PANJIM: The unique dialects of Goa’s tribal community will be documented soon. The Konkani department of the Goa University is getting ready to record these unique dialects spoken by different tribal groups in the State as part of its language documentation programme.
The Head of the department, Dr Prakash Parienkar, recently held an unofficial discussion with the Tribal Welfare Minister, Govind Gaude, who has verbally granted his nod for the project. There are four major tribes in Goa – the Gowdas, the Kunbis, the Velips and the Dhangars – who live in small groups in segregated villages’ right from North to South Goa. The tribal community comprises almost 12 per cent of the State’s population. The State’s total tribal population is around 1,49,275, which comprises of 76,327 females and 72,948 male tribes.
Parienkar said the department is keen on working on a language documentation project, where they will be working on documenting the various forms of Konkani dialects spoken in the different parts of Goa.
“As a part of it, we are looking forward to documenting unique dialects of tribal community,” he said adding ‘different tribal group have different ways of speaking Konkani and it is important that people are made aware about it’.
Parienkar said that Minister Gaude has shown a positive response to their unofficial suggestion and has asked them to make a detailed proposal in this regard.
As per the information available from tribal welfare department, the literacy rate among tribal population is around 71 per cent.
