>From Abril to zonel... there's a lot of Portuguese in Konkani (697 words)
Frederick Noronha f...@goa-india.org Agost (August), amizat (friendship), atak (heart attack) and azulat (bluish eyes). Bafad (choked), bimlam, bord (border) and brut (beast). You can go on with this list, and not stop till you reach some 2000 words in all. And yes, these indeed are Portuguese-origin words which have since entered the Konkani language. Some have made their entry so seamlessly, that even noted Konkani litterateur Pundalik N. Nayak, the other day, voiced his surprise at the way in which these words were thought of as thoroughly local. Retired professor Edward de Lima has just come out with his book tracing the common inheritance of these two languages. Even if calling this a shared inheritance is not a politically correct term today, should such a link be shrugged off merely on grounds of political bitterness, supposed alien-ness, distance or ethnicity? For instance, the Konkani words listed above are actually of Portuguese origin and come from Agosto, amizade, ataque, azulado, abafado, Overrhoa bilimbi, borda, and bruto! This listing in the glossary is both interesting and important, and spans some 35 pages of this large-sized book. Each word is rendered four times -- in Roman Konkani, Devanagari, Portuguese and English. (Incidentally Msgr Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado, 1855-1922, had earlier also authored a book on Portuguese “vocables” in Asian languages – which is now available for free download online, though with some typos that crept in while it was being digitised.) Lima acknowledges that some words, though commonly used by Christians and Roman script writers, may sound unfamiliar to those who are accustomed to write in the Devanagari script. At the end of the book, there's also a listing to show how Portuguese-origin names get rendered in Konkani. Interesting! The first half of the book sets the context. This includes the preface and introduction, and an essay on religion and language. But here the contradictory strands of language in contemporary Goa do emerge. For instance, in the introduction, Fr Mousinho de Ataide labels some Portuguese words in Konkani as tadbhava and others as tatsama. Ataide suggests while the former ought to be kept, “Konkani can do and would be better off” without the latter (p iii). (In its original usage, tadbhava words are borrowed from Sanskrit and changed to fit the phonology of the local language. Tatsama are borrowed but retain their Sanskrit form.) On the other hand, Prof Lima acknowledges that efforts are being made to find a substitute vocabulary for words derived from Portuguese. But, as frankly points out, the Catholic Church has itself produced a liturgy which is “highly Sanskritised, sometimes making it difficult for Christians to articulate as well as comprehend without assistance from the clergy”. So we have provadi (prophet), provachan (sermon), poromeshwar (God Almightly), iodn (sacrifice), iodnik (priest), samskar (sacrament), krist prasad (communion) and prarthanam (prayer). It could be argued that the strength of even languages like English, in part at least, comes from its many borrowings of words from so many other languages. (It has a nice term for them: loanwords.) A quick look at the Wikipedia itself gives a hint of English words taken from all and sundry -- French, Latin, Germanic languages, Greek, Australian Aboriginal, African, Arabic, Czech, Polish, Portuguese, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, or derived from proper names and even some of unknown origins. Lima argues that Konkani needs to be "strengthen(ed)" and standardized to "bring about a synthesis in the existing syntactic differences which exist between the Hindu and Christian speakers". He suggests a "new vocabulary which at times may be borrowed from other sister languages". But if unity and standardization is to come about by disowning the past, we could well be taking further steps towards creating an even more artificial, alien language. While the information conveyed in the glossary makes this definitely a worth-having book, the hang-ups about the past and purity makes such approaches debatable. "Weeding out the alien" is an approach that is itself alien to Goa, and even the rest of diversity-rich India. -- Influence of Portuguese Vocabulary on Konkani Language Edward de Lima Vikram Publications, Limavaddo, Porvorim Pp 74. 2014. Rs 200 ISBN 978-81-920574-6-0 Contact the book's author: delimaedw...@gmail.com