mimerim wrote:
But I think you all might think I'm a little more advanced than I am. I was just going to say "Go raibh maith agat"
You should know, then, that that one’s pronounced somewhat irregularly. It’s just a common and ubiquitous expression that, naturally, it’s usually said very quickly and slurred quite a bit. Of course, this also means that there’s quite a lot of variation in the pronunciation, since you can slur different parts of it to different degrees.
In Donegal, this phrase is most commonly pronounced something relatively similar to how someone from Massachusetts would say “gutter MIDE” (stressing the second word) in quick speech. It doesn’t quite sound like that, but it’s not far removed from it—and I’m guessing that’s probably not what analysing the individual words in the phrase would have given you!