New settlers in Goa start to slur inside hours. Now don’t drink neat from the bottle of jejune assumptions. The lurching speech is brought on by waves of Portuguese and Konkani names that froth like an Indo-European raga, unmooring spelling from sound.
Indian travellers in Paris laud themselves for being the busters of ghost letters in euro-sucking model names. They haven’t been haunted by Panaji’s Latin quarter, Fontainhas. In the event you pronounce that as Fountain-haas, you may be thought-about a vacationer haas-been. Goans and people respectful sufficient to be taught, negotiate syllables as they ebb into the throat, crash towards the tooth, and eddy across the cheeks.
A colleague in Panaji, my new posting, laboured to show me. “Break up the phrase,” he mentioned. “First enunciate ‘Fontah’, however with out the ‘h’. Then say ‘iniyesh’. However don’t go away a chasm between the sounds.”
The pronunciation Everest abruptly appeared not more than a sporadically bumpy seat of an Amdavadi auto. “Oh I see! The final half evokes ‘Hitesh’, a standard title in Gujarat,” I mentioned. “You’ll get it proper finally,” he mentioned. Goan politeness is ceremonially wealthy, constructed on the custom of providing condolence to vacationers on the dying of fine sense, which makes them enter shrines in solar hats and seashore shorts.
Goans are additionally sympathetic when vacationers demand instructions to ‘Calanguttay’. Calangute ends with a thumping word rhyming with ‘put’. However Goans will present each the way in which and courtesy: “Hope you could have a guttay in the present day!”
I’m an ex-Amdavadi stumbling on to Goan locations: Caranzalem is Karazalay; Sanvordem is Sawarday; and Chicalim is Chicklay. However I’m steadied by Panaji pavements.
Ahmedabad footpaths, when discovered, are French fries, however in Panaji they’re as broad as full fish thaalis. Auto and cab fares in Panaji are set for the hats-and-shorts class. So native folks stride to markets, associates’ properties, and non secular locations. Most Ponjekars, subsequently, are as lean as a phrase that has undergone liposuction.
While you stroll across the Goa capital, you’ll discover resort-scale buildings bearing names akin to Vivenda de Amar, Vivenda de Akbar and Vivenda de Anthony. In Portuguese, Vivenda means ‘house’. So please don’t saunter into one among these residences to inquire concerning the per-night charges and room service. You may be advised to Fontainhas Off, amiably after all.
Disclaimer
This text is meant to convey a smile to your face. Any connection to occasions and characters in actual life is coincidental.
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