How do you conjugate the verb “to give” in Ubykh, a Circassian language that died 30 years ago with the passing of its last native speaker? How do you translate from English to N|uuki, a South African language with just one remaining speaker, and back again? How do you match 22 family members to their position on a family tree, given their relationships written in Arabana, a South Australian language spoken by less than 20 people today?

Harker alum Rishab Parthasarathy (‘22) did all that. Tucked in between England and Ireland, the Isle of Man welcomed 184 contestants from 50 teams across 36 countries for the 19th annual International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) from July 25 to 29, where competitors pondered and debated problems concerning languages from Ubykh to Arabana. Parthasarathy, along with seven other students, represented the United States at the competition.

Parthasarathy received a silver medal at the IOL, and the U.S. brought home the IOL Team Trophy with the highest average individual score and a bronze medal in the team contest.

The selection process to join the U.S. IOL team begins with the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (NACLO), an exam featuring diverse linguistics puzzles. Top scorers of the contest then compete in the invitational round, of which the top eight U.S. students are chosen to represent the country at the international level.

Parthasarathy first learned about NACLO in his sophomore year. After years of participating in math and science competitions through middle and high school, he decided on a whim to sign up for the competition, attracted to the idea of playing with languages and solving puzzles. Looking back, Parthasarathy believes that the puzzle aspect of the exam serves as a fun and friendly introduction to linguistics.

“I was also trying not to just stagnate as a person,” Parthasarathy said. “That’s how I’ve always done things: if something is fun to me, I’ll do it. Learning science and solving puzzles has always been fun, so you put it together and get a perfect storm.”

Preparing for the competitions involved training his intuition through studying past years’ problems, which span topics from number systems to morphology. Despite the hours of practice under his belt, Parthasarathy had one goal entering NACLO: to enjoy the test as much as he could.

“Once I started applying that mindset of not [putting] pressure on yourself and accepting that you’re going to do the best you can, in general, I started doing better on things,” Parthasarathy said.

Ultimately, taking the contest with an open mind led to Parthasarathy’s success. After being invited to join the U.S. IOL team, Parthasarathy and his teammates began to practice further individually and as a team, growing closer to each other and developing contest strategies.

“We had some training sessions over zoom, where the team coaches would talk about some aspect of linguistics,” IOL teammate Luke Robitaille said. “Teamwork is definitely important because for the team round, you work together for four hours and try to make as much progress as you can on some really long complicated problem. [Parthasarathy is] good at being a supportive teammate and, for the team, was working very effectively.”

During the competition, the sheer diversity in language of the Isle of Man despite its small size surprised Parthasarathy. From learning about the cultures of his fellow competitors to performing songs in different countries’ national languages, Parthasarathy enjoyed the unique experiences he encountered during his stay.

“Every day is a new experience: meeting new people and being exposed to a really new culture,” Parthasarathy said. “I never knew that the Isle of Man had such a specific and vibrant culture, including multiple dialects of the same language within 20 miles of each other. It was really cool to be exposed to a culture that I hadn’t learned about before [and] see people who think about language.”

Unlike math and science olympiads, linguistics olympiads offer a unique view into the field; solving these language puzzles closely resembles the real work and research of linguists.

“A lot of [linguistics olympiads] is seeing these patterns and learning how to identify patterns,” Parthasarathy said. “That’s applicable beyond just linguistics, but it’s cool to see a competition where they’re actually teaching you what a linguist will be doing in the field which is exactly trying to recreate languages from scratch with this very limited range of information.”

Such problems explore various languages and their changes. For one, several Polynesian languages evolved over time and witnessed shifts in the languages’ vowel sounds. With their roots nearly 8,000 miles away, languages from the Siberian mountains saw analogous changes. Surprising patterns across languages like these intrigued Parthasarathy as he discovered the beauty of language throughout his linguistics career.

“At the beginning, [I was interested in] the puzzle aspects [of linguistics], but by the end, I came out interested in language,” Parthasarathy said. “It’s a puzzle. It’s fun. Linguistics olympiads specifically bring you in with the puzzles, and once you really get to that, once you keep doing it, they keep teaching you more and more.”

In learning languages, Parthasarathy did not stop at competitions. Most people would not consider DNA or even barcodes to be language, but these underlying connections fascinated him; in his scientific research, he applied techniques in natural language processing to analyze genomics.

Now, as an alum of NACLO and IOL, Parthasarathy contributes original problems to the competitions, a process he finds fulfilling.

“It’s a very tight knit group, all alumni giving back to the organization and helping to coach, helping to bring the team together,” Parthasarathy said. “Can I help provide the same boost to someone else? How do you write problems like that? How do you make sure the competition stays running? You’ve seen these people coaching you, now you’re working with them and can actually learn how they think about this. It’s an incredible opportunity.”

To younger students, Parthasarathy recommends exploring linguistics, not only because of the richness of his own experience but also because of the broader community he found.

“If people are coming into high school and they don’t know what they’re interested in or they’re still exploring this, try out language and linguistics, try NACLO,” Parthasarathy said. “If you don’t like it, that’s completely fine, but if you end up enjoying it, keep trying it out because it is really cool and fun when it comes down to it.”