>>In Salcete the words, rand, randi and randul are all used to mean either
>>prostitute or widow. Hence the famous Salcete mando
"Pakle te choddun nu re, te eke rand bhaile."
COMMENT:
You may be using the word rand (randd) in Salcete to mean either prostitute or
widow but we can’t deny the fact that there are two separate Konkani words for
prostitute
and widow e.g., cheddi and randd.
Randd =
a widow, and perhaps a widower too.
In
Konkani, a prostitute is also known as ‘naikinn.’ The Roman Catholic Church in
Goa uses this word instead of 'cheddi.'
Randul (Randdull)
= slang/colloquial for randd, perhaps
not amounting to a woman of ill-repute.
‘Khali bindul, tantun nam tanddull punn
san'na korunk khorxeta randdull’.
I do not know the meaning of
randi, or whether it belongs to Konkani.
The
famous mando line goes thus:
“Paklea tem cheddum nhoi re, ti ek randd bailu,” and not as you wrote: "Pakle
te choddun nu re, te eke rand bhaile.">>Historian Fatima Gracias writes in her
book Women of Goa: "There were four catergories of women who preformed duties
at the temple;
Colvontas, Chedvans, Deulinas and Bandens."
COMMENT:
The plural of ‘colvont/kolvont’ is colvontam/kolvontam and not colvontas; the
plural of ‘cheddum’ is cheddvam and not chedvans; devlina is devlinam and so
on. By the way, what is ‘Bandens?’
>>In Salcete the word Colvont is also used for prostitute very frequently.
COMMENT:
When writer, director, actor John Claro came up with his tiatr “Purtugez
Colvont” most tiatr lovers
were under the impression that he was going to portray a Portuguese prostitute
on the stage but it was not so - it was the story of a singer or kalavont
–‘kala’ means art ‘vont’ means full of – put together ‘kalavont or kolvont,’
which means full of art – an artist – could be a singer, dancer, stage artist.
>>I know don't if I'm making the correct deduction here but "chedvan" could
>>have been corrupted into "chedvi" again to mean prostitute.
And since the word chedvan also means girl, the word chedvi could simply be a
corruption of the word girl. But this is just my own hypotesis
based on phonetic sounds of these words having no bearing to the actual
etymology and could be entirely wrong.
COMMENT:
The Konkani word “cheddi” (not chedvi – I don’t know what it means) is neither
a corrupted word nor Domnic-invented word – it is a word from Konkani
dictionary.
The
words cheddum and cheddo are being used for a girl and a boy
respectively in the Goan Catholic community. But among the Hindu community,
especially among the GSBs, they use the words choli and cholo, and
reserve cheddum and cheddo for young servants/helpers. Better
informed Konkani writers like Felix B da Cruz (Aldona) would provide further
examples and explanations of the terms which seem to be causing confusion among
some people currently.
Moi-mogan,
Domnic
Fernandes
Anjuna,
Goa
Mob:
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