To be funny or to be greannmhar? That is the question

Bilingualism is a wonderful thing. It promotes good listening skills, problem-solving abilities and all those other things that make teachers and parents weak at the knees. I'm pretty sure I can count myself as part of that 50% of the global population that calls themselves bilingual, my two languages being English and Gaelainn, or Irish to you internationals (not called 'Gaelic', NEVER EVER CALLED 'GAELIC'). However, two experiences of late have brought one major bone of contention to mind concerning my mother tongues, and that is this: I cannot, for the life of me, be funny through Irish. And this, my friends, is a big deal.

I'm funny. I make people laugh, be it at me or with me. It's my get-out-of-jail-free card for new and potentially awkward situations. It's the main reason I have friends; in its absence I have very few positive personality traits to my name. Humour is in my genetic make-up. But there's actually a glitch in the gene, as I have recently unearthed. Three weeks of teaching placement in a Gaelscoil and another three weeks working as a ceannaire (assistant) in an Irish course for secondary school students in the Gaeltacht have led me to the blunt reality that, when Irish is the vernacular, I go from stand-up to sit-the-f*ck-down.
No matter how hard I try to weave humour in with my cúpla focal, it doesn't work. As a ceannaire, my subconscious was met with a tough decision as the three-week course went on: I can be a good ceannaire, or I can be good craic, because let's face it - I can't be both. Especially when the kids you're working with aren't exactly proficient at the language, any funny remark you might make in Irish, which may cause the other cinnirí and múinteoirí to ROFL, would otherwise fall on deaf ears. And how are you meant to build warm social relationships on misunderstood (or in some cases, non-understood) jibes and jokes? The class I taught in the Gaelscoil for my teaching placement must've thought me extremely shy and a bit of a loser until the daily English lesson rolled around and I finally got to leap out of my tightly-encased linguistic shell.
When it comes to my spoken Irish, I devote the majority of cognitive effort to making sure that what I am about to utter is grammatically and semantically correct. Overburdened by fear of incorrect grammar or syntax means that any need to be witty or produce LOL-inducing comments is pushed swiftly to the side, my inner perfectionist pipping my inner comedienne to the post time after time. In other cases, my underlying need for social relationships built on banter often bullies me into reverting back to English, my first language, where humour ebbs from almost every word.
As well as the aforementioned difficulties which have been presented, the fact that Irish is an old-fashioned language based on social conventions and practices associated with days of yore (e.g., every greeting has religious connotations, and I mean every one, apart from 'haigh!' which isn't even real anyway) means that it is extremely difficult to bring in slang and modern vocabulary while still remaining true to the integrity of the language. There are no proper words in the Irish language, that I know of anyway, for 'hashtag', 'shift' (the kissing variety now), 'charge' (as in to charge your phone) or 'blog', to name a few. In cases such as these, native speakers of Irish often throw in the English words anyway. If I were to take a leaf from their book, I imagine I could find a way to allow both my inner perfectionist and inner comedienne to live in harmony together, difficult though that may be. Samhlaigh an saol sona sásta sin!