10 March 2022
This is the first time that SPSC has fielded teams for OzCLO. Eight students from Years 8 to 10 signed up to participate in this exciting national competition. In preparation for the day students have been meeting once a week to practise linguistic challenges and crack codes to real life languages.
Teams from around Australia competed simultaneously over a two-hour period to unravel five fascinating language problems. This year students had to grapple with deciphering Rotuman, a language spoken by people who live on the Rotuma group of the South Pacific Islands. They also translated sentences from Waanyi, an Australian language. Another challenge was understanding the Russian phonetics of baby talk! Did you know that there are 8,000 speakers of Arhuaco, which is native to Northern Colombia? Students had to work out the names of places and things in this tongue. For the last challenge the teams learnt about Wik-Mungkan, a Paman language spoken in Queensland by around 1,650 people.
Both teams worked tirelessly with gusto and dedication throughout the contest. It was a delight to see them work collaboratively.
The top three teams for each region will be invited to compete in the second round which takes place at the end March.
Thank you to Ms Harvey and all students that have taken an interest in OzCLO. For anyone in Years 7 to 10 who would like to get involved in the SACLO Society (South Australian Computational Linguistic Olympiad) please contact rspiby@stpeters.sa.edu.au
Rachel Spiby
Head of Languages