I have three questions today, all related to Foclóir.ie or Irish dictionaries generally.

1. In one of my grammar books, I keep getting tips on Ó'Dónaill's Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla. Is the Foclóir.ie website by any chance related to that?

2. Is there a good online source to go BOTH directions, Irish-English AND English-Irish?

3. Strangely, entering the word "sky" at Foclóir.ie doesn't produce its own entry. Instead, it brings up the entry for "pie," under which one of the phrases is "pie in the sky." Has anyone else had an experience like this with the site? Is the website a project in development, or does this sound anomalous?

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Brand new Irish learner inclined to ask questions. Writer, Words & Worlds of New York, a website about language-learning. http://www.ellenjovin.com

Yes it is in development, many words are still missing.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

2. I frequently use http://www.irishdictionary.ie to translate words in both directions.

3. As for focloir.ie, I've encountered this too, but they say on their site that "The dictionary is being published on a phased basis, and the full content won’t be online until end-2014", so I guess it's normal. The entries that do exist there are very detailed and helpful with the usage, so it's been a very good resource for me nonetheless.

No, foclóir simply means "dictionary" or "vocabulary" so a lot of dictionaries will have that word in the title. They are not related.


http://www.irishdictionary.ie (as Pangur suggested) is very good. It even gives you the full conjugation of verbs.
http://www.potafocal.ie is my favourite because it gives you a truckload of example sentences
http://www.focal.ie is a technical dictionary that gives you newly coined terms and technical jargon (motherboard, carbohydrates etc.)

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Táim ag foghlaim fós. Fáilte roimh gach aon cheartúchán.

I vote for Pota Focal - and anyway you can get to the other dictionaries from there as well as Beo and there's Logainm. (I've mentioned this elsewhere) Don't forget Cork Irish and you can even get Dinneen on-line either in the original version (seancló with dots that replace the 'h's) or in more modern print. The dictionary that you mention is available from Litríocht.

Potafocal is the bee's knees! Of course, I am not actually sure that a bee has knees......

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Well, they have segmented legs, and a prominent bend between the third and fourth segments. Of course, they don't have a patella or anything, so whether they have knees or not is entirely up to you.

Now this conversation would be a good translation challenge.

Yes, but probably not a tattoo recommendation!

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You might not know this but Pota Focal was created and is still cared for by a gentleman who is I believe, a Czech - Michal Boleslav Mechura. It was off-line for a while and I wrote to him asking him to bring it back, I doubt very much that I was alone in asking him, but thankfully he did. I can only say (without the relevant accents) dekuji mnohokrát!
PS Our bees are having hard time of it this Spring, they must be on their knees praying for something better.

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