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Chandrakant Keni, ex-editor of the now defunct Rashtramath and an
influential player in building up arguements or positions in
contemporary Goa, wrote this in the August 2006 issue of Goa Today.
While the first part is true, the second IMHO could be debated:
Goa's association with [the] Portuguese for over four centuries has
given many wonderful words and expressions to our language, which
has enriched our vocabulary and which have been preserved with pride.
We do not find 'lens' (handkerchief) a foreigner or 'mez' (table)
an outsider. Scholars have identified that some 2,500 Portuguese
words have been assimilated by various Indian languages. Naturally,
Konkani's share is the largest, which we will preserve. But we need not
preserve the Portuguese form of the Roman script for writing an
Indian language. Those who are familiar with the Devanagari script
(a script originally adopted by Pandits of Dev Nagar -- Kashi), will
be able to write all languages of the world, as they are pronounced even
without knowing the meaning. The same alphabet can be used to record
a phrase in French, Spanish or Arabic without changing the
pronounciation. But a phrase written in [the] Roman script will be
pronounced differently in different languages.
Incidentally, Goanet recently had a discussion on the Portuguese words
used in Konkani. Wonder if there is a list available somewhere?
Keni's comments come in the backdrop of the Devanagari-versus-Roman
script controversy in Goa. Of course, labelling something as "alien"
or "foreign" is just another of those strategies of exclusion, which
can be questioned. After all, if English is unacceptable because of
its "foreignness" and point of origin (never mind that India aspires
to soon have the largest English-knowing/speaking population in the
world), then so can your trousers, parliamentary democracy,
Christianity, the game of cricket, the cashew, and obviously HIndi
also has no role in being a joint official language of Fiji....
But then, language debates, like religion, are more about emotions,
and less about logic. I was suprised to learn from a Free Software
friend in Belgrade, that the Firefox browser could not be translated
into Serbian primarily because of a dispute over which script should
be used. Apparently, the Rightwingers there are pushing for the
Cyrillic script, while Roman could also be practical... That's life.
FN
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Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org 9822122436 +91-832-240-9490
http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/
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