Hacker Cinema
Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom
2003 · Film · short · 14 min
Directed by Daniel O'Hara
Yu Ming is bored of his life in China and decides to go to Ireland. He studies the language, but is dismayed to find that no one understands him when he gets there.
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1 comment on Hacker News
As a native, I have to say that’s an impressive guide to pronunciation. I can’t really argue with any of it except that nobody would mind if you refer to the language as Gaelic.
When I was in school, Irish was taught in a very academic way: the focus was on reading and writing – as opposed to listening or speaking. As a result, most people of my generation don’t actually speak it and only understand a “cúpla focail”. We only learned how to pronounce the words in order to read them correctly (it was only after I left school that I learned that both spelling and the alphabet had been simplified in the mid-twentieth century).
Thankfully, in the decades since then, there’s a lot more emphasis on spoken and colloquial Irish. On Patrick’s Day, I attended a music festival where one stage was all young Irish musicians speaking and performing in Irish, with a lot of the audience understanding what they were saying.
If you have a spare 13 minutes, I’d recommend watching the charming short film, “Yu Ming Is Ainm Dom” about a Chinese man who learns Irish before coming to Ireland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM