Konkani phonology

Konkani is a southern Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-European family of languages spoken in the Konkan coastal region of India. It has approximately 3.6 million speakers.

Konkani is the official language of the Indian state of Goa and a minority language in the Konkan Division of Maharashtra state, and the Malabar Coast of Karnataka and Kerala states, where Konkani speakers emigrated during the Bahmani, Maratha, and Portuguese conquests. It is also one of the official languages of India.

This article is restricted to Konkani dialects spoken in the states of Goa, Karnataka, and Kerala, where the largest number of Konkani speakers are found.

Dialects
The Goan standard dialect of Konkani, the Antruz dialect, is based on Goan Hindu Konkani which was originally the speech of the Hindus from the Novas Conquistas, but it is now spoken by Hindus all over Goa with minor variations. It is also spoken by the Christians of the New Conquests who form a small percentage of the Goan Christians. The vast majority of Goan Christians live in areas called the Velhas Conquistas. Their speech varies considerably from the speech of the Goan Hindus. They also speak two considerably different dialects: Bardes Christian dialect, spoken in Bardes and Tiswadi which form the northern part of the Old Conquests and Saxtti Christian dialect, spoken in Sashti and Mormugao which form the southern part of the Old Conquests. However, these two dialects have certain common features which can be referred to as Goan Christian Konkani features. The major Konkani dialects of Karnataka are the Karnataka Saraswat dialect, spoken by the Saraswat Brahmins of the coastal districts of Karnataka, and Karnataka Christian dialect, spoken by Christians in the coastal districts of Karnataka. The Saraswats and Christians of Karnataka also speak considerably different dialects since they came to Karnataka from different parts of Goa and at different times. The Saraswats came from southern Old Conquests (Sashti and Mormugao) in the sixteenth century because of Portuguese religious persecution. The Christians came in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries mainly from Bardes and Tiswadi.

Writings and Scripts
A good number of writings are available in four of the dialects mentioned above: Goa Hindu, Bardes Christian, Canara Christian and Canara Saraswat. The Canara Saraswat dialect includes the speech of the Gaud Saraswats as well as that of the Chitrapur Saraswats as the differences between these two varieties of speech are minor. Sashti Christians generally use the Bardes dialect for writing. The Goan Hindus use the Devanagari script in their writings but the Goan Christians use the Roman script. The Saraswats of Karnataka use the Devanagari script in the North Canara district but the Kannada script in Udupi and South Canara. The Canara Christians use the Kannada script. The Devanagari script has been promulgated as the official script for Konkani in Goa.

Vowel Rounding in Christian Dialects
In the Christian dialects (Bardes Christian and Saxtti Christian), there are fewer vowel phonemes as the vowel a has merged with o. See table below: