Thank you. I am busy with Konkanni Bhaxechi Bandavoll and Konkanni Utramdaiz, taking all forms of Konkanni, without calling any one form a dialect or pottbhas or boli, into a dynamic system of soroll, that is a *common* form of Konkanni speech. Once this is available, we could easily come close to a common, not standard or normative, form. Any common form should be dynamic because languages constantly borrow vocabulary and arrange it into speech, tongue or language (= lingua Latin). This dynamic could come into any Konkanverter or Google programme of Konkanni. W R Da Silva
On Wed, Apr 15, 2026 at 7:27 AM John de Figueiredo <[email protected]> wrote: > William, > It is remarkable what you have accomplished. > To your question, “is it worthwhile?” I will quote the famous Portuguese > poet Fernando Pessoa: > “Tudo vale a pena > Quando a alma não é pequena” > (Everything is worthwhile > When the soul is not small) > Just keep going. > John M. de Figueiredo > Sent from my iPhone > > On Apr 14, 2026, at 9:25 PM, William Robert Da Silva <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > It is my opinion that attempting an AI or any other online common model > for writing Konkani first needs an understanding of Konkanni in at least > four different scripts, not beginning in English. For example, the ergative > of Konkanni, although used by all, a majority of speakers and writers are > ignorant of its presence and shape. The transitive, intransitive and > causative in Konkanni is not done properly. vochonk is written as > vochunk, roddonk as roddunk. It is a zaunv form, it is not kor or koroi > form, and its equivalent in English is: intransitive. But ti bori zali, > zavunk. to boro zalo, tem borem zavunk. To uttlo, uttonk, not uttunk. Intr. > in English but za in Konkanni. kor, korunk. koroi, koronvk. These forms in > Romi are not uniformly used by all. There is immense variation, even in FN. > I propose, first agree on a soroll form or common form of Konkanni. Don't > go for bamonn (with Marathi-speaking and writing past elders) form of > Konkanni. It is recent, most recent. But they do have a base Konkanni if > they care for it: Chan'neache rati, maddache savllent etc. Goinchea > mhojea... etc. Monglluranchea xarant ek cheddum dekilam, kazar > mhojelaguim zata mhonnon tannem sangilam etc. > There is a lot to explain, which I have worked out over thirty years of > field research, but I did not come to put it down. The MSS were stolen at > Alvas, Mudubidri and the Lexicon work of 1988-1991 was suppressed by the > promoters. St Aloysius College. And its re-starting was suppressed again by > SAC dtb U. There is a lot to report. Is it worth while? WRDS > > On Wed, Apr 15, 2026 at 1:31 AM John de Figueiredo < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Thank you, Frederick, for this helpful information >> John M. de Figueiredo >> Sent from my iPhone >> >> On Apr 14, 2026, at 12:43 PM, Frederick Noronha < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> Prof John and all, >> >> Google Translate handles Konkani *only **moderately well.* Its >> performance varies widely depending on the dialect, script (Devanagari, >> Roman, Kannada, Malayalam, Perso-Arabic), and sentence complexity. It >> manages simple phrases and everyday communication. But it struggles with >> literary or technical texts. Especially those involving regional idioms or >> culturally specific expressions. It often produces awkward or inaccurate >> results. This could be because of its relatively limited digital corpus for >> Konkani compared to major languages. It’s a helpful starting tool, but not >> fully reliable for precise or complex translation. At the moment, it is >> focussed on Nagari (Devanagari) Konkani, though Romi abilities were also >> promised in the past. See Meet the Goan American who Mangified Google >> Translate in Konkani | Prudent Media Goa >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Mh0VcPD20 >> >> <1.png> >> >> >> Google Translate does not primarily “translate into Romi Konkani” as a >> fully separate linguistic output; rather, what you often see at the bottom >> (Roman script after Devanagari output) is usually generated through what >> they're calling a *transliteration layer*. In simple terms, the system >> first produces the Konkani meaning in Devanagari, and then applies a >> rule-based + statistical mapping that converts those sounds into Latin >> letters based on likely phonetic equivalents (for example, “क” → “ka”, “च” >> → “cha”). This Roman output is therefore closer to a *phonetic rendering >> of the Devanagari text* than a true native Romi Konkani orthography, >> which has its own historical spelling conventions and variations. Because >> of this, the Romi line can look inconsistent or “non-standard,” especially >> with vowels, aspirated consonants, and regional pronunciation differences. >> >> This might make sense to those who are in the tech domain: AI translation >> for Konkani—especially across *multiple scripts (Devanagari, Roman/Romi, >> Kannada)*—is not a single “one-click” system working perfectly >> end-to-end. Instead, most systems combine three components: (1) *neural >> machine translation (NMT)* to