A new English-Irish dictionary launched last week by President Michael D Higgins will benefit immigrant learners of the Irish language, Metro Éireann has learned.
A new English-Irish dictionary launched last week by President Michael D Higgins will benefit immigrant learners of the Irish language, Metro Éireann has learned.
The new work, the first national English-Irish dictionary since 1959, can be accessed completely free at focloir.ie.
Currently the site contains about a third of its envisaged final content, including over 80 per cent of words in normal English usage. The final version is expected to be published online and in hard copy by 2015.
“I am delighted to see that the new English-Irish dictionary is being made available free to the public online,” said Seosamh Mac Donncha, chairman of Foras na Gaeilge’s dictionary committee and previously chief executive of the North-South Irish language promotional body when the project started in 2000.
He added: “It will be an essential resource for Irish speakers in general and in particular for learners of Irish throughout the world, and it is also an important cultural resource that highlights our cultural and linguistic identity.”
Project manager Cathal Convery enthused that the new dictionary would be a valuable resource for immigrants interested in learning Irish as it is available for free online and is “easy to access from any device such as a computer, phone or tablet”.
He explained that the dictionary gives sample sentences with most translations so that learners can better understand the context in how words should be used.
“Also, a large number of the Irish translations have sound files, which learners can click on to hear how the word is pronounced,” he added, noting that this should be especially helpful for immigrants as pronunciation of Irish words can be quite tricky for learners.
The launch brings to an end the 13-year wait for the project, descried by Foras na Gaeilge as a major advance for the Irish language and one of the biggest such schemes ever undertaken.
A team of around 70 were involved in working on the dictionary since 2000 on a total budget of more than €6 million. The new dictionary contains over 7,000 headwords so far, which have generated a total word count of 1.3m words, including over 40,000 example sentences with sound files and grammar tools.
When completed in 2015, there will be at least 40,000 headwords in the database.
Foras na Gaeilge said Tomás de Bhaldraithe’s groundbreaking dictionary of 1959 is still the standard text of this kind, containing around 900,000 words.
