NACLO is a linguistics contest that challenges students to demonstrate their ability to understand and analyze human language. Unlike former linguistics contests, NACLO includes problems in Computational Linguistics, in addition to general linguistic ones.

NACLO is also the exam by which U.S. students are chosen for the International Linguistics Olympiad. Read more about NACLO and the ILO.

Top scorers in the Open Competition in February are eligible to compete in an Invitational Competition in March. Winners of the Invitational competition will be eligible to represent North America at the International Linguistic Olympiad. There is no participation fee for any NACLO event.

Register online to participate in the Open Competition. Students may:

(a) Participate at a university test site (see web site for test locations)

(b) Participate at his or her school — this involves having a teacher at the school who will supervise the contest locally on the day of the event.

(c) Participate as a home-schooled student — this applies only to state-recognized home-school students.

Timeline:

February: Open Competition - Open to all interested precollege students. While the target age range is 8th-12th grades, younger students may participate.

March: Invitational Competition - The top 25% from the Open will be invited to advance to this more difficult 3-hour exam. The purpose is to select national winners, who will then participate in the international competition.

In addition to contest participants, NACLO is looking for local organizers for the contests. Anyone (students, parents, teachers, administrators) interested should contact Dragomir Radev (radev@umich.edu) with "NACLO" in the subject line of their message.

Find more practice problems on the old web site, namclo.linguistlist.org.