the goan I network
PANAJI
Goa has conquered the threat to its linguistic identity in the first decade of the 21st century. Numbers of people who say “Konkani is my mother tongue’ have risen significantly according to demographic analysis of Census data put out by the National Census Organisation some two days ago.
Nearly 2 lakh more people claimed Konkani to be their ‘mother tongue’ in the decade between 2001 and 2011.
But in the case of Marathi, the same period saw a decline of 1.45 lakh Goans who declared it to be their ‘mother tongue’.
Konkanis however declined nation-wide in this decade. The numbers of those registering Konkani as their ‘mother tongue’ across India dropped by 2.32 lakhs in the same 2001-11 period.
These figures were deduced by the Census Organisation of India by comparing the Population Census of 2001 with that of 2011 and the data was released two days ago.
The threat of English wiping out the regional languages expressed by several prominent Goan litterateurs, however, does not reflect in the population census. In 2011, only 7,765 of Goa’s resident population has registered English as their ‘mother tongue.’
A total of 9,64,305 Goans have said Konkani is their ‘mother tongue’ and this data is recorded in the population census figures of 2011. A decade prior, this figure stood at 7,69,888 indicating an increase of 1,94,417.
In 2001, 3.04 lakh people had Marathi as their ‘mother tongue’ but the figure dropped by nearly half to 1,58,787 in 2011.
The phenomenon witnessed among the Marathi-speaking populace in Goa was seen among Konkani-speaking populace in neighbouring Maharashtra. The number of Maharashtrians who claim Konkani to be their ‘mother tongue’ dropped by nearly half in the 2011 census figures as against the number in 2001.
The 2001 census shows Konkanis in Maharashtra at 6,58,259 but declining to 3,99,255 in 2011.
