The Linguistics Club is a Week 3 Club at Wheeling Park High School and one that was started this school year by senior Grant Kenamond.
According to Oxford Languages, linguistics is the scientific study of language and its structure.
Kenamond had participated in linguistics competitions before and wanted to bring this activity to students at Wheeling Park.
“Last year I discovered the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition Olympiad,” said Kenamond. “I went up to Pittsburgh and did it and I qualified for the invitational round… I was like, this is a really cool thing and it doesn’t require any background knowledge of linguistics or anything… then I thought, I should bring this back to Wheeling Park High School.”
Kenamond also took the time to break down what linguistics is.
“Linguistics, as a subject, is the study of language,” said Kenamond. “But not necessarily individual languages like you would learn in Spanish class… you’re learning the study of language itself and the structure.”
Annie McKinley, a junior, is also a member of the new club.
“I joined mostly because of Grant, it’s his club, he got most of us into it,” said McKinley. “But I actually love it so much. Now I’m into the linguistics part and I plan on competing.”
Also part of the club is junior Mackenzie Kret.
“It teaches you about different cultures and different languages,” said Kret. “I love the weekly puzzles we do.”
Morgan Graski is also a junior and member of Linguistics Club.
“I think the importance of Linguistics Club is understanding the importance of languages and communication,” said Graski. “And my favorite part is being able to hang out with my friends and solve the linguistics puzzles.”
Mr. Bennett, a foreign language teacher here at Park, is the club sponsor.
“The Linguistics Club is a great opportunity to explore the functionings of language and how languages work,” said Bennett. “That goes right along with learning languages as well… I knew a decent amount about the linguistics part, but the way that the linguistics club works with the logic problems they solve as a result of it, that’s been a learning experience.”
The Linguistics Club is a fun new club to challenge deductive reasoning skills.
If you find this interesting, take a try at the puzzle below!
