Only slagging now (dont take offence), an abhainn is "the river", an am is "the time". But like that I used to have a good "phonetic" use of Irish, I could speak more than I could write - whereas with French I could write it ok but not great to speak it.
I'm all for Irish, but I do find that the real gaelgoirs are hard enough to follow - say if you look at TG4, you've some lad from the back end of Connemara muttering at 100mph, he'd be hard to follow in english let alone Irish.
Watching matches as gaelige and all that is good, & fairly accessible for non experts.