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NACLO 2026 - North American Computational Linguistics Open competition

NACLO 2026 - North American Computational Linguistics Open competition

The open round of this year’s NACLO competition will take place on Thursday, January 29, 2026. Make sure to register at the official site!

 

What is NACLO?

Are you a high school student with a knack for languages, logic and computational thinking? Would you like to try your hand at deciphering an ancient script or deducing the logical patterns of Swahili or Hawaiian?

NACLO stands for the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. It is a contest for high school (and younger) students to solve linguistics problems drawn from a variety of languages. Only logic and reasoning skills are necessary; no prior knowledge of particular languages or of linguistics is required.

 

Where can I participate?

This year, Ohio State University will run an in-person site. The open round of the contest will take place in the Valor Room (Room 100) at Busch House on Thursday, January 29, 2026 (9:30am-1:00pm). Well-performing students will be invited to a second round (March 19th). The top students in the invitational round will have a chance to participate in the International Linguistics Olympiad in the summer. More information about NACLO can be found at the national NACLO site.

After the competition, until 2:00pm, we will provide an optional pizza lunch and introductions to some of our current students for participants who are interested in learning more about linguistics at OSU.  The pizza lunch will be held in the Valor Room after testing is complete.

Registration

Participation is free. Students who are interested in can register at the NACLO registration site. Register early to be assured of a seat. Registrations will still be accepted, provided that space is available, up until January 27.

Location and Parking

Busch House is located on the north part of campus at 2115 N High St.  There is no close parking structure, so if you drive, you may need to find on-street parking - be sure to leave time to find parking.  Alternately, it may be easier to be dropped off or take the #2 COTA bus.

What can Ohio State do for me?

In addition to running our NACLO site, members of the Linguistics department would be pleased to support your NACLO club, team or study session! We can arrange a Zoom or in-person meeting with a member of our faculty or staff to show you how to solve NACLO problems from past years, answer your questions about the study of language, or talk to you about careers in computational linguistics. Contact elsner.14@osu.edu.

 

Sample question

Abma is an Austronesian language spoken in parts of the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu by around 8,000 people. Carefully study these Abma sentences, then answer the following questions. Note that there is no separate word for the or he in these Abma sentences.

  • Mwamni sileng. (He drinks water.)
  • Nutsu mwatbo mwamni sileng. (The child keeps drinking water.)
  • Mwerava Mabontare mwisib. (He pulls Mabontare down.)
  • Mabontare mwisib. (Mabontare goes down.)
  • Mweselkani tela mwesak. (He carries the axe up.)
  • Mwelebte sileng mwabma. (He brings water.)
  • Mabontare mworob mwesak. (Mabontare runs up.)
  • Sileng mworob. (The water runs.)
  • sesesrakan (teacher)

Use the above information to translate the following sentence:

  • The teacher carries the water down.

If you came up with Sesesrakan mweselkani sileng mwisib, this is the competition for you!

More sample questions for practice are available here.

 

Contact Information

Please contact Dr. Micha Elsner or Dr. Clint Awai-Jennings for more information.