--- title: Olympiad: Breakthrough puzzles in made-up languages — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: Breakthrough puzzles in made-up languages», a lesson of the english course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: In a UKLO Breakthrough puzzle (UKLO is the UK Linguistics Olympiad, and Breakthrough is its first, easiest level), you --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/) / Olympiad: Breakthrough puzzles in made… # Olympiad: Breakthrough puzzles in made-up languages Lesson 58 of the english course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/0/) — In a UKLO Breakthrough puzzle (UKLO is the UK Linguistics Olympiad, and Breakthrough is its first, easiest level), you meet a language you have never seen and work out its rules from a few examples, like a detective. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/1/) — You never need to know the language beforehand: everything is in the data, and the trick is to line the examples up and spot what changes and what stays the same. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/2/) — Look for repeated bits: if kapa is house and kapakapa is houses, then saying a word twice makes a plural, so sela (tree) gives selasela (trees). - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/3/) — Word order may not work like English: in some languages a little ending, not the place in the sentence, shows who is doing the action. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/4/) — Always check your rule against EVERY example before you answer, and if the data does not tell you something, the honest answer is "the data does not say". - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/6/) — In Ruvan, mika is girl, pela is dog, tor is sees and sun is feeds; "Mika-n pela tor" means the girl sees the dog. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/7/) — In Ruvan, "Pela-n mika tor" and "Mika pela-n tor" both mean the dog sees the girl, so the ending -n marks the one doing the action, wherever it stands. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/8/) — In Kel, pa = 1, ki = 2, ro = 3, mu = 4 and lan = 5; a number after lan is added (lan pa = 6), and a number before lan multiplies it (ki lan = 10, ro lan = 15), so ki lan pa = 11. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/9/) — In Nam, ka- at the front means it happened in the past, and -ti at the end means "you": nalu = I swim, ka-nalu = I swam, nalu-ti = you swim, ka-nalu-ti = you swam. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/10/) — In Selk, the describing word comes first: ki (eye) + ota (water) = kiota (tears, "eye-water"); with fen (fire) and mor (mountain), a fire-mountain, a volcano, is fenmor. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/11/) — In Lumi, -sa makes a plural, -i means "my" and -ou means "your", added in that order: tak (cat), taki (my cat), takou (your cat), taksa (cats), taksai (my cats). - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/12/) — In Pirr, bo (big) and lo (small) go in front of the noun: bopir = big bird, lopir = small bird, bomuk = big fish. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/13/) — In Tano, ne goes just before the verb to mean "not": Ti ama = I like, Ti ne ama = I don't like, Ka ama = you like. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/14/) — In Ilo, -ko turns a doing word into the person who does it: dami (to run), damiko (runner), seri (to sing), seriko (singer). - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/15/) — In Vor, ral is red, sel is blue and ralsel is purple, but no example shows selral, so the data does not say what it means. - ← previous: [Olympiad: riddles, lipograms and hidden words](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/57-olympiad-riddles-lipograms-and-hidden-words/) - next →: [Olympiad: real languages and codes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/) - ↑ back to [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/)