SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
Team Herald
LONDON/PANJIM: In March Indians came out on their balconies and applauded the efforts of the frontline novel coronavirus warriors. Later hospitals in Goa were showered with rose petals, but in UK, a railway company thought up a unique means of thanking the COVID warriors that involved the use of 116 languages, one of them being our own Konkani.
In July, the Great Western Railway (GWR) unveiled a special livery for its trains thanking key COVID-19 workers for their efforts during the pandemic.
The design features the ideas of three teenagers from across GWR network, who entered a competition on the railway’s social media channels to design a train livery.
Herald spoke to GWR project communications manager Paul Gentleman who confirmed that there was no Goan child involved in the competition. Yet, the use of Konkani in the Roman script for this project, is of course an indication of just how deep the Goan community has penetrated the British social life.
The livery came about from the ideas of Sam Smith, 13, from Gloucestershire, who suggested the words ‘The nation says thank you’; Sam Moorey, 15, from Newton Abbot, who proposed saying ‘thank you’ in different languages; and Ned Thompson, 16, of Guildford, who crafted the overall design.
The livery now features 109 speech bubbles, using 116 languages from at least 166 countries.
Pictures of the train with the Deu Borem Korum have surfaced on social media sites, with Konkani speakers taking pride in this.
