Language decoders

An educational linguistics competition

As part of its Cordées de la Réussite "Langues et Cultures du Monde" program, Inalco is organizing the second edition of "Déchiffreurs de Langues", an educational linguistics competition. Aimed particularly at high-school students enrolled at Inalco, the competition is open to all French-speaking high-school students, whatever their school of origin.

The "Déchiffreurs de Langues" competition is designed to enable participating students to discover new language facts and linguistic systems. Through observation of short corpora and the use of logic, the aim is to deduce linguistic facts, grammatical rules, the workings of an unknown script or numeral system. In some respects, it may recall the Kangaroo Mathematics competition, but here students have to argue, explain in their own words what they've understood, and how.

The way the topics are designed - progressive difficulty of the questions, each question broken down into intermediate steps, clues that students can choose whether or not to use - and the participation arrangements - in teams of three or four - give it a pedagogical dimension: all students will be able to find a number of answers on their own, and be amazed at the discoveries they have made thanks to their thinking and collaborative skills. The competition takes place in teams of three or four: cooperation is the means and the condition of success for the students, who are not alone in the face of the unknown, and this contributes to creating an atmosphere of emulation.

Thus, if this is indeed a linguistics competition, it is designed to motivate and bring success, in one way or another, to all participating students. To give you an idea of the format of the tests, you'll find below the subject of the first round 2023-2024.

The winners of the competition as a whole will be rewarded, as will the best team from each school. They will be offered books related to Inalco's languages and cultures, and will be invited to Inalco for the closing ceremony (prize-giving ceremony, meeting/conference with a linguistics researcher and screening of a documentary).

At the end of the competition, the detailed answers to the competition questions will be sent to the referent teachers. They will then be able to pass them on to the students, or lead a collective discussion session between participating teams, so that all students have the chance to understand what was behind the contest questions.

Competition calendar 2025-2026

The competition is organized in two stages: a first qualifying round will take place during the Semaine nationale des Cordées, and will enable a number of finalist teams to be selected within each school; these will then take part in a second round, the final phase, in March, which will take place during the Semaine des Langues Vivantes.

Schools' online registration: from October 20 to December 20 
NB: in the event of excessively large numbers, registrations may be suspended before the deadline by Inalco.

Date limite d'envoi des listes des élèves inscrits : lundi 20 janvier
Premier tour : matinée du mardi 3 février 2026, pendant la semaine nationale des Cordées de la Réussite.
Second round: end of March, during Modern Languages Week (precise date to be announced)
Closing ceremony for prizewinners: Thursday morning, May 6, at Inalco (65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris)

NB: the dates of the final competition tests in secondary schools will be imposed this year: all students will take the final competition tests simultaneously. For the first-round tests, a date will be proposed, which it is recommended to respect as much as possible, in the interests of fairness.

Practical organization

The organization of the competition is based on a partnership between Inalco and the participating secondary schools. While Inalco is responsible for the entire competition, from drafting and correcting the subjects to general coordination and organization of the closing ceremony, the practical organization of the tests is the responsibility of each school that has registered students for the competition.

We have listed below the tasks for which secondary schools are responsible:

- Communication about the competition at school level and registration of students
- Material organization of the competition tests, following the framework document drawn up by Inalco
- Control of the regularity and smooth running of the competition at school level
- Transmission to Inalco, at the end of the competition, of the students' answer books
- Transmission to the students of the results, the answers to the competition, and any prizes
- Possible accompaniment to Inalco of the finalists (they can also come independently, without supervision)

The rules available below for download also act as a framework document.
Participation in the competition implies full reading and acceptance of these rules.

NB: we would prefer a minimum number of teams per school to take part in the competition, around twenty, not just one class. In other words, it's about making the competition a school-wide event, and getting colleagues involved. We strongly encourage you to allow voluntary participation by students, beyond one entry per whole class.

Competition registration

Registration for the competition is online via a form: Registration for the Language Decipherers Competition.

You don't need to know the exact number of students taking part in the competition, but we do ask that, before registering a class or students, you communicate about the competition within your school: the aim is to open up the competition to a large number of students, anyone who might be interested and motivated.

Preparing students for the competition

From October to the end of January, linguistic riddles with their solutions (questions from previous years) will be available to referents of registered schools, so that they can offer them to students enrolled in the competition but also to others. They can be used to set up a small linguistics club, to post on an ad hoc bulletin board, or to organize a practice test session in the run-up to the competition.

We'll also be offering below, for download, the subject of the first edition of the competition (2023-2024), as well as written answers to the various questions. Short explanatory videos covering questions 1, 3, and 4 will soon be available here.

Video puzzle solutions

Find out below, in pictures, the explanations of three questions submitted during the first edition. A good opportunity to familiarize yourself with the competition and make a few discoveries along the way, but only to be viewed after you've confronted the topics and attempted to solve the riddles! With contributions from Katya Aplonova (Llacan/Cnrs), Alex François (Lattice/Cnrs), and Florian Targa (ingénieur pédagogique/Inalco).