GCHQ Languages Competiton
GCHQ Languages Competiton
From Monday 6 to Friday 10 November 2023, we participated as a team of four in this year’s GCHQ National Language Competition.We were given a week to solve a collection of 72 challenges, which incorporated languages from across the globe, both familiar, unfamiliar, and fictional. We worked on these problems as a team, dedicating all our free time to the challenge both at home and at school during form times, break and lunch.
The competition itself was designed to be incompletable but nonetheless, having set out with a strong drive to do our very best, we managed to answer 71 out of the 72 questions. Some of the challenges proved to be especially fiendish, such as ‘Miskvit Mayhem’, which involved an entirely invented language that we had to learn, and ‘Mangled’, which incorporated a mix of English, Malay and Tamil. Solving these questions required a great amount of teamwork and logic.
Without a doubt, the process itself was challenging at times but we were all so proud of what we achieved as a team when we were informed that we had won the competition regionally, in Greater London. This competition taught us so much about etymology, different cultures and different languages which have and will continue to shape the way in which we communicate. It also allowed us all to hone our teamwork skills. We would like to sincerely express our gratitude towards Ms Delage for making this entire process possible.
Alyssa, Jane, Jemima, Yuna (LV)
