Navhind Times report: >Another myth that was broken by Fr Naik was the >belief that Konkani is a daughter of Sanskrit.
Santosh Helekar wrote: It would be interesting to know what exactly is meant by the above statement. I thought Konkani was derived from one of the Prakrits (early spoken dialects of Sanskrit) and Apabhramsas (regional dialects) in the 10th century A.D.
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Dear Santosh,
I was one of the many present last Friday at XCHR for Dr. Pratap Naik's controversial presentation on 'Myths regarding Konkani'.
Dr. Naik when asked the very same question by an agitated, but obviously very knowledgeable, member of the audience, gave a very technical explanation of his assertion. From what little I understood, to be called a 'daughter' of Sanskrit a language has to fulfill certain criteria of Grammar and Vocabulary which Konkani does not fulfill. So from a pure linguist's point of view Konkani cannot be considered a 'daughter' of Sanskrit. A 'granddaughter' or 'grand niece' maybe but these are not terms used by linguists.
Of course I cannot do full justice to Dr. Naik's very erudite and lengthy answer so it would be best you contact him directly for an explanation.
But I would like to state that it was a very interesting presentation and the Question-Answer session that followed was quite heated, as I am sure will be the debates that will follow on the Goan Internet Forums. What we are forgetting is that Fr. Naik made it very clear that he was speaking from that particular podium purely as a linguist and not as a historian nor as a language activist. The emotional responses from the audience were more activist in nature.
What Dr. Naik seemed to be trying to get across is that we are clouding Konkani with myths to give it some 'superior' appearance. If we just accept the facts we can have a more rational understanding of our mother tongue. That does not mean we love Konkani any less.
Cecil
P.S.
I also suspect that Dr. Naik was purposely very hard hitting in his myths so as to intentionally provoke debate, which is always good. After the dust settles a better understanding of our language might emerge.
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