Re: OT: International Linguistics Olympiad

On Thu, 1 Nov 2007 16:51:05 -0700, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:

><http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=109891>
>
>Huh?!  Did they have this when I was in high school...?
A local version, probably, as long as you went to high school in Russia?  I
haven't actually searched for any details, but
http://www.zompist.com/rants.html#19 is some evidence that this sort of
thing was happening not later than 2001, before the international one started.

Wouldn't at all surprise me if it was earlier, though: Russia and eastern
Europe seem to be very keen on these olympiads overall.  The International
Math Olympiad (which I was latterly involved in), for instance, was a
heavily eastern-European-dominated affair for its first fifteen or so years,
1959--1973; and the earliest mathy specimen I know of is the Hungarian
Eo"tvo"s competition established 1894.

Alex

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