The world’s first social network dedicated to the Irish language Abair Leat! has officially launched, which aims to help normalise the use of Irish in casual settings.
The site is built with the Contain platform, which integrates its language features to make using Irish on the site easier. It includes integrated translation and spelling to allow users with all competencies of Irish to use the site.
It asks users to make posts and comments which contain at least 70pc Irish. The remaining 30pc facilitates non-standard spelling and non-Irish words which may need to be included.
Abair Leat! hopes to take Irish out of the classroom to let people use it in a less formal setting in this social network. They want to allow people to use the language without worrying too much about making mistakes.
It’s aimed at a wide variety of users, including second and third-level students, Irish-language professionals, Irish-language organisations, media outlets and anyone with an interest in the language.
Version 2 of the site will launch in early summer, which will include an integrated thesaurus and speech synthesiser. It hopes to have 50,000 members by the end of the year.
It will also launch smartphone apps by the start of the next school year.
