy ...

), Alexander Berdichevsky ( MSU), Boris Iomdin ( Russian Language Institute) and Elena Muravenko (Department for Russian Language, Russian State University for the Humanities). The five problems at the individual contest concerned

Jacob Linzbach Jakob Linzbach (21 June 1874 – 30 April 1953) was an Estonian linguist. Jakob Linzbach was born in Kõmmaste, in the Governorate of Estonia of the Russian Empire (present-day Estonia) and died in Tallinn. The claim has been made for his (1 ...

's "Transcendental algebra" writing system,

Egyptian Arabic Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian ( ar, العامية المصرية, ), or simply Masri (also Masry) (), is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic dialect in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and ...

(

Afroasiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

), Basque ( Isolate), Adyghe (

Northwest Caucasian The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cau ...

), and French (

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...

). The team contest consisted of three problems, on Tocharian (

), the use of subscripts as indices, and on performative verbs.

IOL 2004

IOL 2 was held from August 2 to 6, 2004, in the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), in Moscow, Russia. Seven countries participated, with the first participation of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

and

Serbia and Montenegro Serbia and Montenegro ( sr, Cрбија и Црна Гора, translit=Srbija i Crna Gora) was a country in Southeast Europe located in the Balkans that existed from 1992 to 2006, following the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of ...

. The five problems at the individual contest were in

Kayapo The Kayapo ( Portuguese: Caiapó ) people are the indigenous people in Brazil who inhabit a vast area spreading across the states of Pará and Mato Grosso, south of the Amazon River and along Xingu River and its tributaries. This pattern has g ...

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

, English, Lakhota and Chuvash. The team problem was in Armenian.

IOL 2005

IOL 3 was held from August 8 to 12, 2005, in

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration w ...

, Netherlands, with the participation of 13 teams from 9 countries,

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...

and

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...

for their first time. The five problems at the individual contest were in Tzotzil, Lango,

Mansi Mansi may refer to: People * Mansi people, an indigenous people living in Tyumen Oblast, Russia ** Mansi language * Giovanni Domenico Mansi Gian (Giovanni) Domenico Mansi (16 February 1692 – 27 September 1769) was an Italian prelate, theolog ...

Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...

and Lithuanian. The team problem was in

Figuig Figuig or Figig ( ar, فجيج; Figuig Berber: Ifeyyey) is an oasis town in eastern Morocco near the Atlas Mountains, on the border with Algeria. The town is built around an oasis of date palms, called ''Tazdayt'', meaning "palm tree" in the ...

IOL 2006

IOL 4 was held from August 1 to 6, 2006, at the

University of Tartu The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...

, Estonia. Chaired by Renate Pajusalu, it received also 13 teams from 9 countries, with

Lithuania Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...

sending a team for the first time. The five problems at the individual contest were in Lakhota,

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

, Khmer, Udihe and Ngoni. The team problem was in

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expre ...

IOL 2007

IOL 5 was held from July 31 to August 4, 2007, at the Hotel Gelios,

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, Russia. Chaired by Stanislav Gurevich, it received 15 teams from 9 countries; Spain, Sweden and USA came for the first time. In that year, it was decided that each country can send one or two teams, consisting of four students each, with the first team's costs fully covered by the host country. Also, the host country could send a third team. The five problems at the individual contest were in

Braille Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille displ ...

, Movima ( Isolate), Georgian ( Kartvelian), Ndom ( Trans-New Guinea), and correspondences between Turkish and

Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary is an umbrella term for different

( Turkic). The team problem was in Hawaiian ( Polynesian) and focused on genealogical terms.

IOL 2008

IOL 6 was held from August 4 to 9, 2008, at the Sunny Beach Resort, Sunny Beach, Bulgaria. Chaired by Iliana Raeva, it gathered 16 teams from 11 countries, including the first time for Germany, Slovenia and

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. The Problem Committee was chaired by Ivan Derzhanski. The five individual problems were in Micmac ( Algonquian),

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

(

North Germanic The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...

)

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...

(specifically, ''drottkvætt''), Drehu and Cemuhî correspondences ( Oceanic), Copainalá Zoque ( Mixe-Zoquean), and

Inuktitut Inuktitut (; , syllabics ; from , "person" + , "like", "in the manner of"), also Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, is one of the principal Inuit languages of Canada. It is spoken in all areas north of the tree line, including parts of the provinces o ...

