Sindhi ( ; or , ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by more than 30 million people in the Pakistani province of

Sindh Sindh ( ; ; , ; abbr. SD, historically romanized as Sind (caliphal province), Sind or Scinde) is a Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Pakistan. Located in the Geography of Pakistan, southeastern region of the country, Sindh is t ...

, where it has official status, as well as by 1.7 million people in India, where it is a scheduled language without state-level official status. Sindhi is primarily written in the

Perso-Arabic The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left script, right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', ' ...

script in Pakistan, while in India, both the Perso-Arabic script and

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

are used. Sindhi is a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language, and thus related to, but not mutually intelligible with, Saraiki and Punjabi. Sindhi has several regional dialects. The earliest written evidence of modern Sindhi as a language can be found in a translation of the Qur’an into Sindhi dating back to 883 AD. Sindhi was one of the first Indo-Aryan languages to encounter influence from Persian and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

following the Umayyad conquest in 712 AD. A substantial body of Sindhi literature developed during the Medieval period, the most famous of which is the religious and mystic poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai from the 18th century. Modern Sindhi was promoted under British rule beginning in 1843, which led to the current status of the language in independent Pakistan after 1947.

History

Origins

The name "Sindhi" is derived from the

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

''síndhu'', the original name of the

Indus River The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayas, Himalayan river of South Asia, South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in the Western Tibet region of China, flows northw ...

, along whose delta Sindhi is spoken. In the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

(), the primary language of this region was likely the Harappan language, but no records exist indicating when or how that language was replaced by the

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east ...

. Like other languages of the Indo-Aryan family, Sindhi is descended from Old Indo-Aryan (

) via Middle Indo-Aryan (

Pali Pāli (, IAST: pāl̤i) is a Classical languages of India, classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages, Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pali Canon, Pāli Can ...

, secondary Prakrits, and Apabhramsha). 20th century Western scholars such as George Abraham Grierson believed that Sindhi descended specifically from the Vrācaḍa dialect of Apabhramsha (described by Markandeya as being spoken in ''Sindhu-deśa'', corresponding to modern Sindh) but later work has shown this to be unclear. The sound changes that characterise the development of Sindhi from Middle Indo-Aryan are: * Development of implosives from geminate and initial stops (e.g. ''g-'', ''-gg'' > ''ɠ''); this is a highly distinctive sound change in NIA * Shortening of geminates (e.g. MIA ''akkhi'' > Sindhi ''akhi'' "eye") * Voicing of post-nasal consonants (e.g. MIA ''danta'' > Sindhi ''ɗ̣andu'' "tooth") * Debuccalization of intervocalic ''-s-'' > ''-h-'' (shared with Saraiki and some Punjabi varieties) * Intervocalic ''-l-'' > ''-r-'' (likely via intermediate retroflex ''-ḷ-''), ''-ll-'' > ''-l-'', ''-ḍ-'' > ''-ṛ-'' * Fronting of ''r'' from medial clusters to initial (e.g. OIA ''dīrgha'' > Sindhi ''ḍrigho'' "long") Additionally, the following retentions distinguish Sindhi from other New Indo-Aryan languages: * Retention of MIA ''-ṇ-'' * Retention of final short vowels ''-a'', ''-i'', ''-u'', but also insertion of these into loanwords * Retention of long vowels before geminates (more archaic than e.g. Prakrit) * Retention of stop + ''r'' clusters but with retroflexion, e.g. ''tr-'' > ''ṭr-'' * Retention of ''v-''

Early Sindhi (–16th century)

Literary attestation of early Sindhi is sparse. The earliest written evidence of Sindhi as a language can be found in a translation of the Qur’an into Sindhi dating back to 883 A.D. Historically,

Isma'ili Ismailism () is a branch of Shia Islam. The Isma'ili () get their name from their acceptance of Imam Isma'il ibn Jafar as the appointed spiritual successor (Imamate in Nizari doctrine, imām) to Ja'far al-Sadiq, wherein they differ from the ...

religious literature and poetry in India, as old as the 11th century CE, used a language that was closely related to Sindhi and Gujarati; at this point in time, Sindhi was not clearly established as an independent literary language. Much of this work is in the form of '' ginans'' (a kind of devotional hymn). Sindhi was the first Indo-Aryan language to be in close contact with

and Persian following the Umayyad conquest of Sindh in 712 CE. Arabic sources thus do mention the language of Sindh in various instances. The following excerpts are translated from '' The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians'' by Henry Miers Elliot.

