Are you interested in learning foreign languages, puzzle-solving, breaking codes, combinatorics, and/or conjugations? Would you like to try your hand at deciphering an ancient script or deducing the logical patterns of Swahili, Hawaiian or Finite State Transducers? If so, NACLO is the right challenge for you!
What is NACLO?
NACLO stands for the North American Computational Linguistics Open competition. NACLO is a contest in which high-school students solve linguistic problems. In solving these problems, students learn about the diversity and consistency of language, while exercising logic skills. No prior knowledge of linguistics or second languages is necessary.
Each January thousands of Middle and High School students across North America participate in NACLO, with the top-performing participants moving forward to the invitational and then international competitions.
Participation in NACLO is free. Students who are interested in taking part will however need to register to participate in the competition at the NACLO registration site.
For more about NACLO as well as past puzzles, go here.
For the student handbook, go here.
Will there be training sessions?
Training sessions at Georgia Tech for the year 2023 will take place on January 13 (Friday, 1 pm – 4 pm EST) and January 14 (Saturday, 10 am to 1 pm EST). The sessions will be held online via Zoom. The link for the online meetings will be made available to everyone who registers. Participation in these training sessions is free. If you plan to attend a training session, please register here.
When is the contest?
The first (Open) round of the contest will take place on Thursday, January 26, 2023, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. Students who perform well in the Open round will be invited to take part in the second (Invitational) round to be held on March 16, 2023, from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm.
The top students in the invitational round from across North America will have a chance to participate in the International Linguistics Open competition in the summer. More information about NACLO can be found at the national NACLO site.
Both the open round and the second round will be hosted in the Pettit Microelectronics Building, 102A&B Conference Room (791 Atlantic Dr. NW, Atlanta, GA 30332).
Acknowledgment
Thanks to the support from the School of Modern Languages in organizing the NACLO at Georgia Tech.
This event is sponsored by the Atlanta Global Studies Center (Awarded project: Introducing Linguistics to Atlanta High School Students, proposed by Prof. Hongchen Wu and Prof. Kyoko Masuda).
Contact info
If you have any questions about the training sessions, or about the NACLO contest at Georgia Tech, send an email to Prof. Hongchen Wu at hwu480@gatech.edu.
For more information and linguistics resources, click here.