Canarim
Konkani has been known by a variety of names: ''canarim'', ''concanim'', ''gomantaki'', ''bramana'' and ''goani''. It is called ''amchi bhas'' ("our language") by native speakers and ''govi'', or ''Goenchi bhas'', by others. Learned Marathi speakers tend to call it ''gomantaki''. The name ''canarim'' or ''lingua canarim'', which is how Thomas Stephens himself refers to it in the title of his famous grammar, has always been intriguing. It is possible that the term is derived from the Persian word for coast, ''kinara''; if so, it would be means "the language of the coast." The problem is that this term overlaps with Kanarese or Kannada. It is therefore not surprising to find Mariano Saldanha calling absurd the appellation ''lingua canarim'', since the language of Goa, being derived from Sanskrit, has nothing to do with Kannada, which is a Dravidian language. The missionaries, who certainly travelled to Kanara as well, must have realized the infelicity of the term, but, not being philologists, continued to follow the current practice. Thus Stephens speaks of the ''lingua canarim'', and a Portuguese missionary called his work ''Arte Canarina da lingoa do Norte'', referring to the Konkanized Marathi of the northern provinces of Bassein, Bandra, and Bombay. All the authors, however, recognized in Goa two forms of the language: the plebeian, called ''canarim'', and the more regular, used by the educated classes, called ''lingua canarim brámana'' or simply ''brámana de Goa''. Since the latter was the preferred choice of the Europeans (and also of other castes) for writing, sermons and religious purposes, it was this that became the norm for all the grammars, including that of Stephens'. The licence of the Ordinary given to his work refers to it as "''arte da lingua canarin bramana''". For his Purāṇa, Stephens preferred to use Marathi, and gives explicit notice of his choice, even though he also notes that he mixes this with the local "language of the Brahmins" so as to make his work more accessible.M. Saldanha 717-718. He was therefore well aware of the difference between Marathi and what he chose to call ''canarim''.References