Medieval Sindhi (16th–19th centuries)

Medieval Sindhi literature is of a primarily religious genre, comprising a syncretic

Sufi Sufism ( or ) is a mysticism, mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic Tazkiyah, purification, spirituality, ritualism, and Asceticism#Islam, asceticism. Practitioners of Sufism are r ...

and Advaita Vedanta poetry, the latter in the devotional bhakti tradition. The format of this poetry is the '' bayt'', indicating significant influence from Arabic and Persian. The earliest known Sindhi poet of the Sufi tradition is Qazi Qadan (1493–1551). Other early poets were Shah Inat Rizvi ( 1613–1701) and Shah Abdul Karim Bulri (1538–1623). These poets had a mystical bent that profoundly influenced Sindhi poetry for much of this period. Another famous part of Medieval Sindhi literature is a wealth of folktales, adapted and readapted into verse by many bards at various times and possibly much older than their earliest literary attestations. These include romantic epics such as Sassui Punnhun, Sohni Mahiwal, Momal Rano, Noori Jam Tamachi, Lilan Chanesar, and others. The greatest poet of Sindhi was Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689/1690–1752), whose verses were compiled into the Shah Jo Risalo by his followers. While primarily Sufi, his verses also recount traditional Sindhi folktales and aspects of the cultural history of Sindh. The first attested Sindhi translation of the Quran was done by Akhund Azaz Allah Muttalawi (1747–1824) and published in

Gujarat Gujarat () is a States of India, state along the Western India, western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the List of states and union territories ...

in 1870. The first to appear in print was by Muhammad Siddiq in 1867.

British India (1843–1947)

In 1843, the British conquest of Sindh led the region to become part of the Bombay Presidency. Soon after, in 1848, Governor George Clerk established Sindhi as the official language in the province, removing the literary dominance of Persian. Sir Bartle Frere, the then commissioner of Sindh, issued orders on August 29, 1857, advising civil servants in Sindh to pass an examination in Sindhi. He also ordered the use of Sindhi in official documents. In 1868, the Bombay Presidency assigned ''Narayan Jagannath Vaidya'' to replace the

Abjad An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...

used in Sindhi with the '' Khudabadi script''. The script was decreed a standard script by the Bombay Presidency thus inciting anarchy in the

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

majority region. A powerful unrest followed, after which Twelve

Martial Law Martial law is the replacement of civilian government by military rule and the suspension of civilian legal processes for military powers. Martial law can continue for a specified amount of time, or indefinitely, and standard civil liberties ...

s were imposed by the British authorities. The granting of official status of Sindhi along with script reforms ushered in the development of modern Sindhi literature. The first printed works in Sindhi were produced at the Muhammadi Press in

Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...

beginning in 1867. These included Islamic stories set in verse by Muhammad Hashim Thattvi, one of the renowned religious scholars of Sindh.

Independent Pakistan and India (1947–)

The

Partition of India The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Dominion of India, Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Paki ...

in 1947 resulted in most Sindhi speakers ending up in the new state of

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

, commencing a push to establish a strong sub-national linguistic identity for Sindhi. This manifested in resistance to the imposition of

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

and eventually Sindhi nationalism in the 1980s. The language and literary style of contemporary Sindhi writings in Pakistan and India were noticeably diverging by the late 20th century; authors from the former country were borrowing extensively from Urdu, while those from the latter were highly influenced by Hindi.

Geographical distribution

Sindhi is the official language of the Pakistani province of

and one of the scheduled languages of India, where it does not have any state-level status. Prior to the inception of Pakistan, Sindhi was the national language of Sindh. Sindhi is additionally spoken by many members of the Sindhi diaspora, particularly in

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

Oman Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline ...

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

, UAE, USA and UK.

Pakistan

In Pakistan, Sindhi is the first language of 34.40 million people, or % of the country's population as of the 2023 census. 33.46 million of these are found in

, where they account for % of the total population of the province. There are 0.55 million speakers in the province of Balochistan, especially in the Kacchi Plain. The Pakistan Sindh Assembly has ordered compulsory teaching of the Sindhi language in all private schools in Sindh. According to the Sindh Private Educational Institutions Form B (Regulations and Control) 2005 Rules, "All educational institutions are required to teach children the Sindhi language. Sindh Education and Literacy Minister, Syed Sardar Ali Shah, and Secretary of School Education, Qazi Shahid Pervaiz, have ordered the employment of Sindhi teachers in all private schools in Sindh so that this language can be easily and widely taught. Sindhi is taught in all provincial private schools that follow the Matric system and not the ones that follow the Cambridge system. At the occasion of 'Mother Language Day' in 2023, the Sindh Assembly under Culture minister Sardar Ali Shah, passed a unanimous resolution to extend the use of

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

to primary level and increase the status of Sindhi as a

national language '' '' A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection— de facto or de jure—with a nation. The term is applied quite differently in various contexts. One or more languages spoken as first languag ...

