I kept getting caught out at Level 99 by “your ring”, “bhur bhfáinne”; the practice in the rest of the course is to indicate plural when intended. It’s not done at Level 99 for a good reason, as that is a review of eclipsis; but when it comes up in review one misses that context. So I changed it to “your (pl) ring” in the database. Please confirm this is OK.
Level 101: “Nár mhaith leis rud ar bith?” is translated as “Wouldn’t you like anything?” But I can’t figure out why it’s “leis” and not “leat”. Is this an idiom? If not I’ll be happy to change it.
Yes, much clearer as “your (pl) ring”. Thanks for changing it.
Yes, again. It should be “Wouldn’t he like anything?” Thanks for catching it. I went ahead and changed it.
The audio for both is from forvo. The speaker is BridEllis. She’s done many, many useful recordings on forvo and matches the duolingo pronunciation fairly closely.
when capitalized, the Dáil does refer to the lower house of the Oireachtas, even in English speaking media. So this isn’t an error; but it might benefit from more information. (I haven’t been on Duolingo for a while, but I think they do the same - i.e. translate ‘dáil’ as ‘assembly’ and ‘an Dáil’ as ‘the Dáil’.)
thanks for the quick answer. I had no chance to check Duolingo as I try to learn the vocabulary via memorise before I do the Duolingo lesson. I did a Google search and it seems to me the lower house is referred to as Dáil Éireann. But I’m not a native English speaker so I have no clue about the common use of the term.
strange, I’m not getting these emails directly any longer. Anyway, that’s right - it is short for Dáil Éireann, but if you look at articles in the Irish Times, say, you’ll see it generally referred to as just the Dáil. I’ve added “Dáil Éireann” to our explanatory note - thanks for suggesting the improvement.
Hi anoulipo, Thanks so much for answering the question and adding an excellent explanatory note.
Everyone refers to it as “the Dáil”, but the current Duolingo answer is “the legislative assembly.” I think Team Irish must have decided it was better to provide an answer for learners that explained the nature of the Dáil. I just added “the legislative assembly” to the alternate answers in the Memrise course.
Here’s a link to the Duolingo record for An Dáil, with all the discussion on this topic.
Heather, sorry for my delay in replying. Thank you - I should have attempted to find the Duolingo translation of Dáil but didn’t (although now I remember reading that forum discussion when I went through the course). Adding “the legislative assembly” makes sense.
I’m curious though about what (if any) other non-Irish “legislative assemblies” it is commonly applied to. The Irish “Vicipéid” (not very large,admittedly) gives the clearly related “Comhdháil” for the U.S. Congress, divided into the “Seanad” and the “Teach na nIonadaithe”. But “Dáil” itself redirects to Dáil Éireann.
(I still like the first translation in the forum discussion: “them up in Dublin”!)
Feel free to add any Irish or English translation alternates you want. When you are in “edit” mode, hover to the right of the word and “alts” appears. If you don’t want the alternate answer to appear when people are learning, put a “_” in front of the alternate, e.g. _the legislative assembly. I know they say the Dáil and the Seanad when referring to “them up in Dublin.” But I’m not 100% sure how they refer to “them over in Westminster” or “them up on Capitol Hill.” But my impression is the same as yours: “an Dáil” is strictly “Dáil Éireann”; the Seanad is the Irish senate, but the word seanad is generic and could refer to any senate, worldwide.
I asked an Irish-speaking colleague about “Dáil”; for him, its reference to a legislative assembly is indeed now limited to the Dáil Éireann, with Comhdháil (conference) or Parlaimint used for assemblies outside of Ireland. I added as an alternate for “an Dáil” what I wish the Duolingo course had used, “the Irish legislative assembly”; but because it clashed with “the legislative assembly” there currently (and probably best kept for the sake of those doing the course), I left this alt with a “_” in front. Hopefully that’s a reasonable resolution of the issue.
Great resolution. Yes, “the Irish legislative assembly” is more accurate and descriptive. Thanks. I’ll file away Comhdháil and Parlaimint for assemblies outside of Ireland.
Hello @heathermagoo and @davidcwalls. Reviewing through the course again after leaving it for a while, I ran into “ochtódú duine” at level 47 as the answer for “eighty people”, correcting my guess “ochtó duine”. But this seems likely an error - “ochtódú” is “eightieth” (as it is at level 48). One mem also flags this issue. I’m not sure if it’s an error in the Duolingo course - I couldn’t find ochtódú there when I looked just now - but teanglann.ie uses “ochtó” for “fear” and “bean”, so it’s certainly used for people in those contexts. So I changed it to “ochtó duine”. If you know some quirk that indicates otherwise, please let me know…
Thanks for pointing out the problem, anoulipo. I just bumped ochtó duine and hopefully freed it from any old phantom answers. If the problem persists, please let me know. :D:D:D Heather
To the creator, would you be willing to share the raw data so that I can create an Anki deck using the same vocabulary items? If so, is it possible to export the list via a TSV or a CSV?
I tried the scraper you suggested and the output is a file without properly delineated entries (see link below) - each line has both the Irish phrase and the English phrase, and they don’t seem to be tab-separated. Can you advise on how to process this into a TSV or CSV?
I actually never used the scraper myself, it’s just one item in my list of links I came across.
What I did use in the past is the word-list generator. However, a bit of work is necessary to get this up and running. Read on here:
Feel free to add any Irish or English translation alternates you want. When you are in “edit” mode, hover to the right of the word and “alts” appears. If you don’t want the alternate answer to appear when people are learning, put a “_” in front of the alternate, e.g. _the legislative assembly. I know they say the Dáil and the Seanad when referring to “them up in Dublin.” But I’m not 100% sure how they refer to “them over in Westminster” or “them up on Capitol Hill.” But my impression is the same as yours: “an Dáil” is strictly “Dáil Éireann”; the Seanad is the Irish senate, but the word seanad is generic and could refer to any senate, worldwide.