Olympiad beginning on the opening of the Olympic Games for the summer sports. The first modern Olympiad began in 1896, the second in 1900, and so on (the 31st began in 2016: see the Olympic Charter). The ancient and modern Olympiads would have synchronised had there been a year zero between the Olympiad of 4 BC and the one of 4 AD. But as the Gregorian calendar goes directly from 1 BC to 1 AD, the ancient Olympic cycle now lags the modern cycle by one year. An ancient Olympiad was a period of four years grouped together, counting inclusively as
International Linguistics Olympiad International Linguistics Olympiad The International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) is the fourth newest of a group of twelve International Science Olympiads. Its abbreviation IOL is deliberately chosen not to correspond to the name of the organization in any particular language, and member organizations are free to choose for themselves how to designate the competition in their own language. This olympiad furthers the fields of mathematical, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics. The setup differs from most of the other Science Olympiads, in that the olympiad contains both individual and team contests. The individual contest consists of 5 problems, covering the main fields of