Konkani Alphabet & Letters

Konkani, the language of Goa and the Konkan coast, has been written in several scripts, but the official one in Goa is Devanagari, the script it shares with Marathi, Hindi, Nepali and Sanskrit. Letters hang from a horizontal headline, the shirorekha, which joins the letters of a word: कोंकणी, गोंय (Goa). There are no capital and small letters, and the script runs left to right.

Devanagari is an abugida: every consonant already contains a vowel, so क is read with a vowel after it. To write another vowel you add a sign called a matra: का कि की कु कू के कै को कौ. The ि of कि is written before the consonant although it is pronounced after it. The full vowel letters अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ stand where a syllable begins with a vowel, as in उदक (water) and एक (one).

That built-in vowel is one of the things that makes Konkani sound like Konkani: it is often pronounced close to a short o rather than the a of Hindi. You can see it in the Roman spelling many Goans use, where बरें (good) is written borem, कर (do!) is kor and the language itself is Konknni.

Alphabet charts differ in what they count. The Konkani letter set in Unicode's locale data (CLDR), which this page follows, has 14 vowel letters (including ऌ), the signs ं ँ ः, and 34 consonants, from क to ह plus ळ. Charts often add the conjuncts क्ष and ज्ञ at the end; you type them as क + ् + ष and ज + ् + ञ.

Konkani consonants, ळ and the half letters

The consonants are arranged by where they are made in the mouth: क ख ग घ ङ at the back, च छ ज झ ञ at the palate, ट ठ ड ढ ण with the tongue curled back, त थ द ध न at the teeth, प फ ब भ म at the lips, then य र ल व and श ष स ह. Each row runs plain, aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated and nasal, as in Marathi and Hindi.

ळ is the retroflex l, said with the tongue curled back. Konkani uses it in everyday words such as सकाळ (morning) and वेळ (time), as do its neighbours Marathi, Kannada and Malayalam. Roman-script Konkani writes these curled-back sounds with doubled letters: sokall, vell, and nn for ण in Konknni.

The virama (halant) ् removes the built-in vowel so that consonants can join into half letters and conjuncts: म् + ह gives the म्ह of म्हजें (my), स् + त gives स्त. Your font draws the joined shapes; you only type the letters and the virama. The nukta ़, the dot under a letter, is in the Konkani set for a few borrowed sounds, but most Konkani writing does without it.

Konkani nasal vowels, open vowels and punctuation

Konkani is full of nasal vowels, and its spelling marks them with the anusvara ं, the dot above the letter: हांव (I), तूं (you), नांव (name), गोंय (Goa), बरें (good). Roman-script Konkani marks the same nasal vowels with m or n: hanv, tum, nanv, borem. The candrabindu ँ is part of the letter set but rare in Konkani spelling.

The half-moon letters write open vowels: ऍ with its matra ॅ for an open e, like the a of English bat, and ऑ with ॉ for the open o of English words such as कॉलेज (college) and डॉक्टर (doctor). The visarga ः and the avagraha ऽ turn up in words and verses taken from Sanskrit, and ॐ heads prayers.

Konkani prose in Devanagari is punctuated much like Marathi and English, with the full stop, comma, question and exclamation marks and ordinary quotation marks. The danda । and the double danda ॥ belong above all to verse, hymns and bhajans. Numbers are written with Devanagari digits ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ or with 0–9, and prices with the Indian rupee sign ₹.

Konkani script: Devanagari, Romi, Kannada and more

Konkani is one language written in several scripts, depending on where and by whom. Goa's Official Language Act of 1987 made Konkani in Devanagari the state's official language, with Marathi also allowed for official purposes, and Devanagari is the script of Goa's schools and of much printed Konkani literature.

Romi Konkani, Konkani in the Roman script, grew out of Portuguese-era church printing and is still the everyday script of many Goan Catholics: church books, hymns, the popular musical theatre called tiatr, and many song lyrics. It uses plain Latin letters with its own conventions: x for the sh sound (xit, cooked rice: शीत), doubled letters for the curled-back consonants (Konknni), and a final m for a nasal vowel (Dev borem korum, thank you). This is what people usually mean by "Konkani letters in English".

In coastal Karnataka, around Mangaluru, Udupi and Karwar, many Konkani speakers write in the Kannada script, and Konkani newspapers and church texts there use it. Konkani speakers in Kerala have used the Malayalam script, and some Muslim communities of coastal Karnataka have used the Perso-Arabic script. The same sentence can therefore look entirely different in Panaji and in Mangaluru; see the Kannada and Malayalam collections for those letters.

How to type in Konkani on a laptop and phone

Windows: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → Add a language, and choose Konkani; its keyboard is Devanagari – INSCRIPT, the Indian government layout with one key per letter (d is the virama, so k d k gives क्क). A Marathi or Hindi keyboard types exactly the same Unicode letters, so either works if you already have one. Switch layouts with Windows + Space. The English (India) layout gives ₹ with Right Alt + 4.

Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → add a Devanagari layout (listed under Hindi: Devanagari or Devanagari – QWERTY). Phones: Swarachakra, a free keyboard from IIT Bombay, has a Konkani layout built for Devanagari; in Gboard or SwiftKey add Konkani if your version lists it, or Marathi. Hindi transliteration keyboards expect Hindi-style spellings, so typing Romi borem gives बोरेम, not बरें: spell the way the Devanagari is written, or use the letter layout. For Kannada-script Konkani, use a Kannada keyboard.

Use Unicode, which every keyboard above produces, for school assignments, forms and websites, so the text survives copying. For single characters, copy them from the grid above; in HTML the danda is ।, ॥ is ॥ and ₹ is ₹.

Where the Konkani language is spoken

Konkani is the main language of Goa, where it is the official language, and is spoken along the coast to the south and north: in coastal Karnataka (Uttara Kannada, Udupi and Dakshina Kannada around Mangaluru), in the southern Konkan of Maharashtra (Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri) and by long-settled communities in Kerala and Mumbai. Goan and Mangalorean families abroad, notably in the Gulf states, Portugal and the United Kingdom, carry it with them, though younger generations often speak English or Portuguese at home.

Speaker counts are estimates. India's 2011 census recorded about 2.3 million people with Konkani as their mother tongue, and CLDR estimates about 4.5 million users. Recognition came in steps: the Sahitya Akademi accepted Konkani as an independent literary language in 1975, Goa made it official in 1987, and on 31 August 1992 it entered the Eighth Schedule of India's constitution. Language codes treat Konkani as a macrolanguage that includes Goan Konkani; see also the collection Konkani (individual language).

Konkani is an Indo-Aryan language, closest to Marathi, and was long claimed to be a dialect of it, a question that hung over Goa's 1967 Opinion Poll, in which Goans voted against merging with Maharashtra. Centuries beside Kannada and under Portuguese rule left their mark: पाव (bread, Portuguese pão), इगर्ज (church, igreja) and मेज (table, mesa) are everyday Konkani. See also the collections for Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Tulu, Malayalam, Gujarati and Portuguese, and the country page for India 🇮🇳.