. There are many Sindhi language television channels broadcasting in Pakistan such as Time News, KTN, Sindh TV, Awaz Television Network, Mehran TV, and Dharti TV.

India

The Indian Government has legislated Sindhi as a scheduled language in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, making it an option for education. Despite lacking any state-level status, Sindhi is still a prominent minority language in the Indian states of

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; Literal translation, lit. 'Land of Kings') is a States and union territories of India, state in northwestern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the List of states and union territories of ...

and

Maharashtra Maharashtra () is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to th ...

. In India, Sindhi mother tongue speakers were distributed in the following states:

Sindhi diaspora

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

, and

(where Sindhi has no official status), ethnics Sindhis are largely shifting to English as their first language, excepting some monolingual first-generation immigrants and second-generation speakers who use Sindhi at home. Codeswitching of varying degrees is observed in some speakers, usually with English but also with Malay and Indonesian. Similar shift to English is found in the smaller

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

Sindhi community.

Sindhi speakers by country

Dialects

Sindhi has many dialects, and forms a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

at some places with neighboring languages such as Saraiki to the north and Gujarati to the south, but not with Marwari to the east. Some of the documented dialects of Sindhi are: * Vicholi: The prestige dialect spoken around

Hyderabad Hyderabad is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part of Southern India. With an average altitude of , much ...

and central Sindh (the ''Vicholo'' region), on which the literary standard is based. * Uttaradi: The dialect of northern Sindh (''Uttaru'', meaning "north"), with minor differences in Larkana, Shikarpur and in parts of

Sukkur Sukkur is a city in the Pakistani province of Sindh along the western bank of the Indus River, directly across from the historic city of Rohri. Sukkur is the List of cities in Sindh by population, third largest city in Sindh after Karachi and H ...

and Kandiaro. * Lari: The dialect of southern Sindh (''Lāṛu'') spoken around areas like

Karachi Karachi is the capital city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Sindh, Pakistan. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, largest city in Pakistan and 12th List of largest cities, largest in the world, with a popul ...

, Thatta, Sujawal, Tando Muhammad Khan and Badin districts. * Siroli (also Siraiki, Ubheji): The dialect of northernmost Sindh (''Siro'', meaning "head"). Spoken in smaller number all over Sindh but mainly in Jacobabad and Kashmore districts, it may be transitional with the

Saraiki language Saraiki ( ', ; also spelt Siraiki, or Seraiki) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group. "The existence of Lahnda as a separate language has long been recognised under various names such as Jatki, Multani, Hindki or Hindko and Western Pan ...

of South Punjab and has variously been treated either as a dialect of Saraiki or as a dialect of Sindhi. * Lasi: The dialect of Lasbela, Hub and Gwadar districts in Balochistan, closely related to Lari and Vicholi, and in contact with Balochi. * Firaqi: The dialect of the Kachhi plains the north eastern districts of Balochistan, where it is referred to as Firaqi Sindhi or commonly just Sindhi. * Thareli (also Tharechi): Spoken in the northeastern Thar desert of Sindh, but mainly spoken in the western part of Jaisalmer district of

, India by many Sindhi Muslims. * Sindhi Bhili: Spoken in Sindh by the Sindhi Meghwars and Bhils. Furthermore, Kutchi and Jadgali are sometimes classified as dialects of Sindhi rather than independent languages.

Phonology

Sindhi has a relatively large inventory of both consonants and vowels compared to other Indo-Aryan languages. Sindhi has 46

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

s and 10

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s. The consonant to vowel ratio is around average for the world's languages at 2.8. All

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

s, nasals, the

retroflex flap The voiced retroflex flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a letter ''r'' with tail, and the equivalent X-SAMPA ...

, and the lateral approximant /l/ have aspirated or

breathy voice Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like s ...

d counterparts. The language also features four implosives.

Consonants

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Affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

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Fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

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Approximant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do prod ...

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Vowels

The vowels are modal length and short . Consonants following short vowels are lengthened: 'leaf' vs. 'worn'.

