Focail nua for the dictionary - Gangland crime, alt-right and emoticon translated into Irish

The Irish language’s successful efforts to keep up with the times are reflected in the latest additions to an online dictionary featuring everything from selfies and selfie sticks to dating sites.

The completion of Foras na Gaeilge’s online New English-Irish Dictionary marks the end of almost a decade of work. But many of the phrases now included would have been alien even when the project began in 2008. Few users would have found the need to go browsing the translation of a selfie-stick, but anyone who wishes can now update their Instagram account or Twitter feed using a picture taken with the help of a ‘maide féinín’.

The phrase is one of 140,000 meanings and phrases using nearly 50,000 words which have been included on the website — focloir.ie — and which are also available to users of the Focloir app.

Dictionary editor Pádraig Ó Mianáin said the project has brought Irish-language lexicography into the third millennium in every way.

“It contains contemporary Irish and English, and covers every level of language use, from formal to informal, from polite to vulgar, and from written to spoken.”

The announcement of completion of the project, in which words and phrases were uploaded in batches every six months, happened during Seachtain na Gaeilge which continues until St Patrick’s Day.

While the growth of Gaelscoileanna and third-level interest since Irish became an official EU language may influence traffic, more than a quarter of the 1.2m unique users of focloir.ie last year were outside Ireland. Nearly one-in-eight people accessing the dictionary were in the US.

The dictionary team plan ongoing maintenance and additions of new words as they enter everyday use, as well as a print edition to be published next year.

While many could say that it is a dying language, users of the site and app might be justified in saying of such commentators: “Ní aithneoidís cat thar chóiste.” (They don’t know their arse from their elbow.)

The level of interest in such a resource might have been hard to believe 10 or 20 years ago, but anyone who questions it today may be living in a ‘sochaí iarfhírinne’ (post-truth society) — or they could just be a ‘dineasár’.

Cúpla focail nua

• ‘Ar mhaith libh teacht anall i gcomhair réamhdheochanna?’: Do you want to come over for pre-drinks?
• ‘Teacht chun cinn na heite deise ailtéarnaí’: The rise of the alt-right.
• ‘Coireanna drongchoirpeachta’: Gangland crime.
• ‘Tá a cuid gruaige ina clibíní inniu’: She’s having a bad hair day today.
• ‘Diabhal aithne air nach é féin a rug é féin / Tá sé an-lán de féin / síleann sé gur air a éiríonn an ghrian’: He’s a pompous arse.
• ‘Cuireadh an chluain fhíorúil air ar shuíomh geandála’: He was catfished on a dating site.
• ‘Aireachas’: Mindfulness.
• ‘Straoiseog’: Emoticon.