The team

My name is Maria Gritsun, I’m a 10-th grade student of biotechnology at the Shimon Peres School. My infatuation with languages has been a passion of mine since I was only a little girl. My grandfather and my mother are teachers and translators of the Italian language, who studied at the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State University. Thanks to them, I developed a deep-seated love for learning languages. I have been learning English since childhood and since the fifth Grade, I have been delving into the German language. In 2021, I commenced the study of Hebrew. And, needless to say, Italian has always been a part of my agenda, which my mother has been teaching me for the past five months.

However, the mere number of languages I study does not attest to the extent of my affection for languages. I aspire to immerse myself in the culture of each language and its origins. In 2021, Misha Iomdin (also a participant in this Olympiad) introduced me to the other side of language learning — linguistics and gave me the opportunity to fall in love with languages for the second time. Since then, I have tried to participate in all kinds of Olympiads related to languages. For instance, in 2022, I took part in the IDO 2022 German Olympiad, which provided me with the opportunity to see Germany for the first time. This year, I participated in the traditional Linguistics Olympiad, which opened my eyes to how much I still have to learn about linguistics. That is why I am partaking in this IOL — to learn more about linguistics and to connect with more individuals who share my passion for this beautiful field of study.

Hi! My name is Misha Iomdin, I am a 10th grade student in the Shimon Peres school in Tel Aviv (a.k.a. Shevach Moffet), majoring in Computer Science and programming.
I have been interested in languages for quite a long time. Apart for Russian (my mother tongue) and English (which I learned at Tabeetha School), I have been practicing French, more lately German, and since we moved to Israel, I have been actively studying Hebrew. I love to tell people about Hebrew, which is why I have a whole blog in this topic (in Russian, in English).

Nevertheless, studying specific languages is neither important nor required for this olympiad. Instead, each problem is about a new language, rare, or sometimes even extinct, one that you are likely not to have ever even heard about. The point is to decipher several sentences, understand the system of the language, its grammatical logic. Describing natural languages' phenomena formally is not only an interesting hobby, but also an important skill, helpful in math and computer science. This is how the modern language processing tools began to be developed, from Google Translate to ChatGPT.

I enjoy linguistics as a whole, and linguistic puzzles in particular. The diversity of languages of the world amaze me every time! I am looking forward to participating in the IOL in order to represent Israel in this major competition, while at the same time getting to know students from all over the world interested in the same subject — as linguistics isn't commonly taught in schools.

Hello, my name is Roman. I study computer science with Misha in Shimon Peres school. Since third grade I'm involved into programming. Therefore, I know several languages. Not only Hebrew, English or Russian, but also python, C# and C++.

About two years ago, Misha first time told me about linguistics. He said, that it's not like you need to know three hundred forty five and a half languages, but about describing their inner logic, like in math tasks.

And guess what? He was right. It's not about knoweldge. It's a research. In any task you shouldn't find out "what", you should understand "how". And it's fantastic. In one time, linguistics problems are math problems, which I also like to solve, and kinda humanitarian. I mean, it's math, but you easily see, what's going on and why it's real.

Also I act in a children theatre (you can see our studio on the photo) and write a book in my free time, like a rest from all of those math, programming.

Hello, my name is Lev.

I am a 10th grader, but unlike my teammates I am from Psagot school at Karmiel. I am interested in linguistics since my 5th grade, when I started to visit an extracurricular course on linguistics at 57th school at Moscow. Languages have always amazed me, but I am looking on them as more of a mathematician, which has lead to me becoming more and more interested in computational linguistics.

This year I am participating in IOL for Israel and yet I am still learning and this is only the beginning for what I think is a great journey.