This is why I love this forum, and why I spend so much of my writing time doing research for just a few lines of dialogue most readers are just going to skip over. Because you people start these interesting discussions that have me rereading the thread like 100 times and then looking words up in my Irish-English dictionaries and then getting distracted by other words and looking those up and then finding other phrases I'd love to somehow work into some dialogue somewhere and...I'm never gonna finish this darn book if I don't get back to actual writing!! LOL!!

Okay so back on topic. I'm cool with changing the English, but I need to keep the meaning that this person did nothing, or did not do anything. I looked up "tada" in my dictionary, which referred me to "dada." Dada had entries for "iota, a jot, a whit" etc., and "(With negative) Very little, nothing" and all the phrases listed for that word had many mentions of "nothing." (for example: Ní ~ é, it is nothing).

If I can use "Ní dhearna mé tada" and have that repeated later as "I didn't do a thing" (because "Ní" is negative, right?) will that work? Is that a logical translation of the meaning or sentiment of that for someone who has grown up speaking both languages? "I didn't do a thing" will work out perfectly for what I need, and if it makes a better idiomatic translation than using the word "nothing" then I definitely prefer that.

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I'm very much a beginner learner. Don't hesitate to correct me, as long as you explain why. This is how I learn best!

"Ní dhearna mé tada" -
I think you can use it safely for both.

If you want more emphasis you can use "faic".
Ní dhearna mé faic - I did absolutely nothing.

Cool ! I didn't know it was that localised.

I suspect that the "meala líomóide" is a reference to the extracted balm, and that the full lus na meala líomóide would be unnecessary, as you'd be using the extract in the spell, presumably, rather than the whole plant.

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

Neamhní is more common than náid in Corca Dhuibhne. Maybe náid is one of those made up words.

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The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

I was thinking the same thing about náid possibly being a made-up word. The person who taught me to say neamhní was from Múscraí and I definitely heard neamhní in Corca Dhuibhne; so now we know that neamhní is used by native speakers in Munster and Connacht.

"Náid" sounds like a borrowing of English "naught".
Scottish Gaelic has "neoni" (one of very few words allowed to break the broad/slender rule) for zero, so neamhna must have a long history behind it.

That said, even "náid" must be reasonably old to have picked up a slender ending that makes it different from English... and yet also relatively recent, in that the English GH had already lost its "lough" CH sound before the borrow.

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

Both "neoni" and "neamhní" means "nothing", Old Irish "nephní", "nební".

The idea of a number 0 gained ground in Europe in the 17th century.
It seems natural to use a word for "nothing" as a name of the new number.
English "naught" originally meant nothing more than "nothing", too.