English Questions: Math Competitions & Olympiads

[Evgeny.Makarov]

Hi,

As a non-native English speaker, I regularly am not sure how to correctly express some ideas in English, including mathematics-related ideas. So if it's OK, I would like to ask questions about English from time to time. The first two questions are organizational.

1. Which subforum suits best for this?

2. Should I start a new thread for each question or should I continue one long thread? I expect questions and answers to be pretty short.

The first actual question in the following. What do you call a mathematical competition that is written at home and then mailed to the committee? Some possible variants: extramural, off-campus, by correspondence, take-home... Also, in Russia it is popular to call mathematical competition olympiads. Is it OK to say "mathematical olympiad" in English? Should "olympiad" be capitalized if it refers to a generic competition and not, for example, to the All-Russian Mathematical Olympiad (I believe that in the latter case all words should be capitalized)?

Edit: Also, what do you call a competition that is the opposite of extramural, that is, the one that is written on campus and handed in right away?

 

[Ackbach]

Hi,

As a non-native English speaker, I regularly am not sure how to correctly express some ideas in English, including mathematics-related ideas. So if it's OK, I would like to ask questions about English from time to time. The first two questions are organizational.

1. Which subforum suits best for this?

This one, probably.

2. Should I start a new thread for each question or should I continue one long thread? I expect questions and answers to be pretty short.

The chat room rules are a bit more lax than the other forums. However, I'd think that if you wanted your questions to be better organized, you'd want separate threads for separate questions.

The first actual question in the following. What do you call a mathematical competition that is written at home and then mailed to the committee? Some possible variants: extramural,

Haven't heard that term.

off-campus, by correspondence,

I'd probably go with correspondence.

take-home...

Definitely not take-home. Take-home is particular to academic coursework. If you say take-home, you mean an exam that the professor is allowing you to take at home.

Also, in Russia it is popular to call mathematical competition olympiads. Is it OK to say "mathematical olympiad" in English?

Some competitions in the US are Olympiads, but not all. It's not uncommon, but it's also not universal.

Should "olympiad" be capitalized if it refers to a generic competition and not, for example, to the All-Russian Mathematical Olympiad (I believe that in the latter case all words should be capitalized)?

The word "olympiad" is in the dictionary as a generic word; thus, you can use it uncapitalized for generic use.

Edit: Also, what do you call a competition that is the opposite of extramural, that is, the one that is written on campus and handed in right away?

Maybe intramural? I would think that would be a good term for it. Sports that occur inside a college are called intramural sports.

 

[Evgeny.Makarov]

Thanks.

I'd probably go with correspondence.

"Correspondence olympiad" or "olympiad by correspondence"?

Maybe intramural? I would think that would be a good term for it. Sports that occur inside a college are called intramural sports.

In Russia, the terms that are used for competitions written at home and on campus are the same that refer to courses taken by correspondence vs those taken on campus. These are not some obscure words; the are used pretty often. For example, there is a saying, "Serving in the military is a great school of life, but it is better to take it by correspondence (extramurally?)". There must be some proper equivalents in English.

 

[Ackbach]

Thanks.

"Correspondence olympiad" or "olympiad by correspondence"?

Sure!

In Russia, the terms that are used for competitions written at home and on campus are the same that refer to courses taken by correspondence vs those taken on campus. These are not some obscure words; the are used pretty often. For example, there is a saying, "Serving in the military is a great school of life, but it is better to take it by correspondence (extramurally?)". There must be some proper equivalents in English.

That saying works quite well in English, as well.

 

[Evgeny.Makarov]

"Correspondence olympiad" or "olympiad by correspondence"?

Sure!

Do you mean both phrases are OK?

One last variant. The term regarding education I was looking for is "distance education". Can I say "distance olympiad", and the opposite is "on-site olympiad"?

I am wondering if "extramural" and "intramural" are ambiguous since they can mean both off- / on-campus and "between universities" / "inside one university". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extramural says, on the one hand,

Extramural studies are taken by the student away from the physical campus, and are often used for those unable to attend classes.

but, on the other hand,

Extramural sports are those contested between different educational institutions, contrasted with intramural sports which are contested internally by the members of the same institution.

Thus, a state competition between many universities can serve as a step following competitions in each individual university, but it may be held on some particular campus.

 

[Jameson]

I think the problem here is that these situations are rare in the US (don't know about other English-speaking countries) so we don't have a short phrase that both sounds natural and explains everything.

My choice for the examples mentioned so far would probably avoid using an adjective in front of the noun. Instead of "intramural/extramural/on-campus/off-campus/correspondence olympiad" I would write something like "olympiad taken on-campus" or "olympiad taken at home and mailed in". This isn't as concise or nice sounding perhaps as "(adjective) + olympiad" but it is more clear, at least to my ears. The phrase "take-home test" is quite common here, on the other hand, and this can be used without explanation because for us, tests are either taken in school during class or taken at home and brought to class the next day.

"Distance olympiad" doesn't work in my opinion. We do use "distance education" as you mentioned but I don't think this form works well for other nouns, at least not without more explanation. "Distance education" usually describes a long-term situation where a student studies for a semester or longer - it's not an event. Perhaps the word "olympiad" is too rarely used to use phrases like this or maybe I'm just not aware of them.

I would find the official pages of competitions that have "olympiad" in their title and see how they describe themselves. You might find that there are standard phrases for these examples. :) Sorry to not give a clear answer but after teaching English for a while now, I find that many questions unfortunately don't have a simple answer but it is useful to discuss why one variant sounds better than another.

 

[Evgeny.Makarov]

Thanks for your detailed and helpful answer.

 

[Jameson]

Thanks for your detailed and helpful answer.

I hope there was something useful in the post for you. :)

Teaching English to non-native speakers has definitely forever changed the way I think about it. I would not say that I have a larger than average vocabulary for my educational level and I don't often read novels anymore like some friends do, point being my interest in English here in the US is nothing special or impressive.

When I started to work more seriously as a teacher in Moscow I quickly realized I had completely unprepared for the questions I got. After spending weeks and weeks trying to explain things I had never even considered before to my students, like the rules for using articles before nouns or how to differentiate vowel sounds in English that sound the same to them, I started to enjoy difficult questions.

The weird part of this though is that I sometimes intuitively think of Russian rules or combine ideas from each language somehow, which results in not being confident at all with certain things. Comma rules are very frustrating now in English because in Russian they seem to be used more often but they have precise rules for using them. English speakers seem to put commas wherever feels right in the moment for reasons that aren't clear, which definitely applies to me.

So if you have any more questions like this I would very much enjoy taking and look and commenting as best as I can, but don't believe anything I say without confirming it elsewhere. :)

 

[Evgeny.Makarov]

When I started to work more seriously as a teacher in Moscow I quickly realized I had completely unprepared for the questions I got.

Off the top of my head, I wouldn't be able to explain Russian conjugation either. In school we study rules like which vowels to use in verb endings, but at least everybody intuitively knows how to pronounce a verb without stressing the problematic vowel. A foreign student may have no idea which ending to use at all.

After spending weeks and weeks trying to explain things I had never even considered before to my students, like the rules for using articles before nouns

This is going to be my next series of questions. Articles is the topic in English I feel the least confident about. I think that though sometimes they carry useful information, most often they are completely superfluous.

or how to differentiate vowel sounds in English that sound the same to them

It took me probably more than twenty years to learn there there are two "oo" sounds in English ("good", "food") and both are different from the Russian analogue. I was also surprised that "father" and "mother" have different first vowel sounds. This probably tells you about the quality of English education in Russia's secondary schools. But I also think that Russian words can be mangled much more than English ones and still be audibly recognized. Russian does not have such similar sounds as English does.

 

[Jameson]

Off the top of my head, I wouldn't be able to explain Russian conjugation either. In school we study rules like which vowels to use in verb endings, but at least everybody intuitively knows how to pronounce a verb without stressing the problematic vowel. A foreign student may have no idea which ending to use at all.

It took me a long time to see many patterns that are commonly used with Russian verbs. There are the basic ones that are taught to beginners: читать and писать were two verbs we used to discuss conjugation and endings. It is really hard though to know which pattern to use with a new verb though whereas in English conjugation in present simple is never a problem.

After 1-1.5 years of really speaking Russian every day with native speakers, I finally developed fairly accurate intuition for conjugating a new verb correctly. If I was nervous about it then I tried to use the infinitive form instead to avoid this. :)

This is going to be my next series of questions. Articles is the topic in English I feel the least confident about. I think that though sometimes they carry useful information, most often they are completely superfluous.

Articles are really tough if your native language doesn't use them I think. Russian obviously doesn't use them and I can imagine just trying to conceive of what these things are and what they do would be very strange. I would like to see an example of an article that is completely superfluous. Never thought of this before.

To give you an example of something similar when learning Russian as an adult, when my professor told me that you must change the endings for all words, not just verbs, but all words for almost every part of speech my head almost exploded. It took almost a year before I could say some basic sentences because of all the endings you need to know. "I go to school every day" is easy to learn in English on day one but in Russian that sentence requires many lectures on grammar.

It took me probably more than twenty years to learn there there are two "oo" sounds in English ("good", "food") and both are different from the Russian analogue. I was also surprised that "father" and "mother" have different first vowel sounds. This probably tells you about the quality of English education in Russia's secondary schools. But I also think that Russian words can be mangled much more than English ones and still be audibly recognized. Russian does not have such similar sounds as English does.

Well as you know, English has a lot of vowel sounds compared to Russian and they are really important. We share some of them but English has quite a few more and even worse, they change a lot between countries and accents. Russian has more consonants though than English does, so for us learning the pronounce letters with a soft sign after it is really hard. "л" and "ль" sound exactly the same for example in English so we have to train ourselves to hear these and maybe be able to say them correctly.

Russian takes a lot longer in the beginning to say very basic things, but after that I think you can say most day-to-day things and people will understand you, even with lots of mistakes. English seems easy at first but quickly becomes really tricky. A normal conversation here can cover various complex tenses and phrasal verbs, which is a nightmare for students I think.

 

[Evgeny.Makarov]

I would like to see an example of an article that is completely superfluous.

I think "an" before "example" is unnecessary. The word "example" implies that it's just one of many. In any case, it is clear from the context that we are not talking about a single situation in the whole English language where an article is unnecessary. But even if it were a single situation, who cares? The sentence expresses a desire to see one example, that's all.

 

[Jameson]

I think "an" before "example" is unnecessary. The word "example" implies that it's just one of many. In any case, it is clear from the context that we are not talking about a single situation in the whole English language where an article is unnecessary. But even if it were a single situation, who cares? The sentence expresses a desire to see one example, that's all.

I haven't explored this topic before so I can't explain this very well, but my first thought is that yes you are correct that "example" is close enough to "an example" that it wouldn't cause confusion. Languages aren't shaped to always convey an idea in the shortest and fastest way possible. The indefinite article indicates a singular, countable noun after it and the listener will know what sort of thing comes next. It also emphasizes contrast with "the example" and isn't quite the same as "one example". "An example" is also very different than "his/her example", so it seems like a small amount of extra info decreases the chance of misinterpretation. The difference between using an indefinite article and no article is very tiny here so it's hard for me to justify why the difference isn't 0 other than to say it "sounds" and "feels" different.

An example in Russian that comes to mind is verbs of motion. As you know, there are four main verbs that correspond to the English verb "to go". Two verbs indicate movement on foot and two of them indicate movement in some vehicle (with exceptions of course). One verb in each of these categories also is used for one way or direct movement while the other involves returning or more complex movement. For English speakers, this is absolutely insane and overcomplicated. I could argue that sometimes it's not really important to describe the type of movement in such a way but it can't be avoided and adds a layer of nuance that is hard to notice.

(This is all my best guess so someone correct me if I'm wrong. Also feel free to join the conversation if you want! Evgeny and I are on opposite sides of each other's language so it's quite interesting to discuss.)

 

[Ackbach]

I think "an" before "example" is unnecessary.

It might not be logically necessary to determine meaning, but the sentence "I would like to see example of an article that is completely superfluous." or even "I would like to see example of article that is completely superfluous." is definitely incorrect English. It's considered acceptable to omit "required" articles in contexts where space is at a premium, such as button text in a GUI. E.g., "Submit Reply" and "Preview Post" in our very own Post Reply screen are omitting technically necessary articles.

The word "example" implies that it's just one of many. In any case, it is clear from the context

Ah, there you step on a sore spot with me. There are some academics these days who buy into a literary critical theory called "Deconstruction", originated by Jacques Derrida in his book Of Grammatology. Deconstruction essentially says that you can take a text, zero in on as small a piece of it as you want, and then get it to mean anything you want. (If you think about this from a cryptographic perspective, this totally makes sense - as the number of symbols shrinks, the number of possible meanings increases, until you get to one symbol, which could have infinitely many meanings.) Deconstruction is complete bosh from beginning to end, and I have very little patience with it. End of rant, omitting two articles.

Bottom line, please do continue to read things in context! It's the only way to get true meaning out of any language.

that we are not talking about a single situation in the whole English language where an article is unnecessary. But even if it were a single situation, who cares? The sentence expresses a desire to see one example, that's all.

