Each year, students from across the nation compete in the Olympiad, that rewards the ability to decode, translate, and compose meaningful phrases in lesser-known languages.
This was the first year IGS students have participated in the event.
“In 2020 our IGS linguists worked through puzzles in: Cuneiform, the oldest known writing system that was created in Babylonia (ca. 3400 BC); Dutch, a Germanic language; Liguriani, a Romance language spoken in Liguria, Northern Italy; Kolyma Yukaghir, a Russian language which is facing obsolescence; and Northern Sámi, which is the most widely spoken of the Sámi languages, the languages of the people indigenous to Northern Norway, Sweden and Finland.”
The top three scoring teams in NSW will progress to the national competition, to be held at the end of March.
Harriet of Year 9 said: “It was a great challenging experience that gave insight into the way other languages work.”
Jack of Year 9 said: “It was intense, it was a good kind of challenging.”
AJ of Year 9 said: “It was fun. Some questions I could get quite well, some I couldn’t get quite well.”
Eliot of Year 11 said: “It was interesting to compare patterns in languages.”
Congratulations to all students involved.
