A lot has been and is being said in English on Goanet about the Konkani language but very little has been done in terms of its promotion. Most Goans born prior to Goa�s liberation and even those born soon after liberation know how to speak Konkani, but what about the present generation? No doubt, education has picked up at a very rapid pace in Goa and it may not be out of place to mention here that most Goans are well off in their respective jobs universally as they are gifted with a good command of English both written and spoken, but that does not mean that we should neglect our mother tongue. I fail to understand why we are so hesitant to embrace our mother tongue! Are we ashamed of it? The present parents hardly make any effort to impart the knowledge of our mother tongue to their children.
Every Indian community speaks their languages at home. A Maharashtrian speaks Marathi; a Keralite speaks Malayalam; a Sikh speaks Punjabi; a Karnatakan � speaks Kannada/Tulu (Christians and Konkannas speak Konkani); to name a few, but we Christian Goans prefer to speak only English at home over Konkani. If Mangaloreans can speak Konkani at home, what prevents us from doing so? We do not only speak a foreign language in our homes but we also restrict children from speaking Konkani. I have witnessed this fact among Goans in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and most recently in Dubai. What is most hurting is that when children gather at a playground to play games, each one of them speaks his/her language except our children - the result: our children learn to speak their languages but cannot impart our language to them because they don�t know how to speak it. While children from other communities act as ambassadors of their languages and promote them, our children demote our language!
It is not only children; even some adults refrain from speaking our mother tongue. I have come across some employees in my Company who hail from Bombay and claim to be Goans but cannot speak Konkani. Obviously, their families back home follow the same pattern; I know this for a fact because I visited them in Bombay. However, their children speak fluent Marathi!
I do have a little good news to our readers. A couple of months ago one of the Goanetters in the US informed me that she was teaching Konkani to her 3-year old granddaughter. Not only that, she wrote to me that whenever she called her family in Goa, her granddaughter spoke Konkani with her great grandmother. This is the type of initiative we need in our homes! If Goans can teach Konkani to their children/grandchildren in the States, why can�t we do so elsewhere and back home?
As we know, it is very easy to mould a child�s mind while young. Given a chance, a child can learn as many languages as he/she is taught. Furthermore, we know that just like education a language is also an asset. So, why are we so afraid to teach Konkani to our children/grandchildren?
So, dear readers, we do have a very serious basic problem � our younger generation has very little or no knowledge of Konkani � which needs to be addressed and looked into seriously. The introduction of Konkani must begin in our homes; we must teach the language to our children/grandchildren right from the beginning but this is not done by many of us; instead, many of us have adopted English as our sole language. If the present Goan parents/grandparents do not teach Konkani to their children/grandchildren, what is the future of our mother tongue? How can we expect our language to prosper if we strangle it in our homes? If our children/grandchildren do not learn the language, how can they identify themselves as Goans? As responsible Goan parents/grandparents/great grandparents it is our duty to pass on the torch of Konkani to our children/grandchildren/great grandchildren so that they in turn pass the batten on to future generations and keep our language alive!
Therefore, I beg one and all to make every effort to teach Konkani to their children/grandchildren/great grandchildren by introducing it in their homes. Long live Konkani!
Moi-mogan, Domnic Fernandes Anjuna/Dhahran, KSA
Vasu Raikar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Speaking of Tiatrs and to boost this good old art that we Goans are thriving up on (that also includes Zatra) we should make Tiatrs available on DVDs just like Rock Concerts and so on. A GOOD SOURCE TO INFLUENCE THE YOUNGER GENERATION WHO HAVE LESS KNOWLEDGE OF KONKANI��
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