Grammar

Nouns

Sindhi nouns distinguish two genders (masculine and feminine), two

numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

(singular and plural), and five cases (nominative, vocative, oblique, ablative, and locative). This is a similar paradigm to Punjabi. Almost all Sindhi noun stems end in a vowel, except for some recent loanwords. The declension of a noun in Sindhi is largely determined from its grammatical gender and the final vowel (or if there is no final vowel). Generally, ''-o'' stems are masculine and ''-a'' stems are feminine, but the other final vowels can belong to either gender. The different paradigms are listed below with examples. The ablative and locative cases are used with only some lexemes in the singular number and hence not listed, but predictably take the suffixes ''-ā̃'' / ''-aū̃'' / ''-ū̃'' () and ''-i'' (). A few nouns representing familial relations take irregular declensions with an extension in ''-r-'' in the plural. These are the masculine nouns ''bhāu'' "brother", ''pīu'' "father", and the feminine nouns ''dhīa'' "daughter", ''nū̃hã'' "daughter-in-law", ''bheṇa'' "sister", ''māu'' "mother", and ''joi'' "wife".

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Sindhi has first and second-person

personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it''). Personal pronouns may also take different f ...

s as well as several types of third-person proximal and distal

demonstrative Demonstratives (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic, their meaning ...

s. These decline in the nominative and oblique cases. The genitive is a special form for the first and second-person singular, but formed as usual with the oblique and case marker جو ''jo'' for the rest. The personal pronouns are listed to the right. The third-person pronouns are listed below. Besides the unmarked demonstratives, there are also "specific" and "present" demonstratives. In the nominative singular, the demonstratives are marked for gender. Some other pronouns which decline identically to ''ko'' "someone" are ''har-ko'' "everyone", ''sabh-ko'' "all of them", ''je-ko'' "whoever" (relative), and ''te-ko'' "that one" (correlative).

Numerals

Postpositions

Most nominal relations (e.g. the semantic role of a nominal as an argument to a verb) are indicated using postpositions, which follow a noun in the oblique case. The subject of the verb takes the bare oblique case, while the object may be in nominative case or in oblique case and followed by the

accusative case In grammar, the accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "he ...

marker کي ''khe''. The postpositions are divided into case markers, which directly follow the noun, and complex postpositions, which combine with a case marker (usually the genitive جو ''jo'').

Case markers

The case markers are listed below. The postpositions with the suffix ''-o'' decline in gender and number to agree with their governor, e.g. ''chokiro j-o pīu'' "the boy's father" but ''chokiro j-ī māu'' "the boy's mother". There are several

ablative case In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages. It is used to indicate motion away from something, make ...

markers formed from the spatial postpositions and the ablative ending ''-ā̃''. These indicate complex motion such as "from inside of". Finally, some case markers are found in medieval Sindhi literature and/or modern poetic Sindhi, and otherwise not used in standard speech.

Complex postpositions

The complex postpositions are formed with a case marker, usually the genitive but sometimes the ablative. Many are listed below.

Vocabulary

According to historian Nabi Bux Baloch, most Sindhi vocabulary is from ancient

. However, owing to the influence of the Persian language over the subcontinent, Sindhi has adapted many words from Persian and Arabic. It has also borrowed from English and Hindustani. Today, Sindhi in Pakistan is slightly influenced by

, with more borrowed Perso-Arabic elements, while Sindhi in India is influenced by Hindi, with more borrowed tatsam Sanskrit elements.

Writing systems

Sindhis in Pakistan use a version of the

Perso-Arabic script The Persian alphabet (), also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left script, right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with four additional letters: (the sounds 'g', 'zh', ' ...

with new letters adapted to Sindhi phonology, while in India a greater variety of scripts are in use, including

, Khudabadi, Khojki, and Gurmukhi. Perso-Arabic for Sindhi was also made digitally accessible relatively earlier. The earliest attested records in Sindhi are from the 15th century. Before the standardisation of Sindhi orthography, numerous forms of

and Laṇḍā scripts were used for trading. For literary and religious purposes, a

developed by Abul-Hasan as-Sindi and Gurmukhi (a subset of Laṇḍā) were used. Another two scripts, Khudabadi and Shikarpuri, were reforms of the Landa script. During British rule in the late 19th century, the Perso-Arabic script was decreed standard over Devanagari.

