Ten Basque expressions for dates, paired (out of order) with ten English glosses. A few words on each side have been knocked out. Match them up, fill in what's missing, then translate four new phrases. Basque is a language isolate — no known living relatives — spoken across the western Pyrenees.
Note. The Basque genitive suffix -en (e.g.
urtarrilaren
"of January") and the article-on-the-end -a (larunbata
"the Saturday") are the two clues that unlock the whole thing. The day
names themselves hide a literal meaning — see Q3.
data · basque expressions
numbered 1–10 · two have blanks (—) · click a word or drag-select letters to mark
data · english translations
lettered A–J · order does not match the Basque list · four have blanks
assignment 1 · matching + gap-filling
(a) Pair each numbered Basque expression with its lettered English
gloss. Write your matches in the box (e.g. "1↔F, 2↔D, …").
Self-graded — work the matching out from the data
above; the gap-fill questions below check whether you got the missing
words right.
(b) Fill the gap in expression #5:
abenduaren lehena, ___
— "the first of December, Wednesday".(c) Fill the gap in expression #10:
___ bigarrena, ostirala
— "the second of January, Friday".
assignment 2 · translate into basque
(d) "The first Monday of December"
(e) "The twenty-ninth of November, Saturday"
(f) "The second week of January"
(g) "The third of February, Monday"
assignment 3 · etymology
(h) How do you think the Basque names of the days
astelehena, asteazkena, asteartea are
translated literally? (They share a stem — find it, then read the
rest.)
Self-graded — the official IOL 2003 solution
(Derzhanski, ed.) has the full discussion;
see the bundled problem PDF
+ ioling.org for the solutions PDF.
Problem 3 from the 1st International Linguistics Olympiad, Borovetz, Bulgaria, 8–12 September 2003 (individual contest, Ivan Derzhanski ed.; problem by Alexandre Arkhipov; 15 marks). Source: the bundled IOL 2003 individual problems PDF in this repo. Next IOL 2003: Problem 4 · Adyghe directionals →