Being cautiously optimistic
Our mother language Konkani, whose origins are obscure and are not ascertainable because of paucity of historical materials, has gone through several vicissitudes over the past few centuries. Local and foreign influences have tried to snuff out the life from her. For long, she had to suffer the disgrace of being labelled as a dialect of Marathi. She has been for long neglected by her own children. Driven out of her birth place (perhaps she adopted that place having left her earlier birthplace), she came under throttling influence of Dravidian languages like Kannada and Malayalam. In her native place, she was all but murdered in cold blood by the Portugal missionaries who came to rule the place. It is however an irony that her revival was facilitated by the same rulers who put her on the deathbed. Her pristine (probably Hindu) literature was destroyed and when her revival was facilitated it was only with selfish motives to propagate Christianity. During these turbulent times which extended over two or three centuries, Konkani took deep roots in Karnataka in Kerala whereas in her native place she was mutilated beyond recognition under the influence of the foreign language. Perhaps, Konkani which reached Mangalore and Kochi was unaffected by this obnoxious influence because the language was not yet subjected to it when people fled their native place. Here again, Konkani could not escape mutilation and corruption because of the predominance of the local languages.
Time and again, the Konkani Bhasha Prachar Sabha has exhorted the members of the Konkani speaking community to use Konkani words wherever they are available and not to substitute them with words of the local language which prevail on the tongue. Konkani is an offshoot of Sanskrit and is classified as a Prakrit language and it is easy to go back to the parent language and find a word to communicate without resorting to the corresponding word in the local language. Konkani is not a language on par with English which has enriched itself with words from other languages. Instead of flourishing, Konkani is likely to perish by freely borrowing from other languages. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, Indologist, historian and linguist Jose Gerson da Cunha, himself a a “Catholic Brahmin” who edited and collated the Sahyadri Khanda of Skanda Purana ( he had received a copy of the Sahyadri Khanda from the then Pontiff of Kashi Math, as stated by him in the Preface) has this much to say about the future of our mother language:
It is only an autonomous country that can preserve its language in a state of purity, and it is to its literature or rather to the learned men of that country is confided the task of rendering its forms classic and unalterable. But Goa has for centuries been swayed by foreign rulers who have insisted on making their own language the official language, or the language of the court, withdrawing, at the same time, all encouragement for the cultivation of the native tongue. Under these circumstances it is no wonder that Konkani has been treated with neglect by the very children of the soil, and has, from the absence of a norm to regulate its forms, dwindled into the state of a jargon, or patois. Add to this internal disorganisation the power and vitality of the neighbouring tongues, and one need not be a prophet to foretell that in the course of a century or two, the Konkani language will be encroached upon by the Marathi from the North, and the Kanarese from the South, a movement that has already begun, when Konkani must succumb to the struggle. This has happened before; and it will happen again: for such is the fate of all weak tongues as also of weak peoples.
This was written much before the advent of the Google Era (AG). Much of what has been foreseen by da Cunha had come true even before the Google (BG). Konkani though it survives as a dialect in certain places has transformed beyond recognition and can be described as Pokam fruit (a la the Kokam fruit seen in abundance on the western coast of India), and has become a haphazard mixture of the languages represented by the three letters Portuguese, Kannada and Malayalam/Marathi.
The efforts of Konkani Bhasha Prachar Sabha is aimed at minimizing the encroaching influence of the other languages on Konkani and resurrect the language in its pristine form as far as possible (there is a limit to which one can go back in time and no language can be absolutely free of influence of other languages with which it comes into constant contact). The Sabha is a cautious optimist in this regard. After all, a pessimist is an euphemism for the optimist who is in the know of the facts and the ground realities. Its aims are to strengthen the language and encourage the community to standardize it by careful user and thereby to propagate it. In spite of the recognition the language has received over the past three decades, Konkani continues to be neglected by her own children. The Sabha knows that no change of attitude is possible without a deep mental revolution in the minds of Konkani speaking community and therefore proposes to proceed with a view to bring it about in the foreseeable future. The Sabha knows that the lackadaisical attitude of the Konkani speaking community is the root of the evil that haunts the language. We owe it to our ancestors that the language survived the vicissitudes thrust on her, be it as a dialect. We cannot rest on the glory of the ancestors if we want the language to breath on its own.