Fa'afetai lava Michelle! (Just saying thank you very much in Samoan)
Is maith sin Michelle! Ar fheabhas! Just stacking up the Irish vocab so i'll be able to reply with what I'm collecting.
I've had a few conversation's in Irish (too far and few between) and they have all gone the same way, fun, but boy do I need a night class. But there are none from where I am in Wellington. I know they have one in Auckland, but that's miles and miles away.
But the general conversation is like "hi, how are you?" - "I'm good, and you?" - "Where, your from?" - (Now I can say that I'm also Samó fosta Kiwi) but yeah, then I end up saying I only speak a little Irish, but learning. Always a bit of laughter from the other side. I think I'm going to be one of those that will have to mix the Irish with the English for quite sometime, just as the way I'm typing.
But it's cool that there is borrowed words, they can be fun and funny to find them out, just like in the Samoan language. The word for Ireland in Samoa is "Irelani" = phonetically; eye'ah - lah'nee. There is a tricky tounge thing you have to do with Samoan's "n's" and "g's" ... Boy, back to the Irish!
This year, I'm going to make a real effort, I've been looking at Irish for about 7-8 years (seems like a long time), just fascinated by it, but never doing anything about it.
This year is the first real attempt. Good that there is a website like this, very encouraging, I do get thrown by all the dialects and the way that the order of things get mentioned in a sentence. But that's the beauty of languages such as Irish. So just want to say I agree with your thoughts Michelle, and I'd be very proud to help the Irish language by learning it!
I do have to say, not meaning to ruffle any feathers, but I do like how the Ulster dialect sounds and can see how the Scots could almost understand them. But I've been tryinig to learn the Connacht way of speaking, my question for anyone is that on the Irish I have been learning off a computer software, there is "Yes" and "No" on there. Except I haven't heard anyone say it or seen anyone write it ... "Is ea = Yes" agus "Ni hea = No". Any idea's anyone why it's not mentioned often, I think I hear "Nil" for "no" more then anything I believe.
Go raibh maith agat Michelle agus trying to help with my Gaeilge.
Frank.
PS: Oh yeah, that would be very cool if you got something's you can say to kids in the new year. Also feels like a good place for learner's like me to start too 