The Gaeltacht regions are official regions of Ireland where the Irish language is the community language. The regions, unfortunately seem to be losing strength to the English language as every year go by. On the positive side, new Irish language communities are appearing in urban areas such as in Belfast.
If you’re interested in visiting the Gaeltacht, check out GaeltachtTravel.com. It’s an in-depth guide (with nice photos) on the Gaeltacht regions of Ireland.
Irish Dictionary.org is now online! It is a new collaborative Irish dictionary. It’s starting empty, but will gradually build up as it learns what words are most sought after.
Abair.ie is a huge step for the Irish language online. It is a new tool that creates a synthesised voice of an Irish language sentence you type in.
All is not perfect, but it is a hugely valuable source for learners who wish to get the approximate pronunciation of a word or sentence.
The dialect used is Ulster. Here’s hoping for Connacht and Munster versions!
See: http://www.abair.ie
One of the biggest Irish dictionaries online englishirishdictionary.com has been offline since at least 5th May 2008.
Does anyone know why it’s offline? Unfortunately they have always been quiet about who’s behind the project.
Please do reply if the site is indeed back online.
Update: As noted in the comments, the dictionary is back online!
There are not that many Irish dictionaries available online. There’s Focal.ie, An Foclóir Beag, and EnglishIrishDictionary.com, for example. But that’s about it.
All of these dictionaries are closed. They do not harness the power of the Internet masses, of the large Irish-speaking community online. They don’t make their databases freely available to the Irish language community, either.
Here’s where a collaborative dictionary could help. Such a dictionary would be empowered by its users. It could keep up-to-date with current word usage. Wiktionary is such an effort, but it’s not very easy to quickly search through.
Here’s where Foclóir Gaeilge.ie comes in. It will be an Irish collaborative dictionary. With a simplicity for searching, and a simplicity for adding to it. Simple as that.
The dictionary will be accessible through both Irish and English language interfaces.
Here’s a sneak preview: http://www.focloirgaeilge.ie
