Fred,
You make good points, frank examples, and are talking of India, Comet is
talking perhaps outside of India, unless the English has also helped him in
the interiors of India or even say at Masjid, Mumbai. Buts as you put it you
have been to Finland and Germany, but at least in Finland you must have been
forced to speak some English, unless you have been quietly studying Finnish.
Yksi kieli ei koskaan riitä.
Perhaps if people run a Mafco stand and only speak in English it may work.
No need to even school the children then. Could get difficult if people come
running up, see the BEST bus coming up the road and yell their orders, Ek
brayilar (hindi), ek broylor (Konknni), eka broilar (marathi), ek brailare
(punjabi), and others may concoct the rest.
I would have been roaming in the Sahyadris for days and perhaps barely made
it out, being exhausted, if I had been able to speak in Marathi with a
kindly woman who at first was totally startled at seeing me, and practically
ran (ti dhavat suttli). She was startled in a different way, when she
realized that I was somehow beginning to speak in her dialect, as the
conversation progressed. Next year my crash course in calligraphy will be
entirely in Japanese and one-on-one with a prof at Chuo Daigaku. I may as
well stick my thumb somewhere if I cannot keep up. All my English vocabulary
will gain not even gain me a bowl of sticky rice.
Basically what I am saying is that Comets reality must be different. Perhaps
he chose it to b such, or it transpired in the way it appears in his
statement. One more thing as the French put it, Language is learnt at the
pillow. But our pillows used to have embroidery in Inglis. II Sweet dreams
mhane II
My Dad—the boy always, the man, the funny man, who studied up to std 4, was
proud that he could read Marathi and Hindi in Devnagiri. Bus signs for sure.
At JJ that memory, resurrected itself after I got pathetic marks in Hindi in
the SSC. Its all a matter of time, what you do with it and the places you
wish to go, in your mind, into the hearts of others and of course physical
places.
So to each his own.
venantius
30
From: Frederick [FN] Noronha *
fredericknoro...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Goanet] Goanet Reader: The price of language
chauvinism:English education in Goa (Nisser Dias)
Viva la difference!
2009/8/11 AF co...@comettele.com
VIVA Goa! I speak NO Portuguese, I speak no HINDI, nor Marathi..French
through SSC
was for the birds; I undertand a little of Konkannim..., but I have gone
places
speaking English.!!
I understand very little Portuguese. I can manage barely passable Hindi.
Despite having studied Marathi for just three years in school, I manage to
read the headlines in the local newspapers when needed. French was all
about
verbs, and wouldn't follow anything if spoken by a native.
I try to understand various dialects of Konkani/Concanim/Konkannim, but
struggle with my daughter's six standard texts.
And, I've not gone places speaking English, but have been staying home
(mostly) since returning here at the age of two! FN
PS: Btw, I also found out that English is as good as Latin, Greek or
Sanskrit (almost) when one visits Germany or parts of Thailand and even
Finland! So where does that leave us?
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FN +91-9822122436 P +91-832-2409490
Konkani adages http://konkani-adages.notlong.com/
Medieval Goa http://medieval-goa.notlong.com/
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