For years I've been telling people that Konkani, the language of my Goan ancestors, valiantly survived potential decimation by Portuguese colonisers. Besides the Inquisition in Goa (1560-1820), during which thousands of Goans fled south, in 1684, Konkani, the native language, was effectively banned in written and spoken forms.

"All available manuscripts were destroyed. It was a crippling blow to the language, which only began to limp back after Portugal experienced a landmark liberal revolution and loosened its grip on Goans via its new Constitution in 1822," writes journalist, Vivek Menezes in an article examining the current 'threatened' state of Konkani. He proudly enumerates how the language began thriving again when the ban was presumably lifted with Eduardo Jose Bruno de Souza launching the first Konkani periodical in 1889 and then publishing the first Konkani novel the next year. His is an extensive piece, but it does not even broach the subject of how a language that was banned from use for at least two centuries managed to evade extinction.

For years, I've been telling people that in Goa, Konkani remained alive and in forbidden circulation because it was spoken discreetly as a kitchen language. How I arrived at this theory, I'm no longer sure. I cannot offer a citation without re-researching the subject. But is it really such an outrageous hypothesis?