UKLO 2016

Germanic; Romance; Celtic

HintThree branches of one family tree — think which countries each trio sits in.

The whyLanguages come in families descended from a shared ancestor. Germanic, Romance and Celtic are three branches of the Indo-European tree; Slavic (Russian, Polish) is another. Family membership shows in basic words: 'mother', 'Mutter' and 'madre' are cousins. A puzzle may hand you number words from three languages jumbled together — spelling habits that only one language shows will sort them fast.

Numbers and family words

HintThe vocabulary a language almost never borrows — what a toddler learns first.

The whyWords for numbers, close relatives, body parts and 'I' / 'you' are rarely borrowed, so if they match, the languages are probably cousins; if they differ completely, probably not. Words for new technology or food travel easily and prove nothing. In a table of several languages, compare those core rows first.

Its spelling habits

HintWhat Spanish words very often end with.

The whyEach language has a fingerprint: letters it never uses, sounds it never ends a word with, a favourite vowel to finish on. Find the fingerprint from the words you are sure of, then sort the rest by it.

cognates

Hint'father' and Latin 'pater' are one pair; find another.

The whyCognates are your free vocabulary when the puzzle language is a relative of one you know. But treat each lookalike as a guess to test, not a fact: false friends exist, and sound shifts can disguise a cognate ('p' in one branch matching 'f' in another — Latin 'pater', English 'father').

Respelt it by its own rules

HintCompare the letters that survived with the ones that changed.

The whyLoanwords are usually respelt to follow the borrower's spelling-to-sound rules, so the pronunciation stays close while the letters change: each sound is written the way the borrower normally spells it, so letters the borrower never uses vanish. Given ten examples, extract the rules and you can predict the spelling of an eleventh.

Borrowed words don't count

HintLook at which kinds of word English took from French — 'beef', 'royal', 'judge' — and which it never did.

The whyKinship is judged on the words a language almost never borrows — numbers, family, body parts, 'I' and 'you' — and there English lines up with Dutch and German. French gave English thousands of words after 1066, but loans, however many, do not change the family tree.

A logographic script

HintChinese characters are the famous example — thousands of signs, none of them spelling sounds.

The whyAlphabets and syllabaries write sounds; logographic scripts write meanings, so you cannot 'sound out' a character — you match it. The upside for puzzles: a character keeps its core meaning wherever it appears, so a repeated character in two names is usually the same word.

In the verb's ending

HintWhich part of the two words differs?

The whyWhen the verb ending names the subject, the pronoun can be dropped. Many puzzle languages work this way, and some also add a second ending for the person something is given to. Line up sentences with the same verb and different subjects, cut off the shared stem, and label each ending: 'I', 'you', 'he', 'we two'…

The indirect object

Hint'her' here is not the person doing the sending.

The why'I sent her a card': 'a card' is the direct object, 'her' the indirect object (to whom). Some languages mark the indirect object with an ending on the verb — one for 'to me', one for 'to him', one for 'to the two of them' — so a single verb can mean 'gave him'. Separate the 'who did it' ending from the 'to whom' ending.

imperative

HintThe mood with no subject and an exclamation mark.

The whyImperatives usually drop the subject: 'Pass the salt!' names no 'you'. In a puzzle, sentences ending in an exclamation mark will show a special verb ending, or no subject ending at all — treat them as their own pattern rather than forcing them into the statement rule.

Latin

HintStill used for the scientific names of species.

The whyThe Romance languages are Latin's daughters, which is why their numbers, family words and verb endings line up so neatly. English is Germanic, but borrowed heavily from French and Latin after 1066.

order

HintCompare two verbs that share one ending — is it in the same position in both?

The whyA verb in an invented language might be stem + 'to whom' + 'who did it', and that sequence never changes. So cut every verb into its slots before you translate: the piece in the final slot always answers the same question. When a slot is empty — a command with no subject ending — the other pieces keep their places.