(

Eskimo-Aleut The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...

). The team problem was about correspondences between Mandarin and

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding a ...

(

Sinitic The Sinitic languages (漢語族/汉语族), often synonymous with "Chinese languages", are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute the major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is ...

) using the

fanqie ''Fanqie'' ( zh, t= 反切, p=fǎnqiè) is a method in traditional Chinese lexicography to indicate the pronunciation of a monosyllabic character by using two other characters, one with the same initial consonant as the desired syllable and one ...

system.

IOL 2009

IOL 7 was held from July 26 to 31, 2009, at the

University of Wrocław , ''Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau'' (before 1945) , free_label = Specialty programs , free = , colors = Blue , website uni.wroc.pl The University of Wrocław ( pl, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, U ...

Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, r ...

, Poland. Chaired by Michał Śliwiński, it received 23 teams from 17 countries, with Australia, United Kingdom,

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

and Ireland sending teams for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Todor Tchervenkov (

University of Lyon The University of Lyon (french: Université de Lyon), located in Lyon and Saint-Étienne, France, is a center for higher education and research comprising 11 members and 24 associated institutions. The three main universities in this center are: C ...

, France). The subject matter of the five individual problems covered: numerals in the

Sulka language Sulka is a language isolate of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. In 1991, there were 2,500 speakers in eastern Pomio District, East New Britain Province. Villages include Guma () in East Pomio Rural LLG.Reesink, Ger. 2005. Sulka of East New Brita ...

( Isolate),

Maninka Maninka (also known as Malinke), or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande language family. It is the mother tongue of the Malinké peopl ...

and Bamana ( Mande) languages in the

N'Ko N'Ko () is a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949, as a modern writing system for the Mandé languages of West Africa. The term ''N'Ko'', which means ''I say'' in all Mandé languages, is also used for the Mandé literary standard written ...

and Latin scripts, traditional Burmese (

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

) names and their relation with dates of birth, stress position in

Old Indic The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, ...

( Indo-Aryan) and the relation between grammar and morphology in classical

Nahuatl Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have small ...

(

Uto-Aztecan Uto-Aztecan, Uto-Aztekan or (rarely in English) Uto-Nahuatl is a family of indigenous languages of the Americas, consisting of over thirty languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found almost entirely in the Western United States and Mexico. The na ...

). The team problem was in Vietnamese (

Austroasiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

IOL 2010

IOL 8 was held from July 19 to 24, 2010, at Östra Real Hostel,

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

, Sweden. Chaired by Hedvig Skigård, it received 26 teams from 18 countries, including first time for

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

and Singapore. The Problem Committee was chaired by Alexander Piperski. The individual contest consisted of five problems covering: relations between various verb forms in Budukh (

Northeast Caucasian The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as ...

), the Drehu ( Oceanic) counting system,

Blissymbolics Blissymbols or Blissymbolics is a constructed language conceived as an ideographic writing system called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symb ...

mRNA In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of synthesizing a protein. mRNA is created during the ...

coding, and the connection between Sursilvan and Engadine

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

s in Romansh (

Western Romance Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini Line. They include the Gallo-Romance and Iberian Romance branches. Gallo-Italic may also be included. ...

). The team problem involved translating extracts from a monolingual Mongolian ( Mongolic) dictionary.

IOL 2011

IOL 9 was held from July 25 to 30, 2011, at the

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

, USA. Chaired by Lori Levin, it received 27 teams from 19 countries, including

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, Canada,

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (The Middle East). It is located at th ...

and

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Adam Hesterberg. The problems of the individual contest required reasoning about Faroese ( Germanic) orthography,

Menominee The Menominee (; mez, omǣqnomenēwak meaning ''"Menominee People"'', also spelled Menomini, derived from the Ojibwe language word for "Wild Rice People"; known as ''Mamaceqtaw'', "the people", in the Menominee language) are a federally recog ...

(

Algic The Algic languages (also Algonquian–Wiyot–Yurok or Algonquian–Ritwan) are an indigenous language family of North America. Most Algic languages belong to the Algonquian subfamily, dispersed over a broad area from the Rocky Mountains to ...

) morphology, Vai ( Mande) syntax,

(

) semantics and the structure of the

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or o ...

language

EAN-13 The International Article Number (also known as European Article Number or EAN) is a standard describing a barcode symbology and numbering system used in global trade to identify a specific retail product type, in a specific packaging configurati ...

