Republic of Ireland launches website designed to help promote Irish language

The Irish Ministry of Education this week launched an interactive website to help teachers and students of the Irish language with their studies.

The Irish Times describes Abair Leat as "a virtual online language laboratory in which students can improve their Irish by interacting over the internet with native Irish speakers. Students can use the website to listen to native Irish speakers, record their own material in Irish and undertake self-correcting exercises".

Irish comedian Des Bishop has been heavily involved in the planning and promotion of the site, and he will tour the schools selected to participate in a pilot program using the service. The Irish Times reports that "he said the site was an important step in the ongoing efforts to make the learning and teaching of Irish more enjoyable and interactive by focusing on the primacy of the spoken word".

However, reaction has not been uniformly positive across the Irish political landscape. Sinn Fein political figure Pearse Doherty has criticized the site for not including the dialect of Donegal in their course offerings.