--- title: Olympiad: real languages and codes — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: real languages and codes», a lesson of the english course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Swahili changes the start of a word instead of the end: mtoto (child) becomes watoto (children), and mtu (person) becomes watu (people) --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/) [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: real languages and codes # Olympiad: real languages and codes Lesson 59 of the english course of Mova's primary school: 16 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/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/1/) — Swahili changes the start of a word instead of the end: mtoto (child) becomes watoto (children), and mtu (person) becomes watu (people). - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/2/) — When words travel into another language they are reshaped to fit its sounds: Hawaiian has no r, s or t, and its syllables end in vowels, so "Merry Christmas" became "Mele Kalikimaka"; Japanese adds vowels too, so ice cream became "aisukurīmu". - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/3/) — Codes are puzzles with a secret rule: shift every letter one step along the alphabet (IFMMP is HELLO), or swap letters for numbers (A = 1, B = 2 and so on). - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/4/) — Picture Ffion in Cardiff saying "cath" for cat but "fy nghath" for "my cat": Welsh changes the first sound of some words after certain little words, a change called a mutation, and checking a rule against EVERY example is how you avoid a wrong guess. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/5/) — In Indonesian, doubling a noun makes it plural: buku (book), buku-buku (books); rumah (house), rumah-rumah (houses). - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/6/) — In Swahili, many words for people take m- in the singular and wa- in the plural: mtoto and watoto, mtu and watu, mpishi (cook) and wapishi (cooks). - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/7/) — In Turkish, the plural ending is -ler when the word's last vowel is e, i, ö or ü, and -lar when it is a, ı, o or u: ev, evler (houses); kedi, kediler (cats); kitap, kitaplar (books). - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/8/) — So Turkish gün (day) becomes günler and kız (girl) becomes kızlar; this matching of vowels is called vowel harmony. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/9/) — Esperanto was invented in 1887 by L. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/10/) — Zamenhof; it is a real language, spoken by people around the world today. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/11/) — In Esperanto, mal- makes the opposite (granda big, malgranda small; varma warm, malvarma cold), and -j makes plurals, on describing words too: bela kato, belaj katoj (beautiful cats). - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/12/) — Hawaiian has only eight consonants (there is no r, s or t, for example), and its syllables end in vowels, so borrowed words are reshaped: "Merry Christmas" became "Mele Kalikimaka". - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/13/) — Japanese syllables almost always end in a vowel (or "n"), so borrowed words get extra vowels: "terebi" (television), "aisukurīmu" (ice cream). - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/14/) — In Welsh, some words change their first sound after certain words; after "fy" (my), c becomes ngh, so cath (cat) becomes fy nghath (my cat). - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/15/) — In the code where IFMMP means HELLO, every letter is shifted one step forward in the alphabet; to decode, move each letter one step back. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/59-olympiad-real-languages-and-codes/16/) — In the code A = 1, B = 2 and so on, 3-1-20 spells CAT. - ← previous: [Olympiad: Breakthrough puzzles in made-up languages](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/58-olympiad-breakthrough-puzzles-in-made-up-languages/) - next →: [Olympiad: tricky comprehension](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/60-olympiad-tricky-comprehension/) - ↑ back to [English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/english/)