Dear friends, I had asked FN to justify his charge against me by answering the few questions I had posed. He has ignored them entirely and instead asks another longish one which has no bearing on my earlier statements that did not at all refer to the dialect and script of (a) a language taught to children in schools, (b) a language which is accepted as "official" in a State or (c) a language which is used to judge the proficiency of candidates in the language when they sit before an interview panel for a government job. Clearly, he is trying to enlarge the scope of the subject and lead the debate astray - pl. see the subject line! And he is the one who accused ME of injecting "script-and-dialect" politics into the debate which, until his intervention, it was not. But, I am sorry to say, this is the course that many "debaters" on this forum adopt when they want to wriggle out of a situation which they have themselves created. I would therefore ask him one question which I hope FN will answer, at least this time around: Where have I said all that figures in your question? I could also answer his longish question very succinctly: Certainly not! But let me elaborate by considering the following facts, as I understand them. I shall be grateful to anyone who shows that I have been mistaken on any or all of them. I. Language taught in schools: 1. There are hundreds of languages in the world which are taught to school-children; each of these languages is necessarily WRITTEN in some particular script. (2) Each language has several dialects, some of which are quite unintelligible to speakers of that very language. (3) Nowhere is a child taught her language necessarily in her own dialect; for some of them the dialect that is taught happens to be their own, but for the majority, considering the multiplicity of dialects, any dialect that is taught would turn out to be an "imposition". Now, where in the entire world has any literate person (that too someone who does not read that language) successfully or otherwise insisted that his child be instructed by his government in his own dialect and that the same dialect, by implication, be imposed on all the other children? To my mind, the very suggestion would be laughed out of court. How many dialects does Konkani have in Goa itself? Are we to produce schoolbooks in each and every one of the dialects? And, assuming we have done so, imagine a child whose parents are transferred from say Salcete to Bardez when she has just completed the Second standard; which books should this child study? The ones in her own dialect or the ones of the region to which her parents are transferred? I think the demand is senseless, being devoid of any road-map. If I want to have an existing system changed, obviously, I should be prepared with an alternative one. Have these people thought of an alternative dialect? If yes, can they justify its imposition on a majority of children whose dialect it is not? II. Official language: "Official language" is necessarily the WRITTEN language of administration. It concerns the general public only while intercommunicating with the government. These communications are necessarily IN WRITING; i.e. they are written and read. If I do not read the "official" language in any script, why should the script in which it is written matter to me at all? III. Language test at interviews: The interviews are necessarily ORAL, not written; hence script has no place here. Obviously, it is the proficiency in oral communication in the language that is being tested, and not the dialect. If it were the latter, and supposing I were to be sitting on a panel, every candidate would fail because I speak a particular dialect prevalent in the Assolna-Velim-Cuncolim region of Salcete; the dialect that a villager of neighbouring Cavelossim (just across the River Sal, and within shouting distance) speaks being distinctly different, he too will fail! So, could any claim be more ridiculous?
Truth shall prevail! Sotachench zoit zatolem! Mog asum. Sebastian Borges On Sat, 11 Dec 2010 Frederick Noronha <[email protected]> wrote: Just because "a large number of GCs (Goan Catholics) do not read Konkani in any script, does it imply they should have no preference about the dialect and script (i) which is used to teach their children this language in schools (ii) which is accepted as "official" in contemporary Goa (iii) which is used to judge their efficiency in the language when they sit bofore an interview panel for a government job? FN Sebastian Borges
