Can anyone please recommond an online Foclóir considered more complete?

go raibh maith agaibh

Pota Focal is certainly a wonderful asset if you already have a good knowledge of Irish.

From a very brief perusal I have discovered that inserting an Irish word will bring up a list of related words in Irish. "Cuidsúlach" – eye-catching – will bring up a long list of words some only tenuously related. Since this is online and the commonly used thesaurus "Gaoth an Fhocail" or even "Gléacht" are not then this is always worth a look. Nevertheless keep the offline dictionaries De Bhaldraithe, Lambert Mac Cionnaith, O'Neill Lane, Oxford and Collins near at hand as well as Ó Duinnín and Ó Dónaill to verify that the word you use conveys the intended meaning.

When I entered the word "cat" numerous modern terms came up including "cat-walk" "ardán taispeána" – good -- and "raining cats and dogs". "ag cur de dhíon is de dheora" – not so sure about that. Unfortunately it also included "chat" which gave "baothchaint" etc and which would send a learner astray.

Here on Daltaí learners are forever advising each other to avoid "Revival Irish" as it used to be called and to immerse themselves solely in texts written or transcribed from genuine monoglot native-Irish speakers. In all solemnity one asks another "Ah! But is he a native-speaker?" Some go even further and ask "What dialect does he use?" If someone specified "Inis Gé" (??) to me I could ask "North or South Island?"

It is all somewhat ridiculous for those of us know "Irish" with or without good pronunciation from one of the dialects or none and continually supplement our lack of vocabulary by consulting the above dictionaries. For us Pota Focal is going to add to our enjoyment of our life-long learning of Irish.

Purists worried about how authentic the sources are and whether a particular word is used in a particular dialect should approach Pota Focal with caution. It is based on a huge corpus of written post-revival modern Irish and from what I have seen is mostly excellent.

I am sure there is much more to be said about it but Michal Boleslav Mechura is to be sincerely complimented as are the others whose work appears in Pota Focal including Kevin P. Scannell for his Líonra Séimeantach na Gaeilge (the Irish Language Semantic Network), a database containing Irish words and the relations between their meanings.

Agus níl anseo ach tús. Fan tamall go bhfeice tú na hiontais!

Tá Ó Duinnín ar líne:
http://glg.csisdmz.ul.ie/index.php

Go raibh maith agat, a Aonghuis. Life is not long enough. I keyed in the English word "beautiful" and got 55 suggestions .i. 19 pages of five. Each Irish word was linked to the page where it appeared and all the related words and examples of usage were there. Seán Ó Riordáin's poem on visiting the Gaeltacht comes to mind where he'd hear the "modh foshuiteach agus an uimhir dhé ar bhéalaibh daoine" [or words to that effect. I can't even remember the title of the poem. Help anyone?]

We'll never learn it all. Osna! Dá mbeadh riar mo cháis féin agam bheinn sásta!

Fill Arís, deir Google liom:
http://tadenc.blogspot.com/2008/01/m2008019.html

Maith thú, a Aonghuis. Bhí Ó Riordáin cliste le focail agus an-mhaith le cur síos a dhéanamh ar a mhothúcháin féin.

Cé is mó atá ag scríobh filíochta i nGaeilge sa lá atá inniu ann?

Ceist mhaith. Bhíos i láthair triúir acu i nDún Laoghaire de Satharn. An t-uafás filí ann, ach ní fear filíochta mé féin seachas nuair a dhualann an taom mé, agus is beag den saothar nua atá léite agam.

Bhíos ag coirm cheoil Liam Uí Mhaonlaí an oíche sin nuair a chan sé amhráin le Bob Dylan arna aistriú ag Gabriel Rosenstock. Oíche iontach.

Ní raibh ar mo chumas freastal ar sin, faraor.

Obair ana mhaith ar siúl ag IMRAM.

http://www.imram.ie/

Is maith liom Potafocal freisin.

Tá súil agam nach bhfuaimneann na daoiní "imram" mar "imram" nó d'fhuaimneochthaí mar /imrəv͂/ i Sean-Ghaeilg é (go bhfios domh) agus is é "iomramh" an fhoirm nua-aimseartha :-)

The French site "Lexilogos.com" is very good. The Irish Gaelic section of it brings you to a page where you can input a word or phrse and then have it translated by a modern dictionary (IDO), or an Old Irish Dictionary (eDil), or Google Translate.

It is pretty efficient for most things.


http://www.lexilogos.com/gaelique_irlandais_dictionnaire.htm

I have it as a homepage. It suffices for most of my translation needs. The real engine of it all is IDO (which if you wanted, you could just use on its own, but I find it useful to be able to go to google translate with a click if IDO doesn't have the answer).

D

...and I have just noticed, they have added "Focal.ie" (the terminology dictionary) to the mix. Mucho cool. Ya gotta love the French.


D

...and here is the version without French (just in English).


http://www.lexilogos.com/english/gaelic_irish_dictionary.htm



D

Go raibh maith agaibh