Goa & Gomantak · Western Coastal Strip
Konkani is a Southern Indo-Aryan language, not a dialect of Marathi, and the distinction was argued in scholarship and in court for the better part of a century before it was settled administratively. It became the official language of Goa under the Official Language Act of 1987 — in the Devanagari script, with Marathi also permitted for official purposes — and entered the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution in 1992. It is written in two scripts by two populations. Devanagari carries the official register, school textbooks and most modern literary prose; the Roman script, Romi, carries tiatr, the mando texts, Catholic liturgy and a long periodical tradition. Only the Devanagari script has official status, and campaigns for parity for Romi have been running since the 1987 Act. The dispute is live, is argued in the state's own newspapers, and is best understood as a question about which written tradition the state funds, not about which speech is authentic.
Speech varieties
The New Conquest inland variety that became the base of the standardised literary Devanagari Konkani. That a standard was drawn from an inland Hindu taluk rather than from the far more populous coastal ones is itself part of the script argument.
Speakers: The Ponda taluk and its surroundings
North Goan coastal Konkani, from Bardez and Tiswadi, with a large Portuguese-derived vocabulary in domestic, administrative and culinary use.
Salcete Konkani, the language of the mando texts and of much of the tiatr stage, and the variety most Goan migrants carried to Bombay, East Africa and the Gulf.
The northern fringe around Pernem and across the Terekhol, shading into Malvani and heavily influenced by Marathi.
The southward continuation into the Karwar estuaries and beyond, including the Saraswat and Catholic Konkani carried down the coast by migration from the sixteenth century onwards.
Marathi has a long liturgical and literary presence in the New Conquest temples and in Goan Hindu schooling, and remains a permitted official language. Its role, rather than its existence, is what is disputed.
Indigenous terminology
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Mand मांड | The village's defined open performance ground, with a sacred marker, on which Dhalo, Shigmo and Zagor are performed. It is a jurisdiction as much as a space — who may dance on it is a matter of hereditary right. |
| Khazan खाजन | Tidal floodplain reclaimed from mangrove and estuary behind earthen bunds, farmed for salt-tolerant paddy in one season and fish in the other. |
| Manos मानस | The timber sluice gate set into a khazan bund, opened and shut on the tide. The word covers both the gate and the right to operate it. |
| Comunidade | The village landholding association, called gaunkari before the Portuguese codified it — land owned collectively by descendants of the founding clans, leased annually, with the surplus distributed as a share. Many still exist and still meet. |
| Zon | The annual dividend a gaunkar receives from his comunidade's land revenue. |
| Poder | The village baker, and by extension the man who delivers bread twice daily by bicycle, announcing himself with a rubber-bulb horn. The word is Portuguese in origin and the round is still run in most Goan villages. |
| Render | The toddy tapper, who climbs the palm before dawn, and whose morning delivery of sur determines whether the day's sanna and poi will rise. |
| Sur, urrack and feni | The three stages of the palm and cashew drink — fresh sap, first distillate, and second distillate. Urrack exists only for the two or three months of the cashew season and cannot be bought outside it. |
| Zatra जत्रा | A temple festival with its chariot procession and fair. The Goan zatra calendar and the Catholic feast calendar overlap deliberately in several villages. |
| Matoli माटोली | The canopy hung above the Ganesh Chaturthi idol, from which forest and garden produce is suspended — wild fruit, gourds, tubers and creepers, many of them collected rather than bought. A matoli is read as a record of what a household could still find in the forest that year. |
| Bhatti | The village still where feni is distilled, and the season of its operation. |
| Morod and kumeri | The laterite plateau above the paddy, and the shifting cultivation once practised on it in the ghat taluks before it was restricted. |
| Susegad | From the Portuguese sossegado — quiet, settled. It describes an unhurried disposition, is used by Goans about themselves affectionately and by outsiders as a stereotype about industry, and Goans routinely object to the second use. |
Sayings
| Saying | Literally | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Deu borem korum | God do you good | The ordinary Konkani thank-you, used by everyone regardless of religion. |
| Mog asundi | Let there be love | A sign-off used on the tiatr stage and in Konkani broadcasting, and the closest thing the language has to a public benediction. |
| Konkani amchi mai bhas | Konkani is our mother tongue | The slogan of the language movement that campaigned through the 1970s and 1980s for official status, and the phrase around which that campaign is still remembered. |
| Xitt kodi | Rice and curry | Not a dish but the word for a meal. To ask whether someone has eaten xitt kodi is to ask whether they have eaten at all. |
| Amchem Goem | Our Goa | The possessive formula that recurs in Konkani song, journalism and political speech, and the framing under which the 1967 Opinion Poll against merger with Maharashtra was argued. |
Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Goa & Gomantak. (18)