Making an Irish Dictionary

On Wednesday, I helped prepare the fortnightly (that’s once every two weeks, and much less confusing than our “biweekly”) senior citizens’ luncheon. One of the other cooks said she was going to wait a few minutes for more people to get there before she “wet the tea.” And then she looked at me and said, “you’ve probably never heard that before, have you?” She was right. The end result of this conversation was that she determined to start compiling for me a list of phrases specific to the Northern Irish. In general, language is not a big issue. I can understand most everybody just fine, though there are a few with heavy accents whose words I have to decode in my head before responding. The only major issue is very young children. I can’t understand them, with their speedy conversation and quiet voices. But neither can they understand me. Ordinarily, this would be fine, since most of my work is with teenagers and senior citizens. However, when I am assigned to give the children’s talk in church, this presents an interesting problem. Two weeks ago, I gave the children’s talk. Never have I seen such quiet children. They all stared at me, very attentively. I was incredibly impressed, until I asked a question and got no response. I asked again, what I thought would be a good conversation starter: “where do we tell stories?” Still no answer. I fed them one. “Do we tell stories to our parents?” I got one very small and hesitant nod. So continued the talk, with me essentially answering my own questions and getting a small nod from one of the children. I’m giving the talk again this Sunday, and I’m still trying to figure out how I can best communicate with these kids. Wish me luck!