A bored Chinese shopkeep learns Gaelic and moves to Dublin only to find the locals can’t understand him since they all speak English.
I felt forumosans would appreciate this video more so than most people.
Soooo what I hear you saying is… My Taiwanese is actually very good, but everyone on the Island speaks Chinese? 
Poor lad, lucky for him he ran into Paddy at the pub (where else?). Or he would have been right buggered…
To me that film seems far more a comment on the decline of Irish than on Yu Ming
Only thing that you need to say in the Gaillec is:
" Poag Ma Hone Ya British Gobshite."
They may vote you into office if you make up some banners and T-shirts with that.
That language was so raped from the people of Ireland years ago it has become almost an extinct language. I mean -it was so throughly made worthless through years of colonialism it has become a quaint custom and an obvious butt of this VERY FUNNY THREAD.
And I write this in English.
Having no other language to write it in.
Which makes this story SO 
extra funny because the powers of colonialism which actually made this language obsolete and embarrassing to speak by the native people that a non-native wanting to speak it, becomes a joke ----a very funny joke…
We millions of Irish around the world laugh heartily at this.
It’s funny---- a Chinese man wanting to speak this quaint language!
Poag Ma Hoan!
My sweet readers --Poag Ma Hoan!
If this story was about a Chinese guy learning an African dialect made obsolete by slavery, poverty and starvation would it be funny?
I mean I’m laughing my ass off here.
I’m sorry, just wanted to bump this very funny thread up to the top.
I think the readers of Forumosa will think it’s funny.
What I want to know is how the hell he learnt Irish in China.
They obviously have fraudulent buxibans in China too.
HG
[quote=“Bubba 2 Guns”]If this story was about a Chinese guy learning an African dialect made obsolete by slavery, poverty and starvation would it be funny?
I mean I’m laughing my ass off here.[/quote]
Watch the credits at the end. It was made by Irish in Ireland. If the film offends you so much…well, blame your own people for making it.
I thought it was neat. Thanks for the link!
Bubba 2 Guns, since I
[quote=“Bubba 2 Guns”]That language was so raped from the people of Ireland years ago it has become almost an extinct language. I mean -it was so throughly made worthless through years of colonialism it has become a quaint custom and an obvious butt of this VERY FUNNY THREAD.
And I write this in English.
Having no other language to write it in.
Which makes this story SO extra funny because the powers of colonialism which actually made this language obsolete and embarrassing to speak by the native people that a non-native wanting to speak it, becomes a joke ----a very funny joke…
We millions of Irish around the world laugh heartily at this.
It’s funny---- a Chinese man wanting to speak this quaint language!
Poag Ma Hoan!
My sweet readers --Poag Ma Hoan![/quote]
Did you actually watch this movie or are you making assumptions without having viewed it? Your comments are probably the most absurd reactions one could get from seeing this.
I saw a man who studied about Ireland in the way it was, dedicated himself to its culture and language, and then found himself in a country where its culture was everywhere, but ignored and taken for granted by its own people. The Irish were so ignorant of their own language that they (not sure what to make of what message the filmmaker was conveying about the Aussie? and Mongolian in the hostel…) didn’t even realize that Yu Ming was speaking it, but this stranger who had such a vested interest in a forgotten culture found his niche among people who still remembered.
But I could be wrong.
Never said I had a problem with the movie.
Irish-Americans are the most ridiculous hyper-patriots on the earth. Yeah, so your great-great-grandfather fled from the potato famine in 1850, so that makes you, a guy born in Kentucky, as Irish as anybody. The way that people in America with even the teensiest bit of Irish blood in them overcompensate with puffed up “Irish pride” is pathetic. It would be funny, too, if people like you weren’t the same ones funding terrorists like the IRA…
I’m not sure whether I should… 
, be 
or :roflmao:
I thought the movie was great though. And when I watched it, I most definitely did :roflmao:
Good movie :bravo:
Yeah, cool movie. It does well to highlight the plight of many languages which are fast becoming extinct. That site has a few other interesting movies too, thanks for the link mordeth.
Gaelic is widely spoken in Wales and Brittany. It’s far from a dead language. There are millions of speakers in those regions. If I recall correctly, about half the population of Wales can speak their dialect of Gaelic with fluency.
Quote:
The way that people in America with even the teensiest bit of Irish blood in them overcompensate with puffed up “Irish pride” is pathetic. It would be funny, too, if people like you weren’t the same ones funding terrorists like the IRA…
What, every single Irish-American is funding the IRA? Maybe you should inform the American government.
Let’s try a few more.
“It’s pathetic how the loyalists in Northern Ireland overcompensate with “British pride”. It would be funny too if people like them weren’t the same ones funding terrorists like the UVF.”
“It’s pathetic how the Moslems in whatever country overcompensate with “Muslim pride”. It would be funny too if people like them weren’t the same ones funding terrorists like al Quaeda.”
“It’s pathetic how the Basques in Spain overcompensate with “Basque pride”. It would be funny too if people like them weren’t the same ones funding terrorists like ETA.”
“It’s pathetic how the Chinese abroad overcompensate with “Chinese pride”. It would be funny too if people like them weren’t the same ones funding terrorists like the PRC Government.”
I don’t think simply because after the trauma of Irish exile the Irish left their American children with an extra cultural dimension that they should be condemned for this. When the English went to America (Canada, India etc.) they went as the conquerors (even if it was only a feeling they had). So today you don’t have English-Americans. The psychology is totally different. But if history had been different perhaps you would have English-Americans acting in a similar way and trying to keep English culture going through say, the medium of French . Maybe you’d be consistent and say that that was equally pathetic. But you’d be having the experience from a different psychological viewpoint. So I suspect not.
Incidentally, though Welsh and Breton are related to Irish they are not Gaelic. The Celtic language family split up into Welsh, Breton and Cornish on the one hand and Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx on the other. At the moment all of these languages are struggling to survive.
Bubba- maybe you misunderstood the point of the film. I think it seemed to be pointing out the sadness (with some wry Irish humour I think) of the situation. But I thought there was a bit off a subtext (if I’m not reading too much into it) Finally, the main character got to the Gaeltacht and made a life for himself there. It seemed to me there was a bit of Irish defiance in the end - if you get my drift. I also liked the idea that a non-European could be an Irish speaker. Seems to me the film was arguing for a non-traditional kind of Irish speaking.
Anyway, there’s no point in being too bitter about the way things are with Irish. It’s as bad as some of those English whinging on about the French and 1066 (perhaps the same people who give the Irish sermons about forgetting the past and not discriminating…). If it helps, there are certain indications that Irish is not going to die out. Like Mark Twain, reports of its death have been exaggerated.
In the 1980s certain “experts” were predicting Irish would be totally dead by the year 2000. Last I heard there are still 100,000 people using it on a daily basis and this number seems to have stabilized at least. People are attending Irish classes in record numbers (yes, I know most of them don’t use it outside the class but at least there seems to be the determination to not let it die). In 1980 the number of Irish immersion secondary schools came to the grand total of three. In 2003 I heard there were 180 (with demand for more). Irish is now recognized in the North and Irish language schools are being built there (talk about winning against the odds). TG4 is up and running and lets not start about Irish classes in other countries ( those damned Irish-Americans, how dare they try to have some culture in their lives? Why don’t they just melt in the pot? 
). Never underestimate Irish stubborness. It has achieved some remarkable results in the past.
The Irish so poor and desperate with zero skills, prosper in America, Canada etc?
Ireland break away from the English Empire in 1921?
Ireland’s economy improve so much in the 1990s?
Irish come back as an everyday language in Ireland?
OK. I finally got round to watching this last night and all I can say is I couldn’t possibly have put it better than Taiwanlight Zone.
Couple of moments I liked in the film:
- When the Chinese guy is doing his De Niro impersonation in front of the mirror.
- When the old guy finally talks to him at the bar (damn near made me cry).
Things I didn’t like:
- When the Chinese guy uses the knife and fork like chopsticks (a bit too stereotypical for my liking).
- When the barman says about the old man speaking Chinese. It’s supposed to be a daft joke I know, but he’d have to be really thick to not recognise the old man was speaking Irish.
All in all, I liked the film and the message. Kudos to the guys who made it. If anything, it made me want to learn more Irish (wasn’t even an option in my N.Irish school. - thanks, Thatcher (or whoever)).