Langauge rules are a bit arbitrary. Not all arbitrary, but somewhat. Spelling rules are definitely arbitrary. In English, they were mostly determined by Johnson's Dictionary and the King James version of the Bible. Before those two works, spelling was however you thought most phonetic. Read some Middle English like Chaucer or Spenser in the original, and you'll see what I mean.

Incidentally, it sounds like Russian is very similar to Latin - nouns and adjectives decline to show their role in the sentence, and verbs conjugate to show different tenses, voices, moods, persons, and numbers.

 

[DreamWeaver]

Very interesting discussion... :D

Am I right in thinking that, much like, say Czech, a Russian noun essentially comes with it's own inbuilt article, in the sense that Russian for "house" can be either "house", "a house", "the house", or "the houses", simply by changing the noun-ending? [with "a house" being the noun infinitive, hence the article is always assumed unless the noun ending suggests otherwise?]

Also, on the subject of English articles, it's worth mentioning that they frequently operate as mere 'place holders', to keep the subject at hand fresh in the mind of the reader/listener. For example, the "an" in "an example" might well seem superfluous - and arguably is - but the "an" in "an inestimably reckless and foolish example of misconduct..." is far less so for the native English speaker.

 

[Evgeny.Makarov]

Am I right in thinking that, much like, say Czech, a Russian noun essentially comes with it's own inbuilt article, in the sense that Russian for "house" can be either "house", "a house", "the house", or "the houses", simply by changing the noun-ending? [with "a house" being the noun infinitive, hence the article is always assumed unless the noun ending suggests otherwise?]

The ending does not determine the article; it is determined entirely by context. A standard rule applies that if the house to which the sentence refers was mentioned previously, then it should be translated as "the house"; if it is a new subject, then it's "a house". You can't determine it from the Russian word itself. Often when "the" would be used in English, one uses the words "this" or "that" in Russian.

By the way, I have no idea which combination of articles to use in the first sentence of the previous paragraph, as well as for half the articles in the whole paragraph. Usually textbooks of English would say some obvious thing as "If a noun was mentioned before, it should be preceded with 'the'; otherwise, use 'a'". Tell this to the sentence "Using the computer is not hard".

In Russian, there are only two words for "house" in nominative case: singular and plural ones. However, almost all cases (six of them) have different endings. The total number of words is nine. Every student of Russian, please accept my apologies and my deepest sympathy. (Smile) Another thing is that "house" also means "home". I made this mistake when I wrote acknowledgments for my thesis, where I wrote, "I thank my friends who accepted me to their houses".

Also, on the subject of English articles, it's worth mentioning that they frequently operate as mere 'place holders', to keep the subject at hand fresh in the mind of the reader/listener. For example, the "an" in "an example" might well seem superfluous - and arguably is - but the "an" in "an inestimably reckless and foolish example of misconduct..." is far less so for the native English speaker.

A very interesting thought.

 

[DreamWeaver]

The ending does not determine the article; it is determined entirely by context. A standard rule applies that if the house to which the sentence refers was mentioned previously, then it should be translated as "the house"; if it is a new subject, then it's "a house". You can't determine it from the Russian word itself. Often when "the" would be used in English, one uses the words "this" or "that" in Russian.

Ah, yes, that sounds familiar. So, separate articles are used more for emphasis or to indicate direction/movement/placement, such as "this house (here)", that car (over there)", etc.?

By the way, I have no idea which combination of articles to use in the first sentence of the previous paragraph, as well as for half the articles in the whole paragraph. Usually textbooks of English would say some obvious thing as "If a noun was mentioned before, it should be preceded with 'the'; otherwise, use 'a'". Tell this to the sentence "Using the computer is not hard".

That's a tricky one, and as you say, that last sentence doesn't follow the general rule. My best guess here would be that "using a computer is not hard" is an idiomatic contraction - possibly quite an old one - of "using a(ny) computer is not hard". [regardless of the thoroughly modern mention of a(ny) computer]

Even the English articles themselves have undergone contractions, of a sort; donating consonants to nouns. Getting slightly off-topic here, but an excellent example is "a newt", which used to be "an ewt". I like newts! But I like ewts even better!

In Russian, there are only two words for "house" in nominative case: singular and plural ones. However, almost all cases (six of them) have different endings. The total number of words is nine. Every student of Russian, please accept my apologies and my deepest sympathy. (Smile) Another thing is that "house" also means "home". I made this mistake when I wrote acknowledgments for my thesis, where I wrote, "I thank my friends who accepted me to their houses".

And again, to the Russian-speaker, the context tells you whether house or home is meant. Makes me wonder, how would you translate the English phrase "to make a house a home"...?