You are right Jose Lourenço, but I have the following reservations. Loan words are a natural process in the growth of any language. "janota" is a Portuguese word for "dandy"! It depends though where, in which part of Goa, or which religious group (Christian or Hindu) of the common people utilise which loan-words! Salcete and Tiswadi have been influenced most by the Portuguese lexical importantion. The same cannot be said of Bardez and even less of the majority of the New Conquest provinces. Also, the common people are generally influenced by the use of words by the elites, and an exagerated use of foreign words that comes in that way due to some political context could be harmful. Our great Konkani linguist, S.R. Dalgado, says precisely this in his Introduction to his classic Konkani-Portuguese dictionary (Bombaim, 1893). It is a marvellous piece of critical study of Konkani language and I wish all those who wish to discuss language issue seriously on this forum make it a point to read it. At the time of the composition of his dictionary he believes that over 10% of Konkani words in Goa were Portuguese loan-words and that most of them were unnecessary as there were native equivalents. [ Adoptaram-se muitas palavras portuguesas, quando nao faltavam as suas correspondentes vernaculas, ou podiam sem difficuldade ser cunhadas com os proprios elementos" (p. xvii). Let us not attribute all "sanscritization" to Saraswat conspiracy! Dalgado already then admits his preference to utilization of sanscrit words or even Marathi words as a more logical procedure to safeguard the original purity of Konkani language. And when Fr. Vasco do Rego,S.J., initiated the campaign for reform of Konkani liturgy in Goa after 1961, he was not pressurized by the Hindu Saraswats to sancritise liturgical Konkani. Please refer also to my posting about sh and x when you write "Khushalborit" I would prefer to write Khuxalborit", and "soglleank" instead of "soggleank I believe that these small details also help creating greater consciousness and respect for our mother-tongue. Teotonio R. de Souza -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of jose lourenco Sent: quinta-feira, 1 de Janeiro de 2004 12:30 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Goa Research Net Subject: [goa-research-net] Re: [Goanet]Re: Unrevising the actions of the Konkani revisionists I have listened to many persons speaking Konkani, men and women from different backgrounds. There are some fluent speakers who use pure Konkani, with a minimum of 'loanwords' from Portuguese/Marathi/English. Others (Uday Bhembre and Tomazinho Cardozo for example) use words from other languages as they have been integrated in the spoken Konkani over the centuries. It is the latter that are more easily understood and a pleasure to listen to as compared to the former. The former tend to lose out on the speaker-audience connection, and communication which is the purpose of speech, is lost. So the puritan speakers (and by my inference, also the revisionists) are the losers. The looser, informal Konkani that is spoken by the masses is the real mass-language that has and will survive. The 'shuddh' lingua that blooms in lofty literature and flowery discourses is enjoyable to its literary circle, but it is the spoken word that eventually rules and thrives. Changes in vocabulary and infusion of new words takes place out there, through new trends in work, culture and entertainment. I once asked an old Hindu Goan who was watching the Carnival floats go by, his opinion on the revelling. He replied "Janoth, baba, janoth cholta!" I don't know where the word 'janoth' came from, but it is a sensual, exultory word. So here's to our 'janoth' language and its verdant wordscapes in the fields, villages, churches and tavernas of our land. Khushalborit Novem Voros Tumkam soggleank ! ----Jose Lourenco "Teotonio R. de Souza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I also think that we need not re-invent the wheel by trying to list words of Portuguese origin that entered as loan-words into Konknni. An elaborate and scholarly work has already been done by our countryman, Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado and it was published in Baroda ............ ------------------------------------------------------------------- To Subscribe/Unsubscribe from Goa-Research-Net ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Send us a brief self-intro to justify your interest in this "specialized" forum. This should be sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (NOT [EMAIL PROTECTED]) * Leave SUBJECT blank * On first line of the BODY of your message, type: subscribe goa-research-net [EMAIL PROTECTED] or unsubscribe goa-research-net [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------------------------------
