From left: Aurobindo Xavier, President of Lusophone Society of Goa, Ana Salgado coordinator of Diccionary of the Academy and Artur Anselmo, President of The Academy of Sciences of Lisbon.
The Lusophone Society of Goa (LSG), India, has just signed a memorandum of understanding with The Lisbon Academy of Sciences. The memorandum aims to strengthen cooperative relations and exchanges between the two institutions.
One of the first activities defined within the framework of the memorandum is the collection and definition, exclusively by LSG, of the Portuguese vocabulary used daily in Goa. The nomenclature and respective definitions will be included in the new dictionary of the Academy which is already in preparation. This edition aims to be a reference dictionary in the lusophone world, with a view to the overall representation of the Portuguese language, explained Ana Salgado, coordinator of the dictionary.
In the act of signing, which took place at the Academy of Sciences, Academy President Artur Anselmo stressed the importance of Goa to the Academy so much in the past as in the present, stressing that as early as 1911 the eminent Goan Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado was elected corresponding member of the Academy and its member in 1922. Sebastião Dalgado was born in Assagão, Goa, in 1855 and died in Lisbon in 1922 and distinguished himself as a linguist and etymologist in the study of the influence of Portuguese language on the languages of Southeast Asia and is considered one of the pioneers of defense of Konkani language, the vernacular language of Goa.
In turn Aurobindo Xavier, President of Lusophone Society of Goa, expressed in the act of signing the commitment of the society to deepen ties with all lusophone countries and referred to the eminent political and intellectual Portuguese Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha Rivara, elected in 1855 corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, who stood out as a defender of the Konkani language. Cunha Rivara was born in 1809 in Arraiolos and died in 1879 in Évora. He lived in Goa for 22 years, where he held an excellent work on the improvement of administrative services, public education and popular education.
