This is an extremely enjoyable Irish short film, the title of which translates as "My name is Yu Ming." It stars Daniel Wu as the title character, a young Chinese man who is sick of his dead end job and decides to move to Ireland after spinning a globe and landing his finger on my native country. After discovering that Irish is the official language, he spends six months learning it. When he arrives in Dublin, however, he finds that no one can understand a word that he is saying and some even assume that he is speaking Mandarin! The misunderstanding is cleared up by a Gaeilgeoir (native speaker) bar patron named Paddy, played by the always wonderful Frank Kelly, who is astonished to find a Chinese person speaking his language fluently. Yu Ming eventually gets a job as a bartender in Connemara, one of the Gaeltacht regions where Irish is primarily spoken, and presumably lives happily ever after.
The film is a very fun and clever satire on the Republic of Ireland's policy towards the Irish language. Constitutionally speaking, Irish is the national and first language of the country but this has always had far more to do with nationalism with reality, frankly. In practice, it is very much the second language and a very, very distant second at that. According to the 2011 census, only 77,185 people out of 4.5 million spoke it on a daily business outside of the education system and less than half of the population can speak it at all. Speaking of the Constitution, the status of Irish means that where there is a contradiction between the English and Irish versions thereof, the Irish one prevails in spite of the fact that it was written in English and then translated into Irish, a rather bizarre scenario which, given my legal training, I find more than a little silly. Some foreign people think that we all speak Irish as a first language. When I was in Edinburgh, I was told by a Polish girl that I spoke very good English! I took it in the spirit in which it was meant. It's all Greek to me. As regards my own attitude towards Irish, my enthusiasm for it knows bounds. However, I have been able to make my peace with it as, by mutual consent, we have agreed to give each other a wide berth in the future, this short film notwithstanding.
The film is a very fun and clever satire on the Republic of Ireland's policy towards the Irish language. Constitutionally speaking, Irish is the national and first language of the country but this has always had far more to do with nationalism with reality, frankly. In practice, it is very much the second language and a very, very distant second at that. According to the 2011 census, only 77,185 people out of 4.5 million spoke it on a daily business outside of the education system and less than half of the population can speak it at all. Speaking of the Constitution, the status of Irish means that where there is a contradiction between the English and Irish versions thereof, the Irish one prevails in spite of the fact that it was written in English and then translated into Irish, a rather bizarre scenario which, given my legal training, I find more than a little silly. Some foreign people think that we all speak Irish as a first language. When I was in Edinburgh, I was told by a Polish girl that I spoke very good English! I took it in the spirit in which it was meant. It's all Greek to me. As regards my own attitude towards Irish, my enthusiasm for it knows bounds. However, I have been able to make my peace with it as, by mutual consent, we have agreed to give each other a wide berth in the future, this short film notwithstanding.