Duligur Ibeling isn’t likely to stop learning languages, even if they’re lost or foreign. His mother Narisa knows just how deep his interest is. On morning drives from home in Maple Grove to Wayzata High School, Ibeling would pop in tapes from the library. “We could be listening to Finnish, Swedish, Welsh, Irish,” she says. “If you talk with his classmates and teachers in school, they will tell you that for a year he had his Latin book, all the time reading between breaks and during lunch.”
And it all paid off. Ibeling scored a 5 on the AP Latin exam in 2010 and a perfect score on the National Latin Exam at level VI—all after studying it on his own. He placed third this year at the North America Computational Linguistics Olympiad—a three-hour test designed for students with no prior professional training in linguistics, computer science or foreign languages. The Olympiad’s puzzles require great logic skills, which the 17-year-old has honed in his AP-level math and science classes. Ibeling was also on one of the top 16 teams at the 2011 National Science Bowl in Washington D.C.
The humble Ibeling isn’t bragging when he talks about the Latin Club he started at school. Rather, he just really liked learning and teaching others the language. He laughs when he says he made the members take the AP Latin exam with him, explaining “it was an educational opportunity.” Some even passed the exam, which can count toward college credit.
This fall, the senior will be a full-time student at the University of Minnesota through the Post Secondary Enrollment Options program. He’s undecided on a major, but says he will go with whatever interests him. After all, that’s what worked for him when it came to linguistics.
