L16: Intangible Heritage — Phrases & Idioms (2)

Good morning, everyone! Welcome back. I see some of you have your lists ready — the words and phrases from your family members. Excellent. We will get to those in the discussion segment. Today is Lecture 16, the second part of our exploration of Intangible Heritage through Phrases and Idioms. We built the foundation last week — we looked at the major categories of lexical borrowing from Portuguese into Konkani, with a particular focus on food, household objects, social institutions, and proverbs. Today we go deeper. We are going to look at emotional and psychological dimensions of this language heritage — the phrases that carry attitudes, the idioms that reveal worldviews, and the way the two-language world of Goa shaped Goan identity in ways that go well beyond vocabulary lists. [0–10 minutes: Introduction] Let me begin with a personal story — or rather, a story I have heard many times from older Goans. There are people alive today — especially in Salcete — who grew up in families where Portuguese was the language of the household, particularly in educated Catholic families of the mid-twentieth century. These families read Portuguese newspapers, listened to Portuguese radio, corresponded in Portuguese, and thought of themselves as belonging to a Portuguese cultural world even though they had never been to Portugal and were unmistakably Indian in their daily life. When Goa was liberated in 1961 and Portuguese was suddenly no longer the official language, these families experienced what can only be described as a cultural dislocation. The language of their education, their literature, their professional life — it was overnight made irrelevant in public life. I tell you this not to romanticise the Portuguese period — we have to be clear-eyed about what Portuguese colonial rule meant, including the Inquisition, the cultural suppressions, the social inequalities it perpetuated. But I tell you this because it illustrates something important: language is not just a communication tool. Language is identity. When you take away someone's language, or when you change the status of a language overnight, you do something to the person's sense of self. And understanding that emotional dimension of Goa's linguistic heritage is essential to understanding Goan identity, which we will examine in depth in Unit III. [10–40 minutes: Core Content] Let me structure today's content under three headings: first, the Porkonkani phenomenon — the creative mixing of Portuguese and Konkani in everyday speech; second, idiomatic expressions and what they reveal about Goan social psychology; and third, the names of places and how they carry historical memory. First, the Porkonkani phenomenon. Linguists studying Goa's language situation have given a name to the creolised everyday speech of Catholic Goans of the Old Conquests — particularly in Salcete and Bardez — that mixes Konkani grammar with heavy Portuguese vocabulary. It has been called Porkonkani — a portmanteau of Portuguese and Konkani. It is not a formal language with a standardised form. It is the spontaneous everyday speech of communities that lived for centuries in a world where both languages were present. A sentence in Porkonkani might use Konkani verb forms and particles but fill the nouns and adjectives with Portuguese words. For example: 'Hanv padreacho janellatun poltachi rua distali' — 'I could see the street across from the priest's window.' Hanv is Konkani for I. Padreacho is Konkani case-inflection applied to the Portuguese word padre. Janellatun is the Konkani ablative case marker -tun applied to the Portuguese word janela. Poltachi is a Konkani locative form. Rua is the Portuguese word for street. And distali is the Konkani verb 'to see' in the imperfective past. So you have a sentence where every major noun comes from Portuguese but the grammatical structure is entirely Konkani. This is code-switching of a very deep kind. It is not the casual switching between two languages that bilingual speakers everywhere do. It is something more fundamental — the two languages have been structurally fused into a new hybrid register that belongs entirely to Goa. Now, there is an important social dimension here. Porkonkani is associated specifically with Goan Catholics. Hindu Goans, who were less exposed to Portuguese in formal education and domestic life, have a different Konkani — one with more Sanskrit and Marathi borrowings. So the very act of speaking reveals community membership. A Goan listening to another Goan can often tell within seconds whether that person is from a Catholic village in Salcete or a Hindu village in Ponda, simply from the vocabulary mix. Language became a marker of community identity, and that marker persists today. This has implications for the post-1961 language debates we will discuss in Unit III. When Konkani was being argued over as the potential official language of Goa, one of the internal disputes was: which Konkani? The Romanised Catholic Konkani of Salcete? The Devanagari Hindu Konkani of Ponda and Pernem? The Marathi-influenced Konkani of the New Conquests? These were not just technical linguistic questions — they were political and communal questions about whose identity would be centred. Second — idiomatic expressions and social psychology. Let me give you a selection of Goan Konkani idioms and unpack what they reveal about the social world from which they come. There is an expression — 'Goenkar ani Goem — donn bhinn goll' — The Goan and Goa — two separate rounds. This is a rueful joke about the Goan diaspora — the fact that Goans have historically left Goa in very large numbers. They went to Bombay, to Karachi, to Mozambique, to Portugal itself, to the Gulf. The idiom acknowledges this tendency for departure with a kind of resigned humour. It also captures the ambivalent relationship between Goans and their home — deeply attached, but always willing to leave. There is a phrase — 'Susegad' — often written susegade, from the Portuguese sossegado, meaning calm, relaxed, unhurried. This word has become almost the signature word for Goan character. The susegad attitude is the Goan preference for a slow, comfortable, unhurried pace of life. It has been both celebrated and criticised. Celebrated as a healthy antidote to the frantic pace of modern urban India — the idea that life in Goa is lived at a gentler tempo, that pleasure and sociality matter more than relentless productivity. Criticised as complacency, as resistance to necessary