The journey that got me here isn’t important, but I’ve signed up for an introductory Irish language class that starts in a week. Because I’m an overachieving nerd, I decided to start digging around the language in advance, which has trapped me in a horrifying maze of words that aren’t spelled at all like they sound. But on the plus side, it has also led me to Now You’re Talking, an early 90s language learning series that I’m completely in love with.
Now You’re Talking was apparently a BBC series tied to a now out-of-print language book. It is, in the nature of all beginner language scenarios, wonderfully surreal. In the first episode, adults walk up to playing children and chilling teens to demand to know how they’re doing; young people lurk around bus stops and bike racks to comment forcefully on the weather. The second episode features a scenario where a couple making out on a couch is constantly interrupted by the girl’s family as an excuse to say the words “brother,” “sister,” and “mother.” The show is narrated by a woman who has to have something to do while she’s explaining language to us, so in the second episode she’s randomly at the gym, walking on a treadmill and telling the viewer about how you ask for someone’s name. Because it’s the early 90s, everyone is in chunky sweaters and windbreakers.
But my favorite regular Now You’re Talking segment is the story of Sean and Deirdre, two people who meet in the show’s town of An Baile Mór. In the first episode, Deirdre’s horoscope tells her “today the cavalry rides in” and that she’s in for some luck. That luck comes in the form of reaching for the same door as Sean, a man with a delightfully 80s haircut and outfit. They try to use the same payphone (a payphone!); given his/our limited language skills at this point, Sean can’t make very much conversation, so he playfully takes her bag and then gives it back to her after her call. Then, because they can’t say much else, after she thanks him for giving back the bag he basically stole in some kind of wordless neg, she starts to walk away, and he can only call after her that it’s a nice day out even though they’re inside (Tá lá breá ann). She looks him up and down before agreeing it is (Tá) and then, desperate to say whatever the viewer will understand, he calls out what I think is him saying that it’s hot (Tá sé te), which is very confusing given that Deirdre is wearing a scarf, and she replies with immense flirtatiousness that it certainly is. The whole thing is wildly pregnant with subtext, but not too much, and it makes the whole interaction incredibly trippy.
In the second episode they meet again, when Deirdre is celebrating her parents’ anniversary and he’s the waiter at their restaurant (reader, I gasped!). Since the second episode is about how to introduce yourself and others, Sean says his name and then everyone stares at each other meaningfully until he walks away, because Deirdre doesn’t have the words to explain how they met. Later, Deirdre introduces her family, which feels like something you’d reserve for someone you’re actually dating and not a guy you talked about the weather with at a payphone. Sean makes small talk with her little brother about his identity, asking “And who’s this?" (Agus cé seo?) and “what’s your name?” (C’ainm atá ort?) the way you would for a kid who I feel like would be much younger than her brother seems to be. (Her brother, it should be noted, appears to be wearing a baseball cap with a radio and headphones fitted in, complete with an antenna.) Deirdre’s dad threateningly informs Sean that Deirdre is his daughter (I’ll be honest here, I have no idea how to spell what he’s saying, but I did understand it!), which causes him to gulp and ask for their order.
When the family leaves the restaurant after the meal, they can’t talk about what occurred in any detail because we don’t know any of those words yet, so they grin and say their goodbyes and remind each other how they’re related. Also, there’s some kind of weird lineup across the street that makes it look like the whole town is watching the interaction. But then Deirdre passes back by the restaurant and Sean bluntly suggests coffee (a word we haven’t learned, but which is easy to sound out), to which she eagerly agrees (Cinntae).
I am on the absolute edge of my seat here. Now You’re Talking’s narrator says the third episode will involve learning about how to say where you live and how to give your phone number, which I hope bodes well for what will surely be an incredibly awkward date given Sean and Deirdre’s limited language skills. Obviously Now You’re Talking isn’t the first show to employ an ongoing narrative to help teach viewers language, but it’s such a good move to get me invested, and the structure of an ongoing meetcute is such a good way to slowly introduce new language concepts.
Apparently there are multiple different dialects in Irish; Now You’re Talking uses the Ulster dialect, but I don’t know which one my class will be in, so there’s a good chance I’m setting myself up to be a version of the assholes who filled the Japanese class I ferociously failed in grad school 20 years ago, where kids far younger than me confidently asserted incorrect things they’d learned from anime while I could barely spell on my own name. Each roughly 20-minute Now You’re Talking episode I’ve watched so far has taken me hours to get through because I keep pausing to try to understand why the spelling sounds the way it does, which I doubt a handful of conversational short classes at a local community center will focus on. I wouldn’t say that it’s taught me Irish yet, but this morning I walked around my apartment muttering “Tá sé fuar” (It’s cold) to myself, which is technically speaking a foreign language! I’m so excited to learn more, and so excited to find out what will happen to Sean and Deirdre next.
