Konkani people

The Konkani people are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group native to the Konkan region of the Indian subcontinent who speak various dialects of the Konkani language. Konkani is the state language of Goa and also spoken by populations in coastal Karnataka, coastal Maharashtra, and Kerala. Other Konkani speakers are found in Gujarat state. A large percentage of Konkani people are bilingual. The word Koṅkaṇa (कोंकण) and, in turn Koṅkaṇi, is derived from (कुङ्कण) or (कुङ्कणु). Different authorities explain etymology of this word differently. Some include: Koṇa (कोण) meaning top of the mountain. Name of aboriginal mother goddess, which is sometimes sanskritised to mean goddess Renuka. Some scholars believe that (कोङ्कण) comes from (कोण) "corner" and (कण) "land". This arises from the legend of Paraśurāma'''s axe, which created a strip of land. This land is normally identified with Gomantaka or Govapuri (गोमन्तक or गोवपुरी), Keralaputra-Deśa (केरलपुत्र देश), Karāvaḷi (करावली ; ಕರಾವಳಿ) or the whole of the Koṅkaṇa coast. It is therefore called Paraśurāma-Sṛṩṭi (परशुराम सृष्टि). Thus the name Konkani, comes from the word , which means the people of Konkan. People of Konkan division In general, in Konkani the masculine form used to address a Konkani speaker is and the feminine form is . The plural form is Konkane or Konkani. In Goa Konkano now refers only to Hindus, and Konkani Catholics do not address themselves as Konkanos as they were banned by the Portuguese from referring to themselves this way. Saraswat Brahmins of Canara refer to the Konkanis as /. This literally means our tongue or people speaking our tongue. Though this is not common amongst the Goans, they normally refer to Konkani as or our language. Sometimes can be used in the Goan context to mean people from my community. Many of the colonial documents mention them as the Concanees, Canarians, Concanies. The then prehistoric region consisting of Modern Goa and some parts of Konkan adjoining Goa were inhabited by the Homo sapiens in Upper paleolithic and Mesolithic phase i.