AILO Workshop in Donnybrook
09 Dec 2024Leading a workshop to prepare students for the All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) is always an end of year highlight. This year I visited Muckross Park College in Dublin. The workshop was also attended by students from Oatlands College, Harold’s Cross Educate Together Secondary School, Catholic University School and The Teresian School.
The group did an amazing job at solving puzzles involving three different languages that were unfamiliar to them: Permyak, spoken by around 60,000 people in the north-eastern part of European Russia, Lalana Chinantec, spoken by around 10,000 people in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, and Umbrian, an extinct Italic language once spoken in the ancient Italian region of Umbria.
In July 2025, the international final of AILO will take place in Taipei, Taiwan. But first, the 100 most successful puzzle solvers from all over Ireland will compete in the national final at Dublin City University in March.
I hope to see some of the students I met today again at the national final — good luck to everyone in the preliminary round! 🤞