hir-iaith Hi-lite

hir-iaith Hi-lite, a grammar-first reading companion for Welsh learners.

Hi-lite is a tool to analyse words in context and to learn their use. It helps you understand not only what individual words mean, but also their grammatical function in sentences, their different forms, and why their form changes.

It displays the part of speech of each word in selected sentences, colour-coded and flagged via icons for ease of use. Depending on the word, it also shows other grammatical information, such as tense, grammatical person, gender, etc.

It can also detect Welsh mutations in selected sentences and provide the grammatical rule governing each mutation.

When you install this extension, you will be able to:

• Call it to action in any website you are visiting.
• Highlight words, sentences, or paragraphs to be analysed by simply selecting them with your cursor.
• Loop through different possibilities for each of the Welsh words selected, with helpful information cards that give you a lot of grammatical detail.
• Search the Welsh dictionary database that is included in the extension, with almost 500 thousand entries.
• Customise the look of your extension, from word sizes, colours, and icons to the option of detecting and displaying literary conjugation of verbs.
• Switch back and forth between your selections with the Undo and Redo buttons.
• Save individual words to a vocabulary list, which you can use to study and revise. This list can be exported and opened on a different device or on the web version of hir-iaith Hi-lite. You can also import vocabulary lists produced by others and shared with you. On the web version, the Saved Words list has an audio function so you can hear the pronunciation of each word.

This extension is also available as a website-based tool, with a slightly modified working method, on the hir-iaith website linked below, in the Hi-lite workspace page – feel free to visit it, read more about its uses on the Welcome page, and try it out before installing.

Instructions:

Click the hir-iaith extension button while visiting any webpage to open the app side-bar. It should take around 5-15 seconds for the app to load. That’s because it contains almost half a million words and is entirely hosted on your own computer: the app works entirely offline and doesn’t collect or send any data. After you load the dictionary data, you should be able to use the app in real time.

1. Text selected on the webpage will be highlighted and the words will be displayed as individual buttons in the Hi-lite pane. They are colour-coded for part of speech, each of which is also associated with an icon. Hover the mouse to show the card with grammar information.
2. The card will show part of speech and other grammar information, such as grammatical person, tense, singular or plural, etc. It shows you if the word is a mutation or a conjugated verb and displays the “root” form of that word. Some combinations of words are detected as expressions when selected together.
3. Some words have more than one function or meaning. Click the word to loop through the cards showing the different meanings.
4. Click the blue Mutations button to display the mutations detected in the highlighted sentence and the rules behind them.
5. Right-click a word to save it to your Saved Words list. Access your list by clicking the Saved button.
6. Click Help to open a glossary of the grammar terms used in the app, with explanations and examples.
7. Click Search to use the extension data as a dictionary and look up a specific word or expression, including any form of a word (mutations or verb conjugations).
8. Click Settings to change the colours and sizes of buttons, hide the word icons, and choose to show literary conjugations when analysing text.
9. Click the extension logo to shrink the app to the side. Click again to bring it back.
10. To close the app, either close the window/tab or refresh it.