New-comer to the Language

It was an interesting conversation I had. We happened to be at a common lunch table at the office canteen and started off by introducing ourselves to ward off boredom. It happens that this individual is from Murudeswar and speaks this language called Navayati. According to my friend, This language, he says, has strong influence of Konkani, Tulu and Marathi. And, as one may have guessed, there is a very small community that speaks this language. It has no script of its own and perhaps banks on from Urdu. He said that his friends/family write to each other in Navayati using the English script also, at times.

The Navayat community came to be, around three hundred years ago when the Arabs/Persians came over to this side of the Vindhyas and blended into the local population. And that's why they were Nava-ayatis (new comers) . I was curious about what brought the Navayatis to India. And the answer was obviously trade. Navayatis were mostly merchants.

I googled away for Navayat and found a few links. But not any information on the vocabulary of the language or its origin or script. From the old pages of a Konkani Culture website, it seems that NavAyati is probably a variation of Konkani, based on the castes or communities of people that speak it (Other variations of konkani are based on the region where it is spoken) That is when it occured to me that his name was Umar and not Kumar as I had first heard.

The Hindu also speaks of a Konkani meeting earlier this year, in which Navayat is mentioned as a language spoken in Bhatkal. Yes, there is also one more picture link with some relevant text.