Dear Tejaswini Niranjan,

My apologies for the delay in responding, was offline for much of the day.

Depending on whom you ask, you could get different replies about the script Konkani uses. My understanding is as follows:

Devanagari-script Konkani = Official script in Goa. Prizes are mostly given for books in this script. Konkani studies at the university (BA and MA level, also a few PhDs) are done in this script. One daily newspaper run in this script in Goa.

Roman-script Konkani = widely used in Goa due to historic reasons (the first printing press in Asia was set up here in 1556) from the mid-16th to at least the mid-20th century. Lots of writing in this script. Still used.

Kannada-script Konkani = widely used in Karnataka (also among Karnataka-expats in places like Mumbai). Numerous magazines and newspapers run in this script.

Malayalam-script Konkani = has been used by Konkani speakers in Kerala. Not sure how active now ... as some in Kerala have expressed an interest to shifting over to Devanagari.

Perso-Arabic script Konkani = used by some (smaller) communities along the Karnataka coast. Not sure how widely used currently.

Kindly note that there is also some degree of dialectical variations among the different scripts. So, in my view, automatic machine conversion from one script to another could result in incomprehensible text. But a machine conversion aided by a human knowing more than one script could work.

Frederick Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या ಫ್ರೆದೆರಿಕ್ ನರನ್ಯಾ ഫ്രെദെരിക് നരന്യാ فريدريك نورونيا

--
FN  Land +91-832-240-9490 Cell  +91-982-212-2436 fn@goa-india.org
Goa,1556 titles: http://bit.ly/Goa1556Books2
Links to my books: http://fredericknoronha1.wix.com/fngoaindia 


On 11 March 2013 08:16, Tejaswini Niranjana <teju@cscs.res.in> wrote:
Dear Frederick,
It's nice to see your signature in several Indian languages!

Wanted to know which script Konkani wikipedia is planning to use, Devanagari or Kannada or both? It would be good if you could throw some light on comparative statistics regarding how many Konkani speakers use which script.

Thanks,
Tejaswini

On 11 March 2013 02:37, Frederick FN Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या *فريدريك نورونيا <fredericknoronha@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all:

Konkani Wikipedia [http://bit.ly/14bTwAi] is in its incubation stage. We would like to attempt to scale it up. Can someone point me to the essential messages that need to be translated (into Konkani), as I could try to get help to get those done.

Thanks in advance, FN

Frederick Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या ಫ್ರೆದೆರಿಕ್ ನರನ್ಯಾ ഫ്രെദെരിക് നരന്യാ
فريدريك نورونيا

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--
Tejaswini Niranjana, PhD
Lead Researcher - Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA)
Senior Fellow - Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS)
Visiting Professor - Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)
Visiting Faculty - Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute
of Science (CCS-IISc)

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http://heira.in
www.cscs.res.in

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