"A Stranger at My Table...."

[Gilbert Lawrence]

Very recently, at my gym in USA, I met a charming South African.  His grandmother is Goan. His grandfather is French. He recounts meeting people in South Africa who on intimate conversations recount their family tree has a Fernandes or Desouza. 

The appearance of these individuals in now White or African. It is only in their names and accents that I determine some degree of duality.  It is fascinating.

While there is a yearning to identify their individual roots, there is no yearning to socially connect with others with a similar history through an association. The very educated friend of mine just does not know how his grandparent landed in South Africa.

Having written a chapter in our book about the Goan diaspora, there is one community I do not have any information - Goans in South Africa.  If any reader of this post has news about this community, please connect. Thanks.

Regards,

Gilbert Lawrence

Co-author: Insight into Colonial Goa

[Albertina Almeida]

Hi,

If in Goan diaspora you include persons of Goan origin, then there is Desmond D'Sa in South Africa. He however does not know but would love to know, where his family house may be, or any relatives he may have. However, he is too busy with his activism on environmental issues to follow up on his roots.

Albertina

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[Frederick Noronha]

Jeanne Hromnik is based in South Africa. She should know.

The co-author (R Mesthrie) of a book she wrote wrote this paper about Konkni-speakers in South Africa. But these may trace their origin to an area outside of Goa (not the Fernandeses or Desouzas that Gilbert refers too).

Kokni in Cape Town and the Sociolinguistics of Transnationalism

Rajend Mesthrie

,

Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi

 &

Ruta Paradkar

Pages 73-97 | Published online: 12 Feb 2018

• Cite this article
 
• https://doi.org/10.1080/10228195.2017.1387168
 
• CrossMark

 

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ABSTRACT

This article continues the initial documentary work on South African Kokni begun in Mesthrie, Kulkarni-Joshi and Paradkar (2016). The language (known as Konkani in India) has been in existence for over 125 years in South Africa, with Cape Town as its main base. We characterise the extent to which the language is still used and the social circumstances under which this takes place. We highlight historical research on the strong transnational mobility of older speakers in Cape Town and their keen awareness of village roots in India. Our investigations on the Konkan coast of India confirm the strong historical and linguistic links between the area and Cape Town. We present our preliminary findings on the dialect characteristics of the Cape Town variety, mainly in relation to morphological variation, based on our fieldwork of 2016–2017. There is initial support for the hypothesis that significant variation based on villages of origin persists well over a hundred years after the initial migrations. We conclude by addressing some dilemmas concerning language maintenance and shift.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10228195.2017.1387168#:~:text=The%20language%20(known%20as%20Konkani,under%20which%20this%20takes%20place.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10228195.2017.1387168#:~:text=The%20language%20(known%20as%20Konkani,under%20which%20this%20takes%20place.

Here's another article on those folk: 

125 yrs on, Kokni remains intact in South Africa 

https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-125-yrs-on-kokni-remains-intact-in-south-africa-2652492 

Apparently, Konkni means many different things in different parts of the globe. (Today, in Goa, it means, Konkani in the Devanagari script.) FN

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