London Language

UK Linguistics Olympiad - round 1 next week

I'm very excited to think that we are now just 5 days away from round 1 of the UK Linguistics Olympiad

A group of us have been interested in the existing Linguistics Olympiads for quite a while now and always thought it a shame that teams from the UK didn't enter. It was hard to see how they could given that so few students study linguistics or linguistics-related topics at school. Now, of course, there is more language at school throughout the curriculum, a thriving A Level in English Language and a group of us are continuing to work towards an A Level in Linguistics, with some of our materials having been trialled in schools.

Last year, UK schools took part in the first All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad and a UK team entered the International Linguistics Olympiad for the first time. They did very well, unofficially ranking around 5th, with one team member winning a bronze medal.

We didn't know how much interest there would in the first UK Olympiad so we're delighted to have over 50 schools registered and around 500 students taking part, some of them as young as 12 or 13.

Hoping it all runs smoothly next week and looking forward to my bit of the marking.

If anybody fancies having a go at some of the olympiad puzzles, scroll down to the bottom of Dick Hudson's UK Linguistics Olympiad page

Billy

Bringing up bilingual and multilingual children

*Venue: **Camden Town Hall, Council Chamber, Judd Street, London, WC1H 9JE**
***

*(2 minutes walk from British Library)*

*Time: **10:00am - 1:00pm, Friday 19 March 2010 *

*Organiser: **Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck,
University of London*

*Speakers**:  Professor Antonella Sorace; Professor Barbara Dodd; Dr Carol
Stow, Dr Sean Pert; Professor Li Wei;  Professor Jean-Marc Dewaele; **Dr
Lisa McEntee**-**Atalianis *

*The event is free to attend. No booking required. Seats
first-come-first-serve. *

Download BilingualChildrenEvent_2009_A5_Layout 1

An interesting mini-lecture

The Secret Life of the Dog

A very interesting programme about animal communication and what it can tell us about human language:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/jan/07/horizon-secret-life-of-dog

Happy New Year!

DonnA

hinting at a downpour - RP RIP?

Guardian Crosswords - RP RIP?

Here's Hugh Stephenson, the Guardian's crossword editor, on problems caused by regional variation when setting crossword clues:

'I read somewhere recently that, after more than half a century of decline in favour of received pronunciation, regional accents have been making a strong comeback in England since the 1970s and continue to do so. This is beginning to create something of a problem for crossword setters who like to sprinkle homophones among their clues and solutions. There has always been something of a problem in this regard for Scottish, Welsh and Irish crossword solvers, for whom RP is not the natural way of things, and for those in other lands who speak a non-English variety of English. To take an example recently sent to me, when it rains heavily we experience downpour. If I wanted to make use of the word homophonically, would it be legitimate to make the final syllable rhyme with "paw" (as in pawpaw or the foot of a dog) or can it only rhyme with "Ur" (as in Ur of the Chaldees)? If we are to allow departures from RP in crossword clues, should there be a requirement and some indicator word to this effect worked in?'

Billy