Large List of Irish Sentences with English Translations

[Gríofa]

Hi,

I’ve put together a list of six thousand Irish sentences covering 350 words at least 20 times each. All the words in the list are among the most common in Irish and the sentences are only made up of these 350 words. I’m hoping this list will help myself and others when learning Irish. This list is aimed at beginners. What do you think? The list is compiled by extracting the examples on focloir.ie and breis.focloir.ie (English-Irish).

I’m wondering if anyone here would be interested in helping me to improve / complement the list of sentences. I’m quite new to Irish myself so I need help! 🙂

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yrgdBlt2Kw7-bg21Ph5gPTKQby67mx3ty-pw8EOVwPI/edit?usp=sharing

Here’s what I need help with:

1) More Sentences

– Do you know of any other sources where there are Irish sentences with direct English translations? I’m particularly interested in dialog text, for example films and tv shows. Maybe you know someone I could contact regarding this matter.

– I have a huge number of Irish sentences which are not translated to English which could be added to the list. Maybe you would be interested in translating some of them?

– Better translations for this sentences already in the list.

2) Filter Idiomatic Phrases

I need help identifying idiomatic phrases in the list. At the moment I’m only taking the following into consideration: “in ann”, “chuid eile”, “ar bith”, “gan fhois”, “ansin féin”, “ar ndóigh”. This results in all sentences contain these phrases being removed from the list, with the exception of those containing “ar bith” and “in ann” since these two phrases occur more than 20 times each. Perhaps you would like to help me identify more idioms in the list? There is a lot of them there, but the more I identify the better the list will be since less common idioms will be removed.

3) Recording

Once the list has be improved it would be great to record as many of the sentences as possible since listening is the most important part of learning a language. I can build a tool to make the recording process as simple as possible for those who would like to help!

My email is “griffin dot barry at gmail dot com” if you wish to contact me or you can send me a message through this forum.

Thanks for reading,

Barry

[Seáinín]

If you have access to a copy of Gaschaint by Úna Lawlor, it’s a wonderful list of two thousand phrases mostly directed from a parent to a child. There are translations and recordings for each of the English sentences into the Irish of the 3 primary dialects. Worth a look.

[Cionaodh]

I’ve put together a list of six thousand Irish sentences covering 350 words at least 20 times each. All the words in the list are among the most common in Irish and the sentences are only made up of these 350 words. I’m hoping this list will help myself and others when learning Irish. What do you think? The list is compiled by extracting the examples on focloir.ie and breis.focloir.ie (English-Irish).

Your list looks wonderful for learners. Is there a reason why you’re limiting the “vocabulary” of this collection to 350 words?

I need help identifying idiomatic phrases in the list. At the moment I’m only taking the following into consideration: “in ann”, “chuid eile”, “ar bith”, “gan fhois”, “ansin féin”, “ar ndóigh”. This results in all sentences contain these phrases being removed from the list, with the exception of those containing “ar bith” and “in ann” since these two phrases occur more than 20 times each. Perhaps you would like to help me identify more idioms in the list? There is a lot of them there, but the more I identify the better the list will be since less common idioms will be removed.

Identifying the idioms in your list would be very useful, but if you segregate them from the “ordinary” sentences, you’ll require the user to have to resort elsewhere when he/she tries to use your list to help decipher an idiomatic sentence they’re having trouble with. But maybe that’s not the point of your list; perhaps you’re focusing on mastering those 350 words?

Irish is full of idioms, and my students have a very hard time figuring them out on their own without teacher assistance or reference to something like Gaschaint that Seáinín mentioned. Your collection of sentence fragments could be a very helpful tool in their belts if the vocabulary weren’t limited and if idioms were identified, included and explained.

[Gríofa]

Identifying the idioms in your list would be very useful, but if you segregate them from the “ordinary” sentences, you’ll require the user to have to resort elsewhere when he/she tries to use your list to help decipher an idiomatic sentence they’re having trouble with. But maybe that’s not the point of your list; perhaps you’re focusing on mastering those 350 words?

Thanks for the feedback Cionaodh! The idea of the list is that is should cover very common words, phrases and idioms and is aimed at Irish language beginners. For this list I define “very common” as any word, phrase or idiom that occurs at least 20 times within the list. Anything else should be removed as I want learners to focus on the very common things. For example, the sentence “He keeps coming on to me” would be a very bad sentence to teach a learner of English even though it contains very common words. The problem with it is that it contains the phrasal verb “come on to” which has its own meaning and its use is relatively rarely in English. Such a sentence would be more suitable for advanced learners. In the case of my list “ar bith” and “in ann” occur more than 20 times each so sentences containing them remain in the list.

I know from learning languages myself how frustrating it is when I was thaught things in class when I knew there were more useful words and expressions that I could have been learning instead.

Of course, it is my intention to create additional list in the future for more adanced learners! If you have time to help me identify the phrasal verbs and idioms in my list please let me know. I would be very greatful! 🙂

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