English-Irish dictionary to be completed by 2015
It’s all thanks to the launch of www.focloir.ie — the first major English- Irish dictionary since the publication of Tomás de Bhaldraithe’s dictionary in 1959.
Published by Foras na Gaeilge, some 71 linguists and lexicographers have worked on the dictionary since 2000. It will be completed in 2015.
Writing the dictionary did not begin until 2008, but technological advances made the process of collating this dictionary much more efficient, a far cry from de Bhaldraithe’s method of jotting down hundreds of thousands of words by hand.
The online dictionary currently contains about a third of its final content and features some 7,500 head words which have generated a word count of 1.3m. De Bhaldraithe’s dictionary contains about 900,000 words.
When the dictionary is completed, there will be about 40,000 head words, example sentences, sound files, and grammar tools.
Editor, Dr Pádraig Ó Mianáin, said it follows the current trend of usage determining content.
“Consequently the English content in the new dictionary broadly reflects how that language is used in Ireland and the Irish content similarly is based on contemporary spoken Irish” he said.
Joe McDonagh, chairman of Foras na Gaeilge’s dictionary committee, said this dictionary is vital to the further development of the Irish language.
“This dictionary is not merely a direct translation of words, it’s a reflection of how we naturally express ourselves in both English and Irish. It will be an invaluable resource, not only for Irish speakers, but for learners of Irish throughout the world.”
The online version will be expanded in the next two years, and the final version will be published both online and as a hard copy, in 2015.
A sign of the times we’re in — new words in the English-Irish dictionary.
App — Aip
Bondholder — Sealbhóir bannaí
Cloud computing — Néalríomhaireacht
Cyberbullying — Cibearbhulaíocht
Defriend — Cairdeas a scaoileadh le duine
Ghost estate — Eastát tréigthe
Live streaming — Beoshruthú
Microblogging — Micreabhlagáil
Negative equity — Cothromas diúltach
Retweet — Atvuít
Tweet — Tvuít
