First English-Irish dictionary published in 60 years

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The first major English-Irish dictionary in over 60 years will be officially published by President Michael D Higgins later today.

The new dictionary, produced by Fóras na Gaeilge, contains 1,800 pages, more than 30,000 entries and 1.8 million words in contemporary English and Irish.

The updated version includes words such as home office (oifig bhaile), fake news (bréagnuacht), and social distancing (scaradh sóisialta), and aims to produce a comprehensive modern dictionary to represent the current use of the language.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, the editor-in-chief of the new Concise English-Irish Dictionary Pádraig Ó Mianáin said: “Any dictionary is really meant to reflect life as it is when the dictionary is published. The last dictionary that came out in ’59 it didn’t ‘doesn’t even contain the word computer.

“So this new one, not only covers modern English, but also modern Irish as it is spoken, and furthermore, it reflects modern dictionaries and as much as older dictionaries would have been much more formal.

“All modern dictionaries are more democratic, they reflect the language that is spoken.”

Mr. Ó Mianáin said that it had been a challenge trying to translate all the informal words from the common English language, as there was such a gap from the last one, “they couldn’t just take the last one and add words to it.”

He said the dictionary was meant to be printed around Easter, but due to the pandemic they were given 24 hours to close their offices.

But, he said, those few extra weeks gave them the opportunity to add words like “coronavirus” or “social distancing,” so the dictionary is now up to date to May of this year.

All the books are out of date, so it will be a while before more current terminology is added, he said.



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