A wild newb has appeared!!

[Shamrock Shamus]

Heya! I'm Shamus. I was born in Ireland but came to the United States as a youngin. I am 38 years old and in a polyamorous relationship with a woman named Janna and a woman named Molly. I have 11 children, a 20 year old, a 17 year old, a 16 year old, an 11 year old, twin 6 year olds (who will be 7 in April), a 5 year old (who will be 6 in March), a set of triplet 5 year olds and an 8 month old.
I taught Mandarin for 10 years. I loved it. I survived lung cancer twice and prostate cancer once. I am a stay at home dad now.

Also, I love crocodilians (so crocodiles, alligators, caimans and Gharials. I love them all!) Just throwing that out there.

Okay, the fridge is making weird noises so, I guess I will stop here and go check it out. Later.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

wow! Twins and triplets! You will have to have your family join WIndlyn too!

Welcome...my game threads are in my signature so please feel free to get extra feathers from there and several of us have charities so definitely look into those. Game room gives feathers and the fishing and quests give you items... buy Lazarus items first as they don't stick around.

Hope you were able to fix your fridge!

[galled]

Welcome to Windlyn!

You've certainly had a full life so far and are a fighter for sure! Mandarin sounds tough to learn, but it's probably more and more useful everyday.

Hope your fridge is ok and that you enjoy your time here!

[Shamrock Shamus]

Lemon Cheesecake: Haha it's strange but what's even more strange is that both sets came from the same mum.
My oldest used to be on another site. I should tell her. : P She's extremely shy though.

Thanks! : ) I will check them out when I get a chance.
Are the Lazarus items like donation items?

It's okay. I am at Molly's house for the first time and she said it always makes weird noises.

Galled: Thanks. : ) It sort of seems like life gets bored and needs to be entertained so it throws things at me and grabs some popcorn. Lol. I tend to not quit easily. Mandarin is pretty tough but I really enjoy languages and somehow can pick them up fairly easily. I am admittedly a linguaphile, a person who loves languages and linguistics. So it may seem strange but I tend to learn them for fun. It is useful to learn Mandarin though considering the fact that the USA has tight trade and economic relations with China. It's also a very widely spoken language, especially in Asia.

It is. I guess it always sounds like that.
Thanks. I will.

[Gingerale]

welcome! sounds like you have over come some major challenges!

Many of our members on Windlyn are on the shy side but they like to dress up the avatar's and even join in posting sometimes!

Unlike the regular shops, the Lazarus shop is where event or past items appear and are only available for a short time.

Check out the new charity I am starting! The link is in my signature.
Maybe you can teach us some languages, there are a few who want to learn Japanese - do you know Japanese?

[galled]

I've often wondered how quotes from foreign officials like from China actually translate. I realize context is everything in communication, but cultural expressions and other quirks in language can very easily leave the wrong impression I would think. Then when you get the press involved and just using the translation (sometimes literal), it's a wonder there haven't been more wars.

[Shamrock Shamus]

Edit: Gonna use spoilers to make this easier on the eyes.

Gingerale:

[+] SPOILER

Thanks. : ) I have and as a result, I don't know how to quit. : P

I am on a few other avatar sites and I always wondered how lurkers get so much stuff. Lol. Sometimes they have extravagant avatars and I am just sitting there wondering how. Lol.

Ah! Gotcha! I've been checking out the items. : ) I really like the avatars here. I like the art style of them.
Okay. Thanks. : )

I don't know Japanese. I was married to a Japanese woman for quite some time but I never learned anything other than very basic things, such as hiragana, katakana and basic phrases. I can recognize some kanji from Chinese, since that's where they came from but I know that some are used a bit differently. I 'd be happy to share what little I know though, to get you guys some momentum and a place to start.

Galled:

[+] SPOILER

I was always told by my professor to not translate word by word but to do the phrase as a whole. Some of their phrases a set up differently. If you translate word for word, you may end up saying something that sounds incredibly weird to them. So for example I let's use the phrase, "We have dinner at home." To translate it word for word, a common mistake would be, 我们有晚饭在家里。Wo men you wan fan zai jia li. (my keyboard can't do some of the tone marks, bear with me.) Wo men is we, you is to have (in the sense of possession) wan fan is dinner zai jia li is at home. So to them, you'd be saying "We possess dinner at home." The correct way to say this would be 我们在家里吃晚饭。Wo men zai jia li chi wan fan. So, literally: "We at home eat dinner." Chi means to eat. Not only is word order different depending on what you are trying to say but words that are the same but can be used in different contexts doesn't always translate well. In Chinese there's so many words that are specific to a certain context. So it can get tricky. So a good rule of thumb is to translate the meaning of the sentence as a whole and not word for word.

[Aly]

Hello wild newb!! -pounces on-

[Shamrock Shamus]

Hiya Gator!! -hugs- I had no idea you were on here until I saw you in another thread.

[Gingerale]

aw, you already found some friends - that is so fun!
I guess keeping your username the same on different sites makes that easier!

[Shamrock Shamus]

Lol it's why I do it. I'm also attached to this username.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

If you moved when you were young were you still able to keep an Irish accent? Do they still speak Gaelic in Ireland?

[Shamrock Shamus]

Unfortunately, I was so young that I lost my accent. Some people have said that they can still slightly tell I am from Ireland while others cannot. So, I think it depends on the person who is listening to me speak. If that makes sense.

There are isolated regions called the Gaeltacht which are places where Gaelic is their mother tongue. They also know English, I presume. But outside of the Gaeltacht, Gaelic is a mandatory subject in school, as an effort to keep the language from dying out. Depends on who you ask but a percentage of Irish people say they are efficient in Gaelic.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

I would hope that they would teach Gaelic at least in Irish history. I think it has been around not just for centuries but 1000's of years which is pretty incredible when you think of how much languages can change through time.

[Shamrock Shamus]

The first recorded use of Irish was around the 4th century AD using Ogham. This is known as Primitive Irish. Then they believe Old Irish was around 5th or 6th century. Then Old Irish evolved to Middle Irish around the 10th century. Around the 12th century is where modern Irish began. In the 18th century, the Brits started trying to force us to assimilate to their norms. They made laws against Irish people doing cultural Irish things we'd always done and they started punishing Irish people who defied these laws. So, this is where the massive decline of the Irish language began. There's a lot of history, since the island has been inhabited by people since the end of the ice age. It's all interesting and kind of sad. But it's also got a lot of heart and a lot of fun things to learn. I say learning it is important.
It's funny but Americans' attitude towards history is quite different. A lot (not all) seem to not care at all. Irish (not all) seem to be proud. If you ask them to explain Easter Rising of 1916, they usually seem to puff up with pride and say that their relatives were in the GPO (General Post Office, headquarters of the Rising). It's very interesting.