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International Cuisine Conference on Traditional Asian Diet Panaji, Goa, September 2-5, 2007 - http://www.indologygoa.in Online Media Partner: http://www.goanet.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mogall Miguelbab, I rejoice at your new-found happiness. But I believe there was really no reason for you to feel unhappy earlier. It was all a result of misunderstanding on your part solely because you gave too much credence to charlatans. Consequently you assumed (or believed the canard) that I am/was against the use of Romi (i.e. Roman script) for writing Konkani. This canard is still being propagated and, I am sorry to say, it is some Catholic priests who are at the root of this. They have even dubbed GULAB magazine as anti-Romi. And, since the source of this information are Catholic priests, other Catholic priests also believe it to be the Gospel Truth. The same goes for the Catholic laity at large; how could they left far behind when a writer of your stature could be misled? But the truth is that, for over a year now, I have been writing in GULAB a page every month on writing Konkani correctly in Romi. The column is entitled Konknni Nitt Boroum-ia. Probably you too believed this canard and have stopped reading GULAB; else you should have known this for a fact. But you are not a fool; you would not believe in a canard unless there was some other corroborative evidence. There was! What has been my stand during all these three years and more? I am against an Amendment to the Official Language Act to include Roman script. Why? Because, given the composition of the Legislative Assembly (current or the last one), at THE VERY BEST it will fail to get the requisite number of votes (therefore, no damage done) or, at WORST, it could end up rescinding the current status of Konkani itself and putting Marathi in its place (a calamity). I have also been busy nailing the lies and half-truths which the vested interests have been propagating for their own ulterior and nefarious motives; and I have done this with VERIFIABLE facts, figures and references. And, since they have labeled themselves as protagonists of Romi, I (being their opponent) was obviously dubbed as antagonist. One of their canards was that the Goa Konkani Akademi did not publish any Konkani books written in Romi and, ipso facto, was anti-Romi; this injustice was also cited as the result of the OLA. I made enquiries and learnt that not a single manuscript in Romi was rejected by the Akademi as NONE WAS EVER SUBMITTED TO IT for assistance in publication, under any of its schemes. Now, you tell me. How can you fault the Akademi in this situation? If these stalwarts were really interested in Romi should they not have motivated writers to submit their manuscripts? I also learnt another fact; a stalwart had undertaken a GKA project to compile an anthology of lyrics of 101 tiatr songs 15 years ago but has not completed it till date. Therefore, the boot was actually on the other foot! The sad fact is that Goans at large have no option but to believe the piffle dished out by clergymen and comedian tiatrists. Contrary to what you have been propagating, the booklet of Orthographic Rules is not a work of collaboration (or working together) of just the three persons you have mentioned which was published by the Goa Konkani Akademi. The Akademi constituted a Committee for the purpose and these three were SOME of the members; the entire Committee is mentioned in the booklet itself. The orthographic rules were arrived at after discussions at several meetings in the Mons. Dalgado Library of GKA. Therefore it would not be proper to call these persons the AUTHORS of the booklet; they all contributed to the outcome. Recently the Dalgado Konkani Akademi conducted workshops for Romi writers. The resource persons were Pundalik Naik for Short Story Writing and Fr. Pratap Naik for Romi Orthography. Didnt it strike you as odd that DKA (which claims that several Romi writers have been denied the Sahitya Akademi award) could not find a single ROMI writer as resource person for either session? That, in spite of both the President and the Secretary of DKA having been members of the Orthographic Rules Committee, neither of them took the responsibility of guiding the participants in the relevant session and had to take the help of a KANNADA script Konkani writer to do the honours? Please ponder over this, if you have not already done so. Borem magun, S. M. Borges Nagdoli, Velim, Salcete. "Miguel Braganza" [EMAIL PROTECTED],wrote: <<Personally, I was never happier for Konkani than when I read that the new Konkani Orthography in Roman script has YOU and Tomazinho Cardoz + Jose Salvador Fernandes working TOGETHER along with the Goa Konkani Akademi.>> S. M. Borges ____________________________________________________________________________________ TV dinner still cooling? Check out "Tonight's Picks" on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- Goanet recommends, and is proud to be associated with, 'Domnic's Goa' - A nostalgic romp through a bygone era. This book is the perfect gift for any Goan, or anyone wanting to understand Goa. Distributed locally by Broadway, near Caculo Island, Panjim & internationally by OtherIndiaBookStore.Com. For trade enquiries contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------------------