The North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition (NACLO) is a fun and educational contest for high school students in which you solve linguistics problems from a variety of languages (natural and artificial).
No prior knowledge of linguistics or any particular language is required. All you need to bring is your curiosity and enthusiasm!
Top-scoring students in the first round are invited to participate in the second round. This leads to the selection of a Canadian national team, which competes with teams from other countries from all over the world in the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), hosted by a different country each year.
A large number of practice problems (and their solutions) are posted on the NACLO website.
Announcement about NACLO 2025
UBC is pleased to be hosting the 2025 competition in person! The open round will be held on Thursday,
January 23, 2025 from 9:00am-12:00pm. Students should plan to arrive at 8:30am. The contest will be held on campus at UBC Vancouver, in PCN 1001 (that’s room 1001 in the Ponderosa Commons building; click the link for address and map). Ponderosa Commons is a 10-minute walk from the UBC bus loop or a 5-minute walk from West Parkade.
Please note that there will be no on-site registration; you must register in advance. You can find information about the contest, as well as a registration form, at https://naclo.org/
We will potentially also be hosting one or more pre-contest practice sessions in the first few weeks of January. Information about practice sessions will be emailed to registered students and/or posted here, as it becomes available.
The invitational round (based on scores from the open round) of the competition will be on Thursday, March 13, 2025, from 9:00am-1:00pm, also on campus at UBC Vancouver.
UBC NACLO can be contacted at naclo.ubc@ubc.ca.