convert meaning from source to target >> language, (2) *script normalization*, and (3) *transliteration layers* >> that map sounds into different writing systems. >> >> Techies keep calling Konkani a "*low-resource* (limited training data)" >> data. I suspect much of the text produced over decades and even centuries >> have not been scanned; and if they have been scanned in >> government/taxpayer-funded projects, these have not been adequately shared >> or utilised. Many digitisation projects have been announced in Goa since >> even the 1980s and 1990s, but what's the outcome of this is not exactly >> clear. Systems like Google Translate often rely on broader >> Indian-language models and then approximate output, especially for Roman >> script, which is usually generated via phonetic transliteration rather than >> a native Konkani orthographic model. >> >> Current research-grade systems like *AI4Bharat’s IndicTrans2* (used in >> academic and open-source Indic NLP work) are believed to outperform >> commercial tools for many Indian languages, including Konkani. These have >> trained specifically on multilingual Indic corpora and supposedly handle >> script mapping more consistently. They might lack user interfaces that the >> commercial tools have. Microsoft Translator and Google’s system are >> blaming the limited training data and uneven coverage across scripts for >> their lack of accuracy. >> >> Another interesting tool is Konkanverter.com. It works *quite well for >> basic Romi transliteration*, especially when converting from Devanagari >> or Kannada into Roman script in a consistent, rule-based way. Its strength >> is that it follows a *standardised orthography model*, so outputs are >> fairly predictable and useful for learners or documentation. It is however >> still a *rule-based transliteration engine, not a dialect-aware AI >> system. * So it does not truly “understand” spoken variation or regional >> pronunciation differences. >> >> Konkanverter.com sometimes struggles with *dialectal variation and >> ambiguity in *Goan sub-dialects (Bardez, Saxtti, Antruz) and Catholic vs >> Hindu usage differences. Many Konkani words change pronunciation and vowel >> quality across regions, but Konkanverter generally maps one standard form >> rather than adapting to those shifts. It has been called a *clean script >> converter, not a dialect-sensitive transliteration AI. I*t performs well >> for formal text but only moderately for capturing real-world spoken >> variation. I find it rendering Romi script better than others. >> Please note: I am not a technical person, but have used both *Google >> Translate* and *Konkanverter.com* a fair bit for my own purposes. Those >> who are into this subject could correct the above..... >> >> FN >> >> _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ >> _/ Frederick Noronha फ्रेडरिक नोरोन्या * فريدريك نورونيا >> _/ AUDIO https://archive.org/details/@fredericknoronha >> _/ http://goa1556.in +91-9822122436 784 Saligao Goa >> _/ Goanet :: 30 years of discussions. [email protected] >> _/ http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/ >> _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ >> >> >> On Mon, 13 Apr 2026 at 09:08, John de Figueiredo <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> Konkani is now one of the languages in Google Translate. Congratulations >>> to those who made this possible. Looks like it is available in Devanagari >>> only. I tested a few words and they were fine. With AI it should be easy to >>> include other scripts. >>> John M. de Figueiredo >>> Sent from my iPhone >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to [email protected]. >>> To view this discussion, visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/E11C911D-637A-4358-B3C8-67B9A591A33F%40sbcglobal.net >>> . >>> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Goa-Research-Net" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CA%2Bmqab_8%2BbxxFcai6NNwMNUi75q7fhaYaBh5sv8O9vqzkrT8sw%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CA%2Bmqab_8%2BbxxFcai6NNwMNUi75q7fhaYaBh5sv8O9vqzkrT8sw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Goa-Research-Net" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To view this discussion, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/6BFD9DB8-0B2B-4BBE-A3C6-7FD41F832101%40sbcglobal.net >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/6BFD9DB8-0B2B-4BBE-A3C6-7FD41F832101%40sbcglobal.net?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Goa-Research-Net" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CA%2BvNr4LawEMb95GLNcJGNTX6XAFm_%2ByKw4j_FsmtDzjuOt%3DP7Q%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/CA%2BvNr4LawEMb95GLNcJGNTX6XAFm_%2ByKw4j_FsmtDzjuOt%3DP7Q%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Goa-Research-Net" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/E5CB2E91-EE16-4A44-A48D-858A3B786174%40sbcglobal.net > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/goa-research-net/E5CB2E91-EE16-4A44-A48D-858A3B786174%40sbcglobal.net?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Goa-Research-Net" group. 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