Nanohedron wrote:
So may I intrude and ask (in English
) how much difficulty there has been in this happenstance conversation
idir Gaeilge agus Gàidhlig? It would seem as if none at all, at least on a basic level. Not meaning to derail, but this is very interesting to me. And I imagine that mutual comprehension would be easier in the written word than with the spoken.
You are right that it's easier to linguistically cross the Giant's Causeway via the written word (assuming one is literate of course), and also to note that we've been sticking to beginners level. I also know just enough basic Irish to get me past (most of) the difficulties and false friends. The few occasions when I've spoken with Irish speakers, it's had to stay at the basic conversational level, but I couldn't generalize about others. I've seen very fluid and fairly complex conversations go off without a hitch - but then I've seen speakers of different dialects of Scottish Gaelic struggle to understand each other. I suspect past experience and personal comfort/confidence in speaking go a long way in determining how successful these things go.
The most unusual Gaelic conversation I had with an Irish speaker was at a Native American language revitalization conference in Connecticut. He was an American learner (like myself), and was switching between Irish (with me) and Passamaquoddy (with his mentor). I also got to speak a bit of Yiddish at that conference, but that's a story for another day.
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