Tomorrow, it's St. Patrick's Day, so I thought that instead of talking about the differences between British English and American English, why not take a short look at Irish English?

Many years ago, I was in Rome on a short vacation. A lot of Irish people stayed in the hotel, and they were always full of fun and good spirit (and sometimes beer).

They told a lot of jokes, and I never understood them. I loved to listen to them, but Irish English was not among the languages they taught us in Danish schools.

Lately, I have watched the series "Against the Wind", which is a story about some Irish people who get sent to Australia. Awesome series! The only trouble with our copy is that it's without subtitles, and especially one of the characters in the movie speaks an uncomprehensible (to me) Irish.

Anyway, here's your chance to learn some Irish. Grammar Girl has invited a guest to tell us about Irish English, and you can both listen and read. It's an interesting read that will explain both about different words used in Irish English, as well as different pronounciations.

I've noticed that a lot of Americans write "ya" instead of "you" (singular), and now I know why. It makes sense, actually. As far as I remember Shakespeare, old English also had different words for you in singular and you in plural. It is so confusing when somebody invites "you" - does she mean "only you", or "you and your spouse"?

Some of the things I found really funny from the article was to learn that the Irish don't use "yes" or "no". How do you avoid those important words?

[They are simply] repeating the verb of the question. Can you swim? I can! Do you like tomato juice? I don't. Are you coming? I amn't.

And "amn't" is of course "I am not", abbreviated, just like we do with "isn't" and "aren't".

After this crash course in Irish English you might be able to write short articles. I'm not totally convinced, though, that Ezine Articles would approve them.

Don't let anything stand between you and success. If you want to do something, or create something, and you don't know how to… Learn it!

Nothing is impossible! Or rather:

Everything is possible!

I just love when people take action, don't you? Take a look at this inspirational video. It's starring a young boy (6th grader), who wanted to create iPhone apps. So he taught himself how to do it. He's awesome, by the way. Look, how he addresses the audience in a very professional way.

Ladies and gentlemen - I give you: Thomas Suarez

I'm participating in a branding challenge, created by Tiffany Dow, and she started out by asking her audience some questions.

I would love it if you would answer these same questions about me in the comments.

So here are my questions for you:

1. What do you like or dislike about me, or my business?

2. What do you trust or not trust about me?

3. If someone asked you who I was, what would your answer be?

4. What main thing do you think I offer as a product or service?

5. Compare me to other marketers in general – how do I stack up?

6. Do I affect your life for the better or worse?

I appreciate you being as blunt as possible. It’s the language I speak best

Don't be shy Speak up, now that you have the chance

The rest of the world might have heard these voices a long time ago, but I just discovered them today, from two different sources, and they touched my heart, both of them.

The first song is a very young French singer, he's 21, singing in Corsican. The second is an even younger performer, she's only ten.

You cannot tell from their voices that they are so young. Listen to these two opera style music clips. Just enjoy, and feel happy

At the moment, I'm doing quite a lot of forum marketing, and on one forum after another, I stumbled upon the same man, who made excellent posts. Or so it seemed.

I was impressed, to begin with. I mean, he cranked out one post after another that should be sticky.

But then I saw that same man getting banned at different forums, and other members writing about how he copied posts from Warrior Forum.

What really puzzles me is: Why does he do it? He must be spending a huge amount of time, joining forums, putting up his picture, writing answers to the copied posts, he makes. All that to have his links removed, his accounts banned, and getting himself a really bad name in business.

Romando Popim, is what he calls himself.

When I searched for his name, I saw a full threat of people having been scammed in ad swapping by him. They send him lots of clicks. He never returned the favour.

What's the purpose? Can't he see that he's riding a locomotive that's gaining more and more speed, headed towards a lavine?

Update:This evening, I fell over this man's face but with another name attacked. This time it was Patrick K. O'Brien - http://www.warriorforum.com/members/pobrien.html

A loot of the books I've written were aimed at absolute beginners, and my friends had fun telling me that I wrote them using copy and paste.

What are friends for, if they couldn't make fun of you, eh?