. The team contest involved the rules and structure of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

( Indo-Aryan) poetry.

IOL 2012

IOL 10 was held from July 29 to August 4, 2012, at the

University of Ljubljana The University of Ljubljana ( sl, Univerza v Ljubljani, , la, Universitas Labacensis), often referred to as UL, is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. It has approximately 39,000 enrolled students. History Beginnings Although certain ...

Ljubljana Ljubljana (also known by other historical names) is the capital and largest city of Slovenia. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative center. During antiquity, a Roman city called Emona stood in the ar ...

, Slovenia. Chaired by Mirko Vaupotic, it received 34 teams from 26 countries, first time for China, Greece,

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

, Israel and Japan. The Problem Committee was chaired by Ivan Derzhanski. The five problems at the individual contest were in Dyirbal ( Pama-Nyungan) syntax,

Umbu-Ungu Kaugel (Gawigl) is one of the languages spoken in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea. Native speakers call the area on the Southern Highlands side of the Kaugel River from the Western Highlands province home. Dialects are Aua ...

( Trans-New Guinea) numbers,

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

( Isolate) pronouns, Teop ( Austronesian) syntax, and Rotuman ( Austronesian) semantics. The team problem involved recognizing country names in Lao language ( Tai-Kadai).

IOL 2013

IOL 11 was held from July 22 to 26, 2013, at the

Manchester Grammar School The Manchester Grammar School (MGS) in Manchester, England, is the largest independent school (UK), independent day school for boys in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1515 as a Grammar school#free tuition, free grammar school next to Manchester C ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

, UK. Chaired by Neil Sheldon, it received 35 teams from 26 countries, including first time teams from

Isle of Man ) , anthem = "O Land of Our Birth" , image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg , image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg , mapsize = , map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe , map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green) in Europe ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

and

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

. The Problem Committee was chaired by Stanislav Gurevich. The five problems at the individual contest were about Yidiny ( Pama-Nyungan) morphology, Tundra Yukaghir ( Yukhagir) semantics, Pirahã ( Mura) phonology,

Muna Muna may refer to: Places * Muna (Mikulovice), a World War II POW camp and ammunition factory in the Czech Republic * Muna, Estonia, village in Rõuge Parish, Võru County, Estonia * Muna, Iran, village in East Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Mu ...

( Austronesian) syntax, and

telepathy Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...

based on

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

. The team problem involved translating

Martin Seymour-Smith Martin Roger Seymour-Smith (24 April 1928 – 1 July 1998) was a British poet, literary critic, and biographer. Biography Seymour-Smith was born in London and educated at Highgate School and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he was editor of ''Isi ...

's list of the 100 most influential books from Georgian ( Kartvelian) written in the 9th century

Nuskhuri The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: #Asomtavruli, Asomtavruli, #Nuskhuri, Nuskhuri and #Mkhedruli, Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, their Letter (alphabet), letters share t ...

script.

IOL 2014

IOL 12 was held from July 21 to 25, 2014, at the

Beijing Language and Culture University } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

, China. Chaired by Jiang Yuqin, it received 39 teams from 28 countries, with

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

and

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

sending teams for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Jae Kyu Lee. The five problems at the individual contest were about Benabena ( Trans-New Guinea) morphology,

Kiowa Kiowa () people are a Native American tribe and an indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries,Pritzker 326 and eve ...

(

Tanoan Tanoan , also Kiowa–Tanoan or Tanoan–Kiowa, is a family of languages spoken by indigenous peoples in present-day New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Most of the languages – Tiwa (Taos, Picuris, Southern Tiwa), Tewa, and Towa – ...

) morphophonology, Tangut (

Tibeto-Burman The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non- Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people spea ...

) kinship, Engenni ( Niger-Congo) syntax, and Gbaya ( Niger-Congo). The team problem involved matching the articles of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...

to their translations in Armenian (

IOL 2015

IOL 13 was held from July 20 to 24, 2015, at the

American University in Bulgaria The American University in Bulgaria (or AUBG) is a private university located in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Established in 1991, today AUBG has about 1,000 students from over 40 countries on 5 continents (as of Fall 2019). Close to 50% of the student ...

Blagoevgrad Blagoevgrad ( bg, Благоевград ) is а town in Southwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of Blagoevgrad Municipality and of Blagoevgrad Province. With a population of almost inhabitants, it is the economic and cultural centre ...

