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'Sindhī' (سنڌي, सिन्धी) is the language of the Sindh region of South Asia, which is now a province of Pakistan. It is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 18.5 million people in Pakistan, and 2.8 million in India; it is also a recognised official language in both of these countries. Although the language is predominantly Indo-Aryan, it also shows up signs of Dravidian influence, making it unique in its importance and identity. Most Sindhi speakers in Pakistan are concentrated in the Sindh province. The remaining speakers are found in India and amongst the Sindhi diaspora community which are scattered throughout the world. The Sindhi language has spread as the Hindu Sindhis left Sindh during the partition of British India in 1947. The language was once written in Devnagri; however, with the mediation of the British East India Company, a modified Arabic script was produced. The Government of India recognizes the Devanagari script and the modified Arabic for writing Sindhi.

Contents

Geographical distribution

History

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Writing system

Sindhi

Arabic

Devanagari

See also

External links

References

Geographical distribution

Sindhi is taught as a first language in the schools of south-east Pakistan. In India especially in the State of Maharashtra many educational institutions managed by Sindhi community and in the schools of such society Sindhi is taught either as the medium of instruction or as a subject [1] Sindhi language has a vast vocabulary; this has made it a favourite of many writers and consequently much literature and poetry have been written in Sindhi. Dialects of Sindhi are spoken in southern Punjab, Balochistan, Northwest province of Pakistan (NWFP), and also Gujarat as well as Rajasthan in India.

History

Arab travellers, specifically Al-Beruni in his book 'Kitab-ul-Hind', had declared that even before the advent of Islam into Sindh (711 A.D.), the language was prevalent in the region. It was not only widely spoken but written too in different scripts. Al-Beruni has described many Sindhi words leading to the conclusion, that Sindhi language was widely spoken and rich in vocabulary in his times.
The Qur'an was first translated into Sindhi in rhymatic format. This was the first ever translation of Qur'an in the 12th century or earlier.
Sindhi was a very popular literary language around the 14th-18th centuries. This is when sufis such as Shah Abdul Latif (as well as numerous others) narrated their theosophical poetry depicting the relationship between humans and God.
Sindh came under British rule in 1843 A.D. and until then Sindhi language did not have a uniform script and was written in different scripts. In 1851, Sir Bartle Frere, the then commissioner of Sindh issued a decree making it compulsory to use Sindhi language in place of Persian in Sindh. A committee was constituted under chairmanship of Sir B.H. Ellis, the then Asst. Commissioner & Chief of Education Department, comprising equal number of Hindu as well as Muslim members which unanimously decided to adopt the Persio-Arabic Sindhi script with slight modifications in 1853 A.D. (effectively adding extra letters to accommodate Sindhi language).

Sounds

Sindhi has a large sound inventory. It has 46 distinctive consonant phonemes (more than all the phonemes of English combined) and a further 16 vowels. All plosives, affricates, nasals, the retroflex flap and the lateral approximant /l/ have aspirated or breathy voiced counterparts. The language also features four separate implosives.

Consonants

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Dental		Alveolar		Retroflex		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal	m mʱ						n nʱ		ɳ ɳʱ		ɲ		ŋ
Plosive	p pʰ	b bʱ			t tʰ	d dʱ			ʈ ʈʰ	ɖ ɖʱ			k kʰ	g gʱ
Implosive		ɓ						ɗ				ʄ		ɠ
Affricate											c cʰ	ɟ ɟʱ
Fricative			f				s	z	ʂ				x	ɣ	h
Tap							r		ɽ ɽʱ
Approximant			ʋ								j
Lateral					l lʱ

The phoneme is usually pronounced as an alveolar tap, , though occasionally reminiscent of a trill with two or more contacts. The affricates are pronounced with a relatively short release and corresponding plosives symbols have therefore been used. can be realized as either or with free variation.

Vowels

Writing system

Sindhi

There is a 52-letter alphabet in Sindhi script based from Arabic. Among the letters there are 5 letters that are originally sindhi and the remaining 47 are from Arabic.

Arabic

In Pakistan, Sindhi is written in a variant of the Arabic script, which was adopted under the encouragement of the British when Sindh fell to them in the 19th century. It has a total of 52 letters, accommodating the additional sounds peculiar to Indo-Aryan languages. Some letters that are distinguished in Arabic are pronounced identically in Sindhi.

جھ	ڄ	ج	پ	ث	ٺ	ٽ	ٿ	ت	ڀ	ٻ	ب	ا
												★
ڙ	ر	ذ	ڍ	ڊ	ڏ	ڌ	د	خ	ح	ڇ	چ	ڃ
ق	ڦ	ف	غ	ع	ظ	ط	ض	ص	ش	س	ز	ڙھ
									?
ي	ه	و	ڻ	ن	م	ل	ڱ	گھ	ڳ	گ	ک	ڪ
★		★

----

Devanagari

In India, the Devanagari script is also used besides standard Sindhi-Arabic script. Diacritical bars below the letter are used to mark implosive consonants, and dots called ''nukta'' are used to form other additional consonants.

अ	आ	इ	ई	उ	ऊ	ए	ऐ	ओ	औ
ə	a		i		uː	e		o
क	ख	ख़	ग	ॻ	ग़		घ		ङ
च	छ		ज	ॼ	ज़		झ		ञ
ट	ठ		ड	ॾ	ड़		ढ	ढ़	ण
त	थ		द				ध		न
प	फ	फ़	ब	ॿ			भ		म
य	र	ल	व
श	ष	स	ह

See also

★ Languages of Pakistan

★ Languages of India

★ List of national languages of India

★ List of Indian languages by total speakers

External links

★ Sindhi Tutorial

★ Sindhi Tutorial and Keyboard Layout for Windows XP/2000

★ Sindhi Literature Magazine in Sindhi Language

★ Indian institute of Sindhology

★ SindhiLanguage.com

★ Sindhi Script History and Script

References

★ International Phonetic Association (1999) ''Handbook of the International Phonetic Association'' ISBN 0-521-63751-1

★ Sindhi Alphabet with example words

★ Sindhi Alphabet with Devanagari equivalents

★ http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sindhi.htm

★ M. Qasim Bughio, ''The Diachronic Sociolinguistic Situation in Sindh'' in 'Web Journal on Cultural Patrimony ' (Fabio Maniscalco ed.), vol. 1, January-June 2006

★ Trumpp E., Grammar of the Sindhi Language, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück, Reprinted in 1970 (original edition 1872)