OLYMPIC MEDAL FOR LINGUIST

UK Linguistics Olympiad silver medallist, Finlay Ross, can speak in tongues whether it is Caribbean creole, ancient Greek or an Amazonian Forest tribal dialect.

The 17-year-old King's School Macclesfield academic was one of only 50 students from over 1500 taking part nationwide to win a prized silver medal in this year's UK Linguistics Olympiad.

Studying German, Latin, English Language and Music in King's Sixth Form, Fin deciphered a series of evermore taxing translations using only his powers of logic to deduce the meaning from the sort of scripts some might describe as hieroglyphics. But not to the thoughtful Fin, who said: "Although I am primarily studying languages, I also like to think I have quite a scientific approach and linguistics combines both skills."

"I enjoy sitting down and analyzing the puzzles that these languages present and working out the meaning and I think I would like to pursue Linguistics at university as it is fantastic mental training."

King's Head of Modern Foreign Languages Ian Dalgleish said: "Linguistics demands a very strong sense of logic, excellent memory and great powers of deduction to look at different languages, deduce the rules and structure from those examples, and then work out the meaning of the script. I would have struggled with parts of the paper. It's certainly not easy."

King's pupil Josh Rajengdran also won a bronze medal in the UK Linguistics Olympiad.