Addressing the issues I raised Prof. Teotonio starts by rightly making explicit something that was only implicit in my previous message: that I don't write as an expert but as someone with some experience and knowledge of the issues at hand. I claim no more than what I can deliver. It is fortunate that Prof. Teotonio points to the difference between colonization and colonialism. As he mentions colonialism is a XIX century phenomenum. The problem is that it became fashionable, specially in left-leaning or post-colonial discourses for the masses, to confound the two concepts and to extend the idea of colonialism to the long period of European colonisation. At the same time the concept of colonialism is reserved only to Europeans as if it could not apply to non-European peoples and countries. If we follow Prof. Teotonio's conceptual distinctions we have to conclude that the Portuguese presence in India was mainly a colonization process without colonialist leanings (at least until Salazar's Acto Colonial, an exercise in futility if there was one), a conclusion that will certainly contribute to Prof. Teotonio's aim to look at these issues in a less emotion-charged way, a desire I wholeheartedly share. Likewise, it would make sense to look at recent phenomena of non-European colonial expansion in terms of new colonialisms. It would be useful both to allow us to understand better these phenomena and to put European colonialism into a less emotion-charged perspective (the moment non-Europeans realise that they can also be colonialists they will feel compeled to be less emotional when looking at these issues). All of this means that I fully agree with Prof. Teotonio when he points to marked differences between the Indian colonization of South East Asia and the western colonial domination since the XIX century. On the other hand, the Portuguese presence in India pre-dates the latter phenomenum, that's why its history has to be written through different lenses from those applied to European colonialism. (Needless to say, Prof. Teotonio and the historians that have been working on Portuguese expansion have been dealing with these issues. But I am sure that there's still a lot of work to be done.) My contention is that the distinction between colonization and colonialism should apply to all types of expansion. So we have European, Indian, Chinese, Russian (maybe part of European?), Javanese, etc. colonization. And we have also examples of colonialism for all those polities in recent times. What is unacceptable is to write about European colonialism like if Europeans had done nothing else and like if no-one else was capable of it. The question about non-european creoles is very interesting but I cannot contribute to it... or can I? More on this latter. On what concerns a Portuguese creole in Goa, I am sorry but even without being an expert, and despite the fact that I only lived in Goa for a little less than 4 years, I can confidently say that there is none. Of course, there may be instances of creolisation of the Portuguese used here. But those instances are not enough to lead us to consider that there's a defined Goan portuguese creole unlike in Malaca, Damao or Baticaloa. The portuguese language spoken and writen around the world has plenty of varieties. From the portuguese islands of Açores and Madeira to the many variants existing in Brasil, to those in Angola or Mozambique it is hard to conclude that portuguese has a widely accepted norm. But that does not make the variants into creoles. (Of course, this is all an exercise in attempting to define positions in a continum with normative portuguese - if there is such thing - in an extreme and a well defined creole at the other extreme.) Let me recall a memory that may help in putting things into perspective: Some three years ago I received in my office at Fontainhas one of our countrymen that was on a visit to Goa. We had a long and interesting conversation. He shared with me that he spoke Cap Verdian creole. He had been to Macau, Malaca, Damao, Baticaloa. In all of this places when he attempted to comunicate in portuguese with the local "portuguese" people he was unable to communicate. But if he used Cap Verdian creole understanding would come smoothly. There is nothing like this in Goa (did I say that I've been subject to both Cap Verdian and Damanese creoles?). People in Goa speak portuguese with a different accent, in any case much closer to European portuguese than what is used in Madeira. They employ a vocabulary with slight differences to what is used in Portugal today (a good deal of these differences are due to language changes in Portugal, not to changes in Goa). There are some local particularities but these are just condiments, they are not the "main dish". Now, a lot of Goans that know portuguese avoid using that language with the paclos like myself. Why? They provide two explanations: They don't have practice (fair enough) or they don't know good portuguese. This second point is the most interesting. It's hard to understand why they insist in their poor skills when for a native portuguese they speak no worst than many of his countrymen. My intuition tells me that this is rooted in the colonial past. I have this idea that this is due to three things: Until 61 some portuguese officials (and their wives, let's not underestimate the importance of the female factor) would use accent to reinforce their superiority on the natives; the teachers at the liceu would penalize students for not using a good intonation; Goans of the upper classes and those that had lived in Portugal would try to differentiate themselves from the rest by their "better" portuguese. I tend to think that language was used through these three ways for the purpose of social differentiation and that the scars remained until today. But that a creole makes not. On what concerns Cunha Rivara... my dear Professor, one of the problems with Goa is that local people and historians still relly too much on things written in the XIX century. Nobody in Portugal would read portuguese history through Herculano or Oliveira Martins. The same in France on what concerns a Victor Hugo. These writers are still considered very important... in literary studies, not in history. Hellas, in Goa people still rever writings with 1,5 centuries. Rivara wrote in a context where the concept of creole and creolization was different from today, among other things because it was surrounded by ideologies that we don't share anymore and because linguistic studies evolved a lot. I don't say that Rivara is wrong (I can't since I didn't read him) but I think he should be read with utmost care. About the portuguese attempts to supress konkani, I had no access to the thesis by our common good friend Delio but I have too many doubts about what I read in other authors (Jose Pereira and Olivinho Gomes come to mind). Besides, there's a difference between ostracism and deliberate supression. Just take a look at Spain. For centuries the local languages (galician, catalan, basque, etc.) were ostracised but it was only with Franco that there were deliberate policies directed at erradicating those languages in favour of Castillan. But even the idea of ostracism is highly overrated. Through centuries the church protected and used konkani to the point that the language was used both in spoken and written form, almost an exception if we consider what happened to the languages of the colonised peoples around the world. This is even more outstanding when we take into consideration that most education was imparted by the church, not by the civil authorities. Is this suppression? Is this ostracism? Yes, there were short-lived outbursts of anti-konkani policies. But these were exceptions, they were not the norm. And yes, portuguese was the language enforced for administration but this points at the most to a policy of bilinguism, not to a policy of portuguese monolinguism. I will not detail my serious doubts about all the arguments used in favour of the famous policy of supression of konkani but I stand by what I said: it is just another biased, mis-informed and outdated (the canonisation of XIX century historiography syndrom) "truth" about the portuguese presence in Goa. Yet... what if there is a creole in Goa? I know not konkani but a lot of Goan Christians and Hindus point to me how influenced and changed by portuguese was the konkani spoken in the Old Conquests. What if we could qualify the language spoken by the Christians as a creolised konkani? Maybe when we think about a creole in Goa we should not look at a creole of portuguese but instead at a creole of konkani. This is, of course, only one more of my unfounded ideas since I don't know the language and only work on earsay. Yet... Sergio
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