Ireland won a team award for the first time in the 17-year history of attending the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) in Bucharest, Romania this week. The team received an ‘honourable mention’, placing 9th out of 65 teams (255 students) from 46 countries and territories. Kirill Korostelev, from the Institute of Education, Dublin, won a bronze medal in the individual competition marking Ireland’s fourth bronze win at the International Olympiad. Joining Kirill on the team representing Ireland were Aidan Alexander from St Mac Dara’s Community College, Templeogue; and Jacob Roantree and Michael Costello, both from St Kilian’s German School, Clonskeagh. The Olympiad challenges participants to analyse the grammar, structure, culture, and history of different languages and to demonstrate their linguistic abilities through individual and team puzzles and problem-solving challenges.
Ireland has now won four individual bronze medals, one team honourable mention and ten individual honourable mentions at the International Olympiad since 2009.
The Irish team has been selected via the All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) since 2009, which has been run by ADAPT, the Research Ireland Centre for AI-Driven Digital Content Technology, at the School of Computing, Dublin City University. The AILO competition is currently looking for sponsorship opportunties to be able to continue to run the AILO workshop programme and competition for 2026/7 as well as attend the international competition for 2027. Further information is available at https://ailo.adaptcentre.ie/sponsor/.
Each year AILO has over 3,500 students, registered with schools on both sides of the border, attending free island-wide workshops and taking part in the preliminary round and – for some – the national finals. In the workshop programme, students work together, using their problem-solving and lateral thinking skills to work our the rules of a language they have never seen before. They then go on to take part in the competition proper of the AILO where they participate in individual and team rounds. School registration is open at https://ailo.adaptcentre.ie/enter/.
Sample puzzles from the All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) can be downloaded at https://ailo.adaptcentre.ie/sample-puzzles/ and international level puzzles at https://ioling.org/problems/samples/.
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L-R: Jacob Roantree (16), Michael Costello (18), Kirill Korostelev (19), and Aidan Alexander (19) who won an honourable mention in the team competition at the International Linguistics Olympiad on Saturday 1st August. Kirill also won a bronze medal in the individual competition. They were competing against 255 young linguistic problem-solvers from all over the world in Bucharest last week. The Irish team was selected via the All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO) which is run by the ADAPT Research Centre at Dublin City University.
