SAVE MY LANGUAGE - GSB Konkani (Amchigele) Dictionary Project - Details

Dear amchigele baa.ndhavaano,

As requested by the moderator of this group, here are a few details on the project:

"Save My Language" is a project that is documenting the GSB Konkani (amchigele) language, as spoken in the 21st century, by the amchigele community in and around Mangalore/Udipi Karnataka. The amchigele language has been changing and adapting over the years. Strong influences from Kannada/Marathi are definitely something that we have to acknowledge. (No the project does not intend to debate whether Marathi is the parent language or Konkani is. This is at best left to historians. Its aim is purely to document the amchigele language as it is today, and document it in devanagri). Every passing generation loses amchigele words, replacing them with corresponding equivalents derived from other languages/surroundings. The present generation tends to use the English language, and the cycle of losing words begins all over again.

The aim is to document the whole language, scientifically and semantically.

To start off, an online Konkani Dictionary has been started, that will be a database of all the amchigele words spoken by the community. This Word List is built up by contributors, who are normal community members (like you and me). Once the words are entered, they are then judiciously validated, ITRANS validated, semantically placed and then added to the main dictionary. The word list is growing rapidly and now has over 1500 amchigele words (and growing). Contributions can be made via the web site.

The project is based on sound linguistics principles. The script used is Devanagari. ITRANS which is an excellent Devanagari tranliteration format is used.

Additional projects running:Due to suggestions from the community (especially from Udyavar Suresh Kamath, a key community contributor) a Kannada script word list is also being created. (Considering that a vast majority are still not very comfortable with Devanagri script). However this is purely for reference only. Devanagri will stay as the main script, throughout the project.

Once the word list is huge enough (circa 10,000), the next step would be to move into semantics and grammar. This would then finally pave the way for organised/standardised amchigele literature.

Ofcourse it is a community project and depends totally on the community word contributions.

Comments/Suggestions are always welcome.

Do feel free to contact us if you need more details or want to contribute to the project. Especially so if your amchigele is above average !!!

URL: www.savemylanguage.org

jai ko.nkaNi !!! jai samaaja !!!

Regards,
Roshan PaiEditor: www.savemylanguage.org

Email: savemylanguage@googlemail.com

PS: It is rather unfortunate that the message in this email could not be conveyed in pure amchigele, and we had to rely on a foreign language. Hence the title 'Save My Language'. !!!