Alan Treloar

I've developed the odd habit over the last couple of years, perhaps related to my interest in dead languages, of reading the obituaries in the paper from time. Not in an obsessive way, but I'll often flip to the back of the Herald and have a glance to see who's featured, and more often than not it's someone who I've never heard of, but who lived a remarkably interesting life.

Like Alan Treloar, whose obituary included the following:

Colonel Alan Treloar was one of Australia's greatest linguists and classical scholars and also a distinguished soldier.


Few could rival his knowledge as a scholar of ancient Greek and Latin. He had a special interest in the Roman poet Horace but had read the entire classical literatures of both languages at least twice.


He had an astonishing gift for languages and would admit, when pressed, to direct knowledge of about 80. He had a formidable command of many, such as Sanskrit, Russian, Chinese, Arabic and Hittite. In his early 80s he was investigating Bunuba, a language of the Kimberley.

Being (at a stretch) tri-lingual I often meet people who express amazement at my language skills, but in reality I am a mere dwarf compared to such a giant. I am especially in awe of his claim to have read the entire classical literatures of both Latin and Greek twice, to the extent that I wonder if it could possibly be true. I'm sure it is, though how he managed to find the time is completely beyond me.

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on radio and tv

I took two teams to the Australian Computational Linguistics Olympiad at Sydney Uni last week, and though neither team made it through to the next round they should be very pleased with their efforts (the year 10s got a 'gold medal', the year 9s silver). I haven't seen a copy of the questions yet, but apparently one of them was about ancient Etruscan, which would have been interesting.

ABC radio did a short story on the competition which you can listen to hear.

I also managed to catch an episode of the fantastic Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour last night, where he explores the Roman forum, Herculaneum and Pompeii. It's upon iview for another day - catch it while you can. I'm looking forward to seeing the next episode on Greece.

OzCLO

I don't know about you, but I'm excited about OzCLO - the Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad. I only studied linguistics at uni for a year, but it was one of my favourite courses from my five years there. The competition only started in 2008 and aims to help students "to develop... strategies for solving problems in fascinating real languages."

The sample problems on the website are fascinating, dealing with a huge variety of languages including Aboriginal languages, Japanese braille and Linear B (an ancient Greek script). The problems are challenging, and encourage you to think analytically and creatively. I found them really stimulating, and can imagine that they would be perfect for gifted and talented students. I'd love to enter a team from my school for next year's competition - stay tuned to hear more.