The wider issue here is: Is Goa a monolingual or multilingual space? Everyone pushing for diversity seems to be promoting monolingualism (or, at least that one language is somehow superior). As long as it's the language they themselves favour :-) FN PS: Even the claim about Goans "finally hav(ing) their mother tongue recognised" is a complex and very debatable one, given the realities of script and dialect, and what OLA 1987 actually meant to the Konkani language itself.
On Tuesday 5 December 2023 at 20:04:01 UTC+5:30 John M. de Figueiredo wrote: Not all Goans pursued the English language. Some did, others did not. Some pursued the Portuguese language, others pursued Marathi. English was never the dominant language in Goa before the annexation. It was the colonial language of the rest of India, that’s why it was imposed on the Goans. The switch from Portuguese to English was not an easy pass. It was very traumatic. Entire institutions, both public and private, were closed (private out of necessity). People lost their jobs. Had it not been for the annexation, English would not have been one of the dominant languages in Goa. These are the facts. The rest (such as “Portuguese lost out for very good reasons”) is politics. And it took protests, demonstrations, even deaths for the Goans to finally have their mother tongue (“dudh bhas”) recognized. If this is not forcing and imposition, what is? Certainly it contradicted Jawaharlal Nehru’s promise that “Goa will continue to be an open window to the Portuguese culture”. John -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/98d3daac-8818-413a-ba31-56e5e0838a85n%40googlegroups.com.
