Transcriber: Shihwan Go Reviewer: Hiroko Kawano
For my 28th birthday,
I got a present of a mug cake recipe book.
And for everyone in the audience who's now thinking,
'There is absolutely no way that this girl is 28',
(Laughter)
you're right, you're totally right.
Because it was three years ago.
So I'm 31, okay?
I don't really have time to convince you any further, okay?
So you can either choose to believe me
or be in the majority of bouncers in Ireland.
(Laughter)
And don't. Yeah.
(Laughter)
But for anyone who's unfamiliar with mug cakes,
I have a few pictures.
They're basically just cakes that you make in a mug.
You put them in the microwave, and they take about 30 seconds, okay?
So, obviously, I couldn't wait to make my own mug cake.
And this is how my one turned out.
(Laughter)
And I have an aerial view.
(Laughter)
You could say my mug cake wasn't quite perfect.
Okay.
But by coincidence,
at the same time that I got this mug cake book
and I made this cake,
I was writing a bilingual comedy show,
using English and the Irish language, or Gaelic - as some people may know it.
And I was trying to write something
that would allow people to hear and enjoy the language
in a fun and accessible way.
Because for the majority of Irish people, the Irish language is a second language.
We spend 14 years learning it in school,
and the majority of us like the language and would like to speak it,
but the unfortunate thing
is that only a handful of us ever actually speak it meaningfully
within our everyday lives.
And the reasons why we tend not to speak it
are the same for anyone trying to speak a second language,
whether it's French or German or Japanese.
The reasons that stop us are fear:
fear of making mistakes,
fear of embarrassment
and fear that it's not going to be perfect.
And I've noticed this as I try to promote my comedy,
you know, because people say to me,
'Ah. No. Sure, that's Irish.
I'd have no idea what's going on.
I wouldn't understand anything.'
People assume that I'm a fluent speaker
and that my level of Irish is going to be at an incomprehensible level.
But the thing about it is is my Irish is terrible.
It's terrible.
And I'm actually in the majority.
I'm not a fluent or native speaker.
I'm just someone who learned it in school,
but I've managed to find a way to speak it in my everyday life.
And it's because I'm in the majority
that I have this passion to write bilingual comedy
and share it with other people.
The best thing I ever did to learn Irish
was start playing Gaelic football with an Irish-speaking team.
Because up to that point, I had tried lessons and done different things,
but it was when it was part of a hobby
that it become something natural for me and it just made it easy for me to learn.
And I'll tell you now,
I mean, for anyone who's trying to speak a language
and starts to speak a second language, engage with fluent speakers,
you know, and once you start doing it,
those fears -
the fears of being embarrassed and making mistakes -
those fears become an absolute reality.
(Laughter)
I had no idea what was going on.
(Laughter)
Like up to that point, the only time I'd ever heard Irish,
there'd be a beep before the conversation.
(Laughter)
And the only reason I learned the word 'taobhlíne', which means 'sideline',
is because the sideline was my position for matches.
(Laughter)
And that took me three months to learn
and quite a lot of awkward social conversations
of people trying to explain that to me.
But I think the worst thing about it was
was because it was me trying to communicate in a second language,
I felt I couldn't be myself.
I couldn't express myself how I normally would.
I couldn't use humour,
and I just felt that people - my other teammates -
thought that I was just a bit boring and didn't really have any personality
because I couldn't connect beyond a very simple level.
And anyway, I stuck with it, I continued.
And because it was playing football, it was natural for me.
And after time, it got easier.
My Irish got better,
and to the point that after two years of playing,
I became the captain of the team.
And at this point,
my Irish still was in no way fluent
and I had a huge amount of insecurities about it.
But I just tend to be the person to say yes
and find myself in these situations.
So it was the first game of our season.
It was half time, and we were in the dressing room,
and we were also losing badly.
And I was there as my first day as captain,
and I was really trying my best -
'An déanamh ag marcáil d’imreoir' -
to give a kind of like a serious and motivational talk,
and I was in the dressing room, and I was saying,
'We just have to focus on marking. Okay?
Please mark your player all of the time, and if you see a free player -
it's no one else's responsibility - mark them yourselves.'
And as I was saying this and looking around the dressing room,
I could see everyone was beginning to smirk,
and eventually, everyone burst out laughing.
And immediately, I was really annoyed because I was trying to be serious.
But in a split second, my annoyance turned to absolute embarrassment
because I had no idea why people were laughing.
And I realized that the Irish 'to mark or to defend'
is 'be ag marcáil',
but what I was saying was 'be ag marcaíocht'.
(Laughter)
So some of you already get the joke.
(Laughter)
And for those of you who don't,
what 'be ag marcaíocht' means is 'to ride'.
(Laughter)
And for anyone who doesn't understand,
the connotations of what that is in Ireland,
I was basically encouraging my team to go out to perform quiet an intimate act
(Laughter)
with their counterpart - yes? -
something that would typically be done in a bedroom between two people.
(Laughter)
So you can see me in the dressing room:
'Please, we have to focus on riding.
Ride your player all of the time.
And if you see a free player, it's no one else's responsibility -
ride them yourselves.'
(Laughter) (Applause)
I was embarrassed.
(Laughter)
But I think that example is a good example
because it shows how even if you're speaking to another English speaker,
we have the potential to make mistakes.
If you're not from Ireland
and you don't realize that that's what 'to ride' means here,
you could potentially find yourself in an embarrassing situation.
Just like I think foreign people
don't understand the Irish dating culture -
because I've heard that in America, you start a date with a meal,
whereas in Ireland, you know, we start a date by going out.
We start dancing, we start kissing, and then we make eye contact.
(Laughter)
So language and culture create opportunities for misunderstandings.
Yes?
And I could stand here,
and I could keep telling stories of times when I embarrassed myself,
when I was out of my comfort zone,
when I got heckled by an audience member to correct my grammar.
But I want to come back to the mug cake.
Because this mug cake - it might not be perfect,
but the interesting thing about it is because it turned out like this,
it meant that it gave me the inspiration to write that comedy show
that I was writing at the time.
So it's as if something positive and unexpected
came from the very fact that it wasn't perfect.
So my Irish isn't perfect.
And actually, I think it's a huge amount more than that.
It's become this exciting part of my life that I never thought I would have.
It's continued to challenge me,
and it's meant that I've met amazing new people,
had wonderful experiences
and built my own confidence and resilience
in a way that kind of doing new things just doesn't seem that difficult anymore.
So what I want to say is
if you want to learn a second language -
if it's Irish or French or Japanese -
if you want to make mug cakes or whatever it is,
let's stop worrying about being perfect,
and let's humiliate ourselves.
(Laughter)
Let's embrace the unknown.
Let's make mistakes.
Let's ride each other.
(Laughter)
Because I think the ability to do that
and to learn and develop positive things out of it -
for me, that is perfect.
Thank you.
(Cheers) (Applause)