, Bulgaria. Chaired by Aleksandar Velinov, it received 43 teams from 29 countries, with

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

and

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

sending teams for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Bozhidar Bozhanov. The five problems at the individual contest were about

(

) and Arammba ( South-Central Papuan) numbers, morphology in the

Besleney The Besleney ( Circassian: Bеслъэней, ''Bestləney'', ; russian: Бесленеевцы ) (also known as Beslenei or Baslaney) are one of the twelve major Circassian tribes, representing one of the twelve stars on the green-and-gold Circa ...

dialect of Kabardian ( Abkhaz-Adyghe),

Soundex Soundex is a phonetic algorithm for indexing names by sound, as pronounced in English. The goal is for homophones to be encoded to the same representation so that they can be matched despite minor differences in spelling. The algorithm mainly enc ...

, Wambaya ( West Barkly) syntax and the rules of Somali (

) poetry. The team problem involved using extracts from a monolingual

Northern Sotho Northern Sotho, or as an endonym, is a Sotho-Tswana language spoken in the northeastern provinces of South Africa. It is sometimes referred to as or , its main dialect, through synecdoche. According to the South African National Census o ...

(

Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...

) dictionary to build a grammar and lexicon of the language.

IOL 2016

IOL 14 was held from July 25 to 29, 2016, at the

Infosys Infosys Limited is an Indian Multinational corporation, multinational information technology company that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. The company was founded in Pune and is headquartered in Ba ...

Development Center in

Mysore Mysore (), officially Mysuru (), is a city in the southern part of the state of Karnataka, India. Mysore city is geographically located between 12° 18′ 26″ north latitude and 76° 38′ 59″ east longitude. It is located at an altitude of ...

. Chaired by Dr. Monojit Choudhury and Dr. Girish Nath Jha, it received 44 teams from 31 countries, with

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

and

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

sending teams for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Boris Iomdin. The five problems at the individual contest were about spatial deictics in

Aralle-Tabulahan Aralle-Tabulahan is an Austronesian language that belongs to the South Sulawesi subgroup. It is spoken in Mamasa Regency, West Sulawesi, Indonesia. Aralle-Tabulahan has three dialects: Aralle, Tabulahan and Mambi. The Mambi dialect is the most ...

( Austronesian), Luwian hieroglyphic script (

), Kunuz Nubian (

Eastern Sudanic In most classifications, the Eastern Sudanic languages are a group of nine families of languages that may constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Eastern Sudanic languages are spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania. Nub ...

) morphosyntax, Iatmül (

Sepik The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the second largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provinces of Sandaun (formerly West Se ...

) semantics and

Jaqaru Jaqaru (''Haq'aru'') is a language of the Aymaran family. It is also known as Jaqi and Aru. It is spoken in the districts of Tupe and Catahuasi in Yauyos Province, Lima Region, Peru. Most of the 2000 ethnic Jaqaru have migrated to Lima. Kawki, ...

(

Aymaran Aymaran (also Jaqi or Aru) is one of the two dominant language families in the central Andes alongside Quechua languages, Quechuan. The family consists of Aymara language, Aymara, widely spoken in Bolivia, and the endangered Jaqaru language, Jaqa ...

) morphology. The team problem involved matching over 100 utterances in

Taa Trans Australia Airlines (TAA), renamed Australian Airlines in 1986, was one of the two major Australian domestic airlines between its inception in 1946 and its merger with Qantas in September 1992. As a result of the "COBRA" (or Common Brand ...

( Tuu) to their IPA transcriptions.

IOL 2017

IOL 15 was held from July 31 to August 4, 2017, at

Dublin City University Dublin City University (abbreviated as DCU) ( ga, Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath) is a university based on the Northside of Dublin, Ireland. Created as the ''National Institute for Higher Education, Dublin'' in 1975, it enrolled its f ...

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. Chaired by Dr. Cara Greene, it received 43 teams from 27 countries, with

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

sending a

Francophone French became an international language in the Middle Ages, when the power of the Kingdom of France made it the second international language, alongside Latin. This status continued to grow into the 18th century, by which time French was the l ...

team for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Hugh Dobbs. The five problems at the individual content were about Berom (

Plateau In geology and physical geography, a plateau (; ; ), also called a high plain or a tableland, is an area of a highland consisting of flat terrain that is raised sharply above the surrounding area on at least one side. Often one or more sides ha ...

) numbers, Abui ( Timor-Alor-Pantar) possessives and semantics, Kimbundu (

) morphosyntax, Jru' (

) written in the

Khom script Khom script may refer to either of the following writing systems derived from the Khmer script: *Khom Thai script, a script based on ancient Khmer and historically used in Thailand *Khom script (Ong Kommadam), a script developed in Laos by the rebe ...

and

Madak Madak was a blend of opium and tobacco used as a recreational drug in 16th- and 17th-century China. It emerged in southern coastal areas in the first half of the 17th century. In the last quarter of the 18th century madak was phased out by raw ...

( Meso-Melanesian) morphophonology. The team problem involved establishing correspondences between 87

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...

s and their descriptions in

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...

( Austronesian).

IOL 2018

IOL 16 was held from July 26 to 30, 2018, at the Czech University of Life Sciences in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. Chaired by Vojtěch Diatka, it received 49 teams from 29 countries, with

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

and

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark ...

competing for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Maria Rubinstein. The five problems at the individual contest concerned Creek (

Muskogean Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is a Native American language family spoken in different areas of the Southeastern United States. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally div ...

) stress, Hakhun ( Sal) morphosyntax, Terêna (

Arawakan Arawakan (''Arahuacan, Maipuran Arawakan, "mainstream" Arawakan, Arawakan proper''), also known as Maipurean (also ''Maipuran, Maipureano, Maipúre''), is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branch ...

) phonology, counting in Mountain Arapesh ( Torricelli) and kinship in

Akan Akan may refer to: People and languages *Akan people, an ethnic group in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire *Akan language, a language spoken by the Akan people *Kwa languages, a language group which includes Akan *Central Tano languages, a language group w ...

( Atlantic-Congo). The team problem examined phonological correspondences among the three Jê languages Mẽbêngôkre,

Xavante The Xavante (also Shavante, Chavante, Akuen, A'uwe, Akwe, Awen, or Akwen) are an indigenous people, comprising 15,315 individuals within the territory of eastern Mato Grosso state in Brazil. They speak the Xavante language, part of the Jê lang ...

and Krĩkatí.

IOL 2019

IOL 17 was held from July 29 to August 2, 2019 at the

Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (abbreviated as HUFS; Korean: 한국외국어대학교) is a private research university based in Seoul, in South Korea. HUFS consistently ranks as one of the best universities in South Korea. The university ...

Yongin Yongin () is a city in the Seoul Capital Area, the largest in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. With a population over 1 million, the city has developed rapidly since the 21st century, recording the highest population growth of any city in the count ...

. Chaired by Minkyu Kim and Yoojung Chae, it received 53 teams from 35 countries, with

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Uzbekistan Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked cou ...

and

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

competing for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Tae Hun Lee. The five problems at the individual contest concerned

Yonggom Yonggom is one of the Ok languages of West Papua and Papua New Guinea. It is very close to North Muyu, which is also called 'Yonggom'. Phonology Consonants * /b, d/ can become fricatives �, ðintervocalically in fast speech. * /k/ can ...

( Ok) morphosyntax,

Yurok The Yurok (Karuk language: Yurúkvaarar / Yuru Kyara - "downriver Indian; i.e. Yurok Indian") are an Indigenous people from along the Klamath River and Pacific coast, whose homelands are located in present-day California stretching from Trinidad ...

(

) colours,

Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Per ...

(

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

) written in Book Pahlavi script, West Tarangan ( Aru)

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...

and Nooni (

Beboid The Beboid languages are any of several groups of languages spoken principally in southwest Cameroon, although two languages (Bukwen and Mashi) are spoken over the border in Nigeria. They are probably not most closely related to each other. The E ...

) morphosyntax and day names. The team problem involved the symbol notation used by judges in

rhythmic gymnastics Rhythmic gymnastics is a sport in which gymnasts perform on a floor with an apparatus: hoop, ball, clubs, ribbon. The sport combines elements of gymnastics, dance and calisthenics; gymnasts must be strong, flexible, agile, dexterous and coord ...

IOL 2020

IOL 18 was to take place from July 20 to 24, 2020, in

Ventspils Ventspils (; german: Windau, ; see other names) is a state city in northwestern Latvia in the historical Courland region of Latvia, and is the sixth largest city in the country. At the beginning of 2020, Ventspils had a population of 33,906. It ...