Perso-Arabic script

During the

British Raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

, a variant of the Persian alphabet was adopted for Sindhi in the 19th century. The script is used in Pakistan and India today. It has a total of 52 letters, augmenting the Persian with digraphs and eighteen new letters () for sounds particular to Sindhi and other Indo-Aryan languages. Some letters that are distinguished in Arabic or Persian are homophones in Sindhi. Below table presents Sindhi Perso-Arabic alphabet. Letters shaded in yellow are solely used in writing of loanwords, and the phoneme they represent are also represented by other letters in the alphabet. Letters and digraphs shaded in green aren't usually considered as part of the base alphabet. They are either commonly used digraphs representing aspirated consonants, or are ligatures serving a grammatical function. These ligatures include the , which is pronounced as �ĩ̯and represents ''and'', and the , which is pronounced as ẽand it creates a locative relationship between words. The orthography of the letter ''hāʾ'' in Sindhi, especially as it comes to typing as opposed to handwriting, has been a source of confusion for many. Especially because whereas in

and Persian, there exists one single letter for ''hāʾ'', in

, the letter has diverged into two distinct variants: '' gol he'' ("round he") and ''do-cašmi he'' ("two-eyed he"). The former is written is written round and zigzagged as "", and can impart the "h" () sound anywhere in a word, or the long "a" or the "e" vowels ( or ) at the end of a word. The latter is written in Arabic Naskh style (as a loop) () , in order to be used in digraphs and to create the aspirate consonants. For most aspirated consonants, Sindhi relies on unique letters as opposed to the Urdu practice of digraphs. However, this doesn't apply to all aspirated consonants. Some are still written as digraphs. The letter ''hāʾ'' is also used in Sindhi to represent the sound in native Sindhi words, in Arabic and Persian loanwords, and to represent vowels ( or ) at the end of the word. The notations and conventions in Sindhi are different from either Persian or Arabic and from Urdu. Given the variety of the types of ''hāʾ'' across these languages for which

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

characters have been designed, in order for the letters to be displayed correctly when typing, a correct and consistent convention needs to be followed. The following table will present these in detail. The punctuation of Sindhi Perso-Arabic script differs slightly from that of

, Persian, and

. Namely, instead of using the typical ''inverted comma'' ( U+060C">:wiktionary:،">U+060C/nowiki>) common in these mentioned alphabet, a ''reversed comma'' ( U+2E41">:wiktionary: ⹁">U+2E41/nowiki>) is used. Although many documents do indeed incorrectly use Urdu punctuations. Sindhi alphabet

Devanagari script

In India, the Devanagari script is also used to write Sindhi. A modern version was introduced by the government of India in 1948; however, it did not gain full acceptance, so both the Sindhi-Arabic and Devanagari scripts are used. In India, a person may write a Sindhi language paper for a Civil Services Examination in either script. Devanagari was seen as the most practical option for Sindhi language in India.

Diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

al bars below the letter are used to mark implosive consonants, and dots called '' nukta'' are used to form other additional consonants.

Laṇḍā scripts

Laṇḍā-based scripts, such as Gurmukhi, Khojki, and the Khudabadi script were used historically to write Sindhi.

Khudabadi

The Khudabadi alphabet was invented in 1550 CE, and was used alongside other scripts by the Hindu community until the colonial era, where the sole usage of the Arabic script for official purposes was legislated. The script continued to be used on a smaller scale by the trader community until the

in 1947.

Khojki

Khojki was employed primarily to record Muslim Shia Ismaili religious literature, as well as literature for a few secret Shia Muslim sects.

Gurmukhi

The Gurmukhi script was also used to write Sindhi, mainly in India by Hindus.

Roman Sindhi

The Sindhi-Roman script or Roman-Sindhi script is the contemporary Sindhi script usually used by the Sindhis when texting messages on their mobile phones.

Advocacy

In 1972, an bill was passed by the provincial assembly of Sindh which saw Sindhi, given official status thus becoming the first provincial language in

to have its own official status. * Sindhi language was made the official language of

according to Language Bill. * All Educational institutes in Sindh are mandated to teach Sindhi as per the bill.

Software

By 2001, Abdul-Majid Bhurgri had coordinated with Microsoft to develop Unicode-based Software in the form of the

Sindhi script which afterwards became the basis for the communicated use by Sindhi speakers around the world. In 2016, Google introduced the first automated translator for Sindhi language. Later on in 2023 an offline support was introduced by

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingualism, multilingual neural machine translation, neural machine translation service developed by Google to translation, translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a web applic ...

. Which was followed by Microsoft Translator strengthening support in May of same year. In June 2014, the Khudabadi script of the Sindhi language was added to

, However as of now the script currently has no proper rendering support to view it in unsupported devices.

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * *

External links

Sindhi Language Authority

Sindhi Dictionary
*
Mewaram's 1910 Sindhi-English dictionary
{{Authority control Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages Languages of Sindh Official languages of India Subject–object–verb languages Languages of Gujarat Languages of Rajasthan Languages of Maharashtra Languages written in Brahmic scripts Languages written in Devanagari