Anyway, no, I have never used copy and paste. But I have rewritten things from time to time. More lately than earlier. But never copied. I would never recommend the use of copy and paste, when it comes to creating texts.

Today, somebody asked me if copy and paste were involved in my product "How to Get Fresh'n'Free Unique Content on your Blog".

The clear answer is No. And I'll tell you why not.

Copying is Stealing

One of the main reasons is that by copying somebody else's work, you are in fact stealing it. It's illegal and un-ethical.

Copying is to take Honour from Somebody Else

I was on a mailing list about how to lose weight. Somebody postet a poem on the list, and everybody wrote and praised her for her poem. Only problem - it wasn't her poem, but a famous Danish poetrist, but she just signed it with her own name.

How could she enjoy the praisals knowing that she wasn't the creator of the poem?

Inspiration is Okay

You can let yourself get inspired by other people's texts. But never copy them. Oftentimes you might even make a better text than the original by structuring it differently, or just by using a better language.

Earlier, I would never even use this methode. Once I was asked to write an article for a Danish computer magazine, and they send me some articles to use as inspiration. I didn't. I knew I could do better myself.

Today, I use articles as inspiration for my own from time to time. Especially, if it's about a subject I don't know that much about. What I do then is to read two or three articles about the subject, and then I write my own article based on the informations I found in the others.

My grandchild, Naomi, was born at 11:51 this morning. She and her mother and father is fine.

Of course, in these modern times, my first impression of Naomi is from a picture send per MMS.

Here she is. Cute, eh?

Welcome to the world, Naomi!

She was born a little too early. Was supposed to appear around November 14, but she didn't want to be born as a Scorpio, it seems

Naomi weighted 2840 g and measured 47 cm at her birth.

Have you ever been haunted by a song?

I have. Even for years and decades.

When I was a child, I lived in Germany, and I learned to speak German, English and Danish almost at the same time. Obviously, many of my childhood songs were in German, and the haunting song was between them. The first lines goes like this:

Alle meine Püpchen, Emmy und Marie, schlafen noch in Betchen, biss zum Morgen früh.

I am sorry, if there are spelling errors. After all, I was 5, when we left Germany.

This means something like: "All my little dolls, Emmy and Mary, are still sleeping in their little beds, until tomorrow morning."

What is wrong with that?

Why did the stupid author write "alle" (= all), when he could have written "beide" (= both)?

I have been puzzled about this for more than 40 years now.

If I said four words to you, could they change your life?

Maybe, but most likely not. But words certainly are able to change lives. I know, because it was four simple words that changed my life, and I've never looked back since.

Do you want to know which words they were?

Listening right now to...

When I go down in my cellar to do the ironing, I always put on my iPod, so I can enjoy the work and learn at the same time. Right now I'm listening to "Six Days to Saturday" (I'll come back to that later in a review), and this is what inspired me to write this blog post.

The author of "Six Days to Saturday" had his life changed by four words as well. His little daughter at three asked him "Dad, is tomorrow Saturday?", because she only saw her father on Saturdays. The rest of the week he was either working or thinking about work. So he decided to make everyday a Saturday by quitting his job and doing something completely different.

Waiting for my life to be over

For me it happened one Monday morning. I only worked four days a week (took the fifth off to start writing), but I was really bored at work, and I didn't like to spend all that time in the train getting there, putting my kids to kindergarden etc. But I wasn't really aware that something was awefully wrong, before that Monday morning, where I woke up, and my first thought was: "I wish it were Friday!".

There and then I decided that I wouldn't want to spend my life just waiting for it to be over, always rushing towards Friday, only enjoying three days a week. Soon after I quit my job and started as a freelancer, which let to writing books and articles and having the life, I wanted.

I have never looked back since.

Which words can change your life?

We are not there yet...

Today the weather has been really nice, clear sunshine, but only 8 degrees Celcius, which should correspond at 46.4 Fahrenheit.

Pretty chilly, in other words.

But soon, I'll be working outside, in the garden, with my MacBook Pro. I'm looking forward to that time. When I get to my laptop, I'll put up a picture of me, sitting outside, working.