. Due to the widespread

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, the International Board of the IOL decided to postpone the event to July 19 to 23, 2021, on which it was successfully held. The competition was organised remotely in the respective countries of each team, marking the first time that the mode of competition was adopted at the IOL. Chaired by Vladimir Litvinsky, it received 54 teams from 34 countries, with

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

competing for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by . The five problems at the individual contest concerned Ekari ( Paniai Lakes) numerals, Zuni ( Isolate) semantics with special focus on food,

Kilivila The Trobriand Islands are a archipelago of coral atolls off the east coast of New Guinea. They are part of the nation of Papua New Guinea and are in Milne Bay Province. Most of the population of 12,000 indigenous inhabitants live on the main isla ...

( Oceanic) morphosyntax, Agbirigba (a

cant language A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot ...

) and its derivation from the Ogbakiri dialect of Ikwerre ( Atlantic-Congo), and

Rikbaktsa The Rikbaktsa are an Indigenous peoples in Brazil, indigenous ethnic group from the Mato Grosso region of Brazil. Name ''Rikbaktsa'' (Rikbaktsa ''rik'', person + ''bak'', human being + ''tsa'' lural suffix, the group's self-denomination, can ...

( Macro-Jê) morphology. The team problem involved matching sentences in passages written in

Garifuna The Garifuna people ( or ; pl. Garínagu in Garifuna) are a people of mixed free African and indigenous American ancestry that originated in the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent and speak Garifuna, an Arawakan language, and Vincentian ...

(

) with its translations, as well as acknowledging the difference between the language's male and female registers and establishing their relationships with Kari'ña (

Cariban The Cariban languages are a Language family, family of languages indigenous to northeastern South America. They are widespread across northernmost South America, from the mouth of the Amazon River to the Colombian Andes, and they are also spoken ...

) and

Lokono The Lokono or Arawak are an Arawak people native to northern coastal areas of South America. Today, approximately 10,000 Lokono live primarily along the coasts and rivers of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, Barbados and French Guiana. They speak the ...

(Arawakan), respectively.

IOL 2022

IOL 19 was held from July 25 to 29, 2022 at

King William's College King William's College (nicknamed KWC or King Bill's; gv, Colleish Ree Illiam) is an independent school for pupils aged 3 to 18, located near Castletown on the Isle of Man. It is a member of the International Baccalaureate and Headmasters' and ...

in Castletown,

. Chaired by Rob Teare, it received 46 teams from 32 countries, with

Moldova Moldova ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Moldova ( ro, Republica Moldova), is a Landlocked country, landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The List of states ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

and

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

competing for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Samuel Ahmed. The five problems at the individual contest concerned Ubykh ( Abkhaz-Adyghe) morphophonology, the semantics and morphophonology of

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...

(

) verbs, Nǀuuki ( Tuu) syntax,

Arabana The Arabana, also known as the Ngarabana, are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia. Name The older tribal Exonym and endonym, autonym was Ngarabana, which may have been misheard by white settlers as Arabana, the term now generall ...

( Pama-Nyungan) kinship, and phonological changes and

tonogenesis Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...

in two daughter languages of

Proto-Chamic The Chamic languages, also known as Aceh–Chamic and Achinese–Chamic, are a group of ten languages spoken in Aceh (Sumatra, Indonesia) and in parts of Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hainan, China. The Chamic languages are a subgroup of Malay ...

, Phan Rang Cham and Tsat. The team problem presented extracts in 17th and 18th century

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...

( Tungusic) from Cheong-eo Nogeoldae and the

Kangxi Emperor The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 1654– 20 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, born Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1661 to 1 ...

's Imperially Commissioned Mirror of the Manchu Language for analysis, with tasks involving matching sentences in Old and Modern Manchu to their respective translations as well as writing in the

Manchu script The Manchu alphabet ( mnc, m=, v=manju hergen, a=manju hergen) is the alphabet used to write the now nearly-extinct Manchu language. A similar script is used today by the Xibe people, who speak a language considered either as a dialect of Ma ...

Summary

The different editions of IOL can be summarized on the following table: # The competition was held remotely.

Participant countries

Individual medalists

Team medals

All-time medal table

Only countries with at least 1 gold medal are listed. The data is accurate up to 2022.

Media coverage

* Newspaper article in

The Age ''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...

"It may be semantics, but linguistics can be a team event". July 27, 2012.