The vernacular literature of medieval Ireland is a vast and fascinating resource stretching back as far as the sixth century, but much of it is written in archaic Old & Middle Irish, and the linguistic complexity of the material can be a barrier to accessing it. Academics at the University of Ulster have developed an electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language and are now working on a supplement that will update and expand it, funded by a five-year grant from the AHRC.
The online electronic resource is based on the paper dictionary published by the Royal Irish Academy, the most comprehensive and authoritative of its kind. As well as updating the electronic version, the team will also publish a supplement to the original paper dictionary.
For those studying medieval Irish literature, dealing with sources written in Old & Middle Irish can be problematic. The inconsistency in the spelling and meaning of many words has long frustrated researchers. These issues also make the paper dictionary, while comprehensive, complex and somewhat difficult to use. The electronic dictionary is therefore an invaluable resource, and this latest project aims to ensure it is as up-to-date and as useful to students and academics as possible.
“The early language is notoriously difficult to deal with,” explains principal investigator Professor Gregory Toner. “Not only is it a highly inflected language, but the spelling is highly irregular. Coupled with editorial inconsistency, it can be very difficult for researchers and students to locate a word in the original dictionary.”
The searchable online version is a much more accessible facility, and this supplement will add a wealth of corrections and additions published over the last seventy years. It will thus give users of the online dictionary much more information about the material it contains, as well as access to the latest scholarly interpretations of this material. The supplement will also help to regularise the inconsistencies that have carried over from the paper dictionary, which took more than 100 years to complete and represents the work of several generations of researchers.
The electronic dictionary is already being used by many different communities in a variety of ways – some of which have surprised even the team behind the project – not only by researchers but also by Irish creative writers, for example. It is also being mined by modern Irish lexicographers to reintroduce previously obsolete words into the modern language.
Professor Toner hopes that by enhancing the existing resource the project will further benefit not only academic linguists, historians and literary scholars, but also the public and the many other users of the dictionary.
To use the electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language, visit www.dil.ie.
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