Dear Tony, Seems you have got me wrong. I certainly did not doubt the sincerity of your intentions. But, considering the state the Konkani language is in, I did not expect an erudite person of your stature to seriously suggest that we should standardize the language before it is used in schools. We have to admit that in today’s world, standardization of a language cannot be imposed from the top; only a Kemal Ataturk could have made such an attempt. Even if a Committee is officially appointed, there is no guarantee that the recommendations will be universally accepted, assuming that the Committee will itself come to a unanimous decision. As matters stand, we cannot even agree to follow a set of orthographic rules! But, if at all it is to succeed, standardization must happen, it must come about, evolve. And this can happen or evolve only through the free and willing participation of speakers of the language belonging to the various groups. For Konkani, the groups are regional, linguistic, caste etc among whom one notices dialectal variations. It would be ideal if writers from each group write in their own dialect and the same is read by writers from all the other dialects. When all are exposed to the lexical and phonetic variations, the writers are likely to use those words/phrases from others' dialects which they find attractive. This process will also throw up a thesaurus of the most popular usage, leading to spontaneous but gradual standardization. Unfortunately for Konkani, this does not happen. And one of the hurdles is the multiplicity of scripts that the language is burdened with. It is essential that the reader gets the nuances of another's dialect with all its phonetic variations. This could be conveyed more effectively by everyone writing in a single Indic script (Devanagari, Kannada etc.) wherein the characters have intrinsic phonetic values, rather than in a script like the Roman, where the phonetic value of a character varies from language to language and even within the same language. But here again, we are bogged down by avoidable controversies. Therefore, if we wait to introduce Konkani in schools until we have standardized the language, we shall never be able to do, it. And this is why I thought you are not serious about that suggestion. One need not know everything about any subject/topic; therefore, ignorance is not a sin. But one need not display that ignorance arrogantly. Survival of the fittest may be a law fit for the jungle, but the modern precept is to provide a level playing field. The English language borrows foreign words, but these are for new things and concepts to express which it does not possess equivalents in its own lexicon; they do not replace or displace already existing ones. This is not the case with borrowings into Konkani; our children do not know the Konkani words for familiar things, but can effortlessly cite English names for the same. This is not enrichment of the Konkani language. Insisting on native words, where such exist, is certainly not Puritanism. Sebastian Borges On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 Tony de Sa <[email protected]> wrote:
WHAT I HAVE TO SAY: Thank you for that very elaborate and erudite reply. As for the Konkani language goes, I am a 'nennar' as far as these intense linguistic studies go. I have sufficient command of the Konkani language to communicate and to go about my business as any other citizen. Since, this is not my area of primary interest I have not delved as deeply as you have in the subject. Also as my prime language of communication is English (I am not saying mother tongue,lest I be thrown in the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth by the BBSM) I have not read Konkani as deeply as you have. If you feel that English has eroded the Konkani linguistic base, then that is the natural process of evolution. Survival of the fittest. Any organism or any entity which is not strong and fit enough to survive will perish. If Konkani has lost to English in some ways it has also gained in another way wherein English words have been adopted by Konkani. Should there be puritanism in languages too? Well you don't have to go to the good book for that one. Just take a good look around you and smell the coffee! Why are you such a doubting Thomas that you should question/ doubt my intentions when I made the comment I did? I am prepared to learn from anybody without fear, favour or prejudice.
