The focal.ie website will be relaunched at Oireachtas na Samhna in Killarney, as part of Foras na Gaeilge’s dictionary-related events at the festival. The new version of focal.ie is a gateway website of Contemporary Irish Vocabulary, listing all the words that can be found in the principal reference sources, from the time of the implementation of the Official Standard (an Caighdeán Oifigiúil) to the present day. The user can simply click to view the relevant evidence from any of these sources.

"focal.ie is geared towards the Irish language exclusively," says Pádraig Ó Mianáin, Foras na Gaeilge’s Lexicography Editor. "Anyone who’s interested in Irish words will be interested in the comprehensive information which is now being made available on one website – what words are in use, their meanings, where they can be found, when they came into use, and so on. focal.ie is the perfect site for sharing such information, and we’re very pleased that it’s being launched at such an important Irish-language festival."

The new website is an index to the Irish words which can be found in six major sources: in Ó Dónaill’s Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, in tearma.ie, in the terminology databases of gaois.ie and in the monolingual Irish dictionary An Foclóir Beag; together with the primary Irish translations from the New English-Irish Dictionary (focloir.ie) and from de Bhaldraithe’s English-Irish Dictionary. Additionally, frequency data for the words from the New Corpus for Ireland is provided. 

"focal.ie is a preparatory step for the development of the Irish-Irish and Irish-English dictionaries which are the aim of Foras na Gaeilge when the current dictionary is published in printed form in 2020," says Seán Ó Coinn, CEO of Foras na Gaeilge. "There are many exciting potential developments for the website in the future, for example by the addition of lists of words from specific dialects, or links to other relevant sources. We also plan to offer crowdsourcing opportunities to the public to submit words, senses or comments to the site."

Dublin City University’s Fiontar is also a participant in this new version of focal.ie, with the terminology databases on Fiontar’s gaois.ie website. "This is a partnership which benefits all parties", says Professor Ciarán Mac Murchaidh, Head of School for Fiontar and Scoil na Gaeilge in DCU, who will officially launch the site at the Oireachtas festival. "It’s through the avenue of terminology that many of the new words in Irish are being composed and circulated, and it’s a tremendous facility for the user to have these two major terminology sites and  the dictionary websites side-by-side. We see this as another opportunity to place the valuable asset that is gaois.ie at centre stage, alongside the other major Irish-language sources.”

Focal.ie will be launched at 4.00 p.m today in the Torc Suite, Gleneagle Hotel, Killarney at Oireachtas na Samhna 2018.

The event will streamed live on Foras na Gaeilge’s Facebook page.

Further Information:

Anna Davitt, Programme Manager: Communications, Marketing & Awareness, Foras na Gaeilge

Contact: 0035387 673 6175 | Email: adavitt@forasnagaeilge.ie