change, as an excuse for inefficiency. But what is fascinating is that susegad is a Portuguese word — sossegado — fully absorbed into Konkani and then used to describe a quintessentially Goan quality. The coloniser's word became the colonised people's badge of cultural pride. That is a remarkable inversion. There is another important concept — depoiment or prova — demonstrating proof, particularly in social contexts. The social culture of the old Goan Catholic communities placed enormous value on prova — on demonstrating your family's standing, your caste background, your communidade membership. Family pride expressed through social occasions — the lavishness of a wedding, the grandeur of a festa meal, the quality of the house — was a form of continuous social communication. There are Konkani phrases that capture this: 'Amchea ghorant prova kelya' — 'In our house, proof was made.' Meaning: we demonstrated our worth. This culture of prova is directly connected to the communidade system we studied last week. In a village where your social standing depended on your gaunkar status, where everyone knew everyone's family background, there was continuous social performance. The Portuguese social framework of honour — honra — with its emphasis on family reputation and visible demonstration of status, fused with the indigenous caste system's emphasis on hereditary social rank to create a very particular Goan Catholic social culture that is both beautiful and, honestly, can be quite stifling. Third — place names. Goa's landscape is covered with Portuguese place names, and each one is a little historical document. Panaji — the capital — comes from Panaji or Ponjim, which is from the Konkani Ponnjê, meaning 'land that does not flood.' The Portuguese wrote it as Pangim and eventually Nova Goa when they moved the capital there from Old Goa in the eighteenth century as the old capital emptied out due to disease. Vasco da Gama — the city named after the great explorer. A Portuguese name given to a new port town, now Goa's largest city. Margao — from the Konkani Mardgaon, meaning great village — Mardgaon is the district headquarters of Salcete and the second largest city. Its name is pre-Portuguese but its Portuguese-era colonial layer is visible in the wide boulevards, the Monte Hill with the Church of the Holy Spirit, the grand old houses of the Latin Quarter. Colva, Benaulim, Cavelossim — these are beach names in Salcete. Colva comes from the Konkani Kolem. Benaulim is from the Konkani Bambolim or a local variant. The Portuguese did not rename most of the villages — they adapted the existing names to their phonology. So a name like Candolim is the Portuguese adaptation of the Konkani Khanda Odem. Calangute is from the Konkani Kolanguttem. These names preserved fragments of the pre-Portuguese landscape. Old Goa — Velha Goa, or the Konkani Goa Velha — the old capital on the Mandovi. Now a small village with extraordinary churches. The Portuguese built their golden capital here and then abandoned it as disease, particularly cholera and malaria, swept through repeatedly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The capital moved to Panaji, and Old Goa slowly became the village it is today — a UNESCO World Heritage Site surrounded by paddy fields. The names of the talukas — Tiswadi from the Konkani for thirty villages; Bardez, possibly from the Konkani bahir des meaning outer land; Salcete from the Portuguese corruption of the Konkani sashti, meaning sixty, as in sixty villages. These administrative names encode the ancient geography of Goan village organisation. [40–55 minutes: Activity and Discussion] Let us hear those family word lists now. Who wants to start? Fatima, what did your grandmother tell you? [Allow student response] Wonderful — camarão for prawn. Absolutely Portuguese — camarão is the Portuguese word. Now used as the standard Konkani word in coastal communities. Your grandmother had no idea it was Portuguese? [Allow response] Exactly. And that is the point. The word has been Goan for so long that its foreign origin is genuinely invisible. Deepak, what about your family? [Allow student response] Interesting — and that is a case where the word has a Konkani competitor. Some families use one, some use the other. That kind of synonymy — where a Portuguese borrowing and a native Konkani word coexist for the same thing — is very common and worth noting. So let me ask the whole class now. The word susegad — that beautiful word for the relaxed Goan pace of life — is a Portuguese borrowing, as we discussed. So let me ask you: is susegad a part of Goan identity, or is it a Portuguese imposition that Goans have mistakenly adopted as their own? I want to hear from someone who thinks it is genuinely Goan identity, and someone who wants to challenge that. [Allow discussion] Good. I think the most honest answer is: it is both. The relaxed pace may well reflect something about the Goan climate, the ecology, the communidade system's relative security. But the word that expresses it — and the specific cultural coding of it as a positive virtue — that has Portuguese origins. The word and the concept have grown together into something that is genuinely Goan. [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] To summarise today: we explored the Porkonkani phenomenon — the deep structural mixing of Portuguese vocabulary into Konkani grammar; idiomatic expressions and what they reveal about Goan social psychology, including susegad, prova, and the diaspora idiom; and the historical memory embedded in Goa's place names. We saw how language is not just a vehicle of communication but a carrier of cultural identity, social values, and historical memory. Your assignment: write a two-paragraph reflection on the word susegad. First paragraph: what does it mean to you personally, and do you think it accurately describes a real Goan quality? Second paragraph: knowing that it comes from the Portuguese word sossegado, does that change how you feel about it? Should Goans continue to use it proudly, or should they replace it with a Konkani-origin equivalent? In our next lecture — Lecture 17 — we move from language to life-cycle rituals. We will examine the Customs of Birth in traditional Goan society. This is rich territory — the rituals that surround the birth of a child in Goan families, Hindu and Catholic, carry layers of ancient practice and Portuguese-era adaptation that are fascinating to unpack. Come with your family stories, because everyone has them. See you next time!