Offaly student to compete at International Linguistics Olympiad in Bulgaria

A linguistics team featuring a student from Tullamore College is set to compete in the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOl) in Bulgaria this week.

The Irish Team is comprised of Naoise Sheridan (18) from Tullamore College, Finn Wallace (18) from CBC Monkstown, Paddy Clancy (17) from St Vincent’s Castleknock and Megan Boland (18) from Ursuline Secondary School, Thurles, Tipperary. The Irish team qualified last March in the 2023 All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) run by ADAPT, the SFI Research Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology.

The International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) is an annual international competition that brings together secondary school students and experts from various fields of linguistics. Since its inception in 2003, the IOL has been hosted in a different country each summer. The competition challenges participants to analyze the grammar, structure, culture, and history of different languages and to demonstrate their linguistic abilities through puzzles and problem-solving challenges.