Several large grants have been announced, including €368,000 for DCU (Focal.ie) to develop a database of words to do with the EU.

eDIL.ie received an annual grant of €165,068.

Good to see investment in references for the language.

Reference: IrishIndependent.ie

Don’t forget to visit IrishDictionary.org, our collaborative free Irish dictionary.

IrishDictionary.org now has over 2,000 headwords. It’s a collaborative effort involving over 150 members, and is alway growing.

I’m happy to announce you can now download the dictionary as a PDF completely for free.

The PDF is updated daily. It only includes validated entries. It’s only a 200Kb download.

The PDF download might help you to study Irish, (but probably won’t help you with Irishisms).

If there’s a word that’s missing, please do join the site to add more words.

Bainigí taithneamh as.

http://www.irishdictionary.org/pdf/

For those wanting to immerse themselves in new culture and language the price is right.

Free Learning Tools

At TalkIrish.com the focus really is on free learning and they have established a great reputation for being a place where students, teachers, and speakers of the Irish language from all over the world can come together to share thoughts and ideas. Recently they have added several tools to help make the transition into the language easier. These tools are free and available now online and anyone using them is encouraged to contribute by uploading videos or other resources into the discussion forums where everyone can share in their access.

Podcasts

It’s called Focal an Lae and it’s a podcast designed to help you learn the language one word at a time. Every day they post a new Irish word and sentence to inch your learning along and with free downloads of online interactive flashcards learning has never been easier. You can upload the podcast onto your own iPod or other mp3 player for learning on the go. You can even practice what you’ve learned in the online blog where readers are very patient with those still learning.

Coming Soon

The website is planning its next phase of growth that will include new games and quizzes to test your Irish knowledge and will continue its expand its forum for new users. Recently they were awarded a spot on the 2009 Courvoisier Future 500 list of innovative business brains and creative talent.

Other Alternatives for learning Irish Gaelic

If one phrase or word per day is not fast enough for you there is a whole world of alternatives waiting to teach you. One of the more popular teachers online can be found at Rosettastone.com, and you can purchase Rosetta Stone on Amazon.com. This well known teaching series recently gave away a week of free Irish Gaelic lessons in mid March so that students could learn some Irish before St. Patrick’s Day. The website is always offering different promotions and although the course is far from free it does offer learning at a faster pace and also offers a guarantee on their product.

For someone wanting to learn Irish Gaelic for business purposes this could be a great alternative to classic classroom time. The classes are a mixed format of audio and bookwork and have already been successfully used by thousands to learn new languages.

This post was contributed by Karen Sampson, who writes about degrees in arts and humanities. She welcomes your feedback at Karen.Sampson1120 at gmail.com