Irish Dictionary Advice

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

Over at Irish-Sayings.com you can currently pick up for yourself a St. Patrick’s Day Pub Cheat Sheet. Print it off at home, and curse as Gaeilge like a made Irish person. It’s only available for this week only!

It includes such classic gems as Póg mo thóin and Pionnta Guinness, le do thoil. While you there, you can listen to several hundred recordings of three native Irish speakers.

It’s only a bit of craic!