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Hi Cecil,
My mum has been berating me lately for the way I speak Konkani. Mum has been
in Toronto since April this year and lives with my sister. I see her very
infrequently as she lives quite a distance away. But we make it a point to
talk every few days. Sometimes when I call her nobody answers the phone.
My sister does not have a caller ID and so my mum is unaware that I do phone
her. So when she calls me she gently chides me for not calling her.
Mum loves to talk in Konkani, although all my life we spoke only in English,
at home. Mum was a 'Bombay' girl who studied at the Mount Mary's School in
Bandra. When I tell her 'tuka apoilem' - I don't even know how to say the
word correctly, it's not my fault that we don't have many Goans around here.
I have more Mangalorean friends than Goans and it is not easy to understand
their Koknni so we just speak in English anyway. Mum laughs and tells me
that is not the word to use for phone calls. William is no help either.
His Konkani is a mixture from Karwar, Dharwar and Goa. His dad was from
Karwar, his mum from Dharwar and they lived for over 40 years in Goa but
never lost their Konkanni dialects..
I lived in Goa for only 8 years, during my school/college days, and although
I love languages and spoke Konkani then, I was made fun of by the local
folks for my Kenyan accent, which finally got lost somewhere in Kuwait. .
Thanks for bringing up this topic. Mum will have a laugh when I tell her
about this though I still don't know how to say "I phoned (called) you" in
Konkani.
Judaline Alphonso
Cecil Pinto wrote
> For example yesterday I had phoned a journalist friend of mine a couple of
> times, on his mobile, but got no response. Later in the evening he phones
> me and asks in his accented Konkani, "Tuvem mhaka don favti apoiloi?"
>
> Technically speaking it does translate as "You called me twice" but "apoi"
> is "call" as in call and not as in phone call. The phrase sounds absurd to
> a Konkani speaker.
