Languages won’t survive if they don’t exist on the Internet: Experts

TANVI BAMBOLKAR, PANAJI | 24 January 2016 11:50 IST

Ramarao Wagh at 30th Konkani Parishad (Photo: Antara Bhide)

No language which does not exist on the Internet will survive in the world, predicts Ramdas Karmali, assistant professor of MCA at Goa University.

“Internet is 21st century’s printing press”, he said while speaking at a seminar on “Use of technology to develop Konkani” at the 30th session of All India Konkani Parishad held in Panaji.

The session was chaired by Ramarao Wagh, associate professor of MCA at Goa University.

While analysing usage of Indian languages on the Internet, Karmali also said technology develops with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Chinese are 22% among the Internet users worldwide and 20% among them use Chinese language. On the contrary, he informed that most of the Indians use English as a prime language on the Internet rather than their own regional language.

“This is a threat to India while also a disadvantage since the real feelings cannot be expressed so intensely in a foreign language. We don’t write on the Internet what we feel intensely but what others want to read”, he observed.

The whole session primarily explained the whole audience about the ongoing projects at Goa University as well as World Konkani Centre in Mangalore to reach Konkani on the Internet as well as digitization of Konkani.

Gurudatt Bantwalkar, secretary of the World Konkani Centre, said WKC has digitized 10,000 Konkani books, using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.

Ramdas Karmali at 30th Konkani Parishad (Photo: Antara Bhide)

While WKC has also developed a software to transliterate literature in various Konkani scripts, he said Unicode technology of writing various languages in different scripts can unite the Konkani people worldwide.

Explaining in what way Goa University has developed Konkani Wikipedia, Fr Louis Gomes stressed upon the need to have Goa as a centre for future Wiki projects as only Wikipedia has been developed so far from among the six features of Wiki.  

Dr Jyoti Pawar, another associate professor of MCA at Goa University, explained the progress of the building Konkani corpus through different fields like literature, health, agriculture etc.

“What we need badly is a comprehensive Konkani dictionary online”, she said.

Ramarao Wagh however expressed concern over the future of all the projects the Goa University has taken up.

He feared that funding of most of these projects, financed by ministry of information technology as well as department of IT of Government of India, may stop after its tenure is over.

“Goa government should take responsibility of these projects by continuing its funding otherwise all the efforts would go waste”, he cautioned. 


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Yes I fully agree regarding language on internet so it can developed

- vicentin Rebello, uk | 24 th January 2016 18:38

 

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