No Béarla, is a four part series in which Manchán Magan attempts to live his life (eat, travel, socialise, find accommodation, shop, etc) through Irish. It is a journey to find out whether the 1.6 million people who claim they can speak Irish in the national census really can and whether one can survive in Ireland today without speaking a word of English....
No Béarla, is a four part series in which Manchán Magan attempts to live his life (eat, travel, socialise, find accommodation, shop, etc) through Irish. It is a journey to find out whether the 1.6 million people who claim they can speak Irish in the national census really can and whether one can survive in Ireland today without speaking a word of English.
In the course of his travels Manchán gets kicked out of bars, served the wrong food, given the wrong directions, the wrong clothes, the wrong haircut. He gets abused, insulted, treated as an imbecile. When his car breaks down he finds he can’t get a mechanic - directory enquiries simply laugh at him. Likewise, he gets jeered at trying to chat up girls in a nightclub in Donegal. On the Shankill rd, he is warned that he’ll end up in hospital if he continues speaking the language. In Galway he tries busking, singing the filthiest, most debauched lyrics he can think of to see if anyone will understand - old ladies smile and tap their feet merrily as he serenades them with filth. In Killarney he stands outside a bank, promising passers-by huge sums of money if they help him rob it, but again no one understands. He may as well be speaking Kling-on.
In short, No Béarla is a thousand mile road trip around Ireland involving a lot of pointing, miming and desperate gesticulation. It casts a cold eye on the state of Ireland’s first official language - watch it and weep, or laugh . . .
