French and Mandarin...very distant cousins?

Have you read Joseph O’Connor’s polemic on Peig, I can’t remember whether it was in The Secret Life of the Irish Male or An Irishman at Home and Abroad, but quite funny all the same.

There was a programme on the telly years ago suggesting that the original Irish came from Arabia, and that Irish is somehow similar to Arabic. I wish I could get a copy - an interesting programme.