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Sindhi
سنڌي , सिन्धी ,Sindhī
Native to	Pakistan, India. Also Hong Kong, Oman, Philippines, Singapore, UAE, UK, USA, Afghanistan
Region	South Asia
Native speakers	54.3 million
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Northwestern Zone Sindhi
Writing system	Arabic, Devanagari
Official status
Official language in	Sindh, Pakistan India
Regulated by	Sindhi Language Authority (Pakistan)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sd
ISO 639-2	snd
ISO 639-3	snd

Sindhi (Arabic script: سنڌي, Devanagari script: सिन्धी, Sindhī) is the language of the Sindh region of Pakistan. It is spoken by approximately 41 million people in Pakistan, and is also spoken by a minority 12 million in India; it is the third most spoken language of Pakistan, and the official language of Sindh in Pakistan. It has also been made an official language of India. The Government of Pakistan issues National Identity Cards to its citizens only in two languages, i.e. Sindhi and Urdu. Genealogically it is an Indo-Aryan language, though it also shows signs of heavy Dravidian influence. 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 to migrate to the Hindu-majority India, during the Independence of Pakistan in 1947. The language is written in Devanagari script by Sindhi Hindus; however, with the conversion of most Sindhis to Islam, a modified Arabic script was produced. After the independence of both Pakistan and India from British rule, the Government of India introduced Devanagari, alongside the official Arabic script, for writing Sindhi.

Geographical distribution

Sindhi is taught as a first language in the schools of Sindh and second language in Balochistan in Pakistan. In India, especially in the states of Maharashtra & Gujarat, 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. Sindhi 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 in India (in the Rajasthan state).

History

The immediate predecessor of Sindhi was an Apabhramsha Prakrit named Vrachada. Arab and Persian travellers, specifically Abu-Rayhan Biruni in his book 'Mal al-Hind', had declared that even before the advent of Islam in Sindh (711 A.D.), the language was prevalent in the region. It was not only widely spoken but written in three different scripts -- Ardhanagari, Saindhu and Malwari, all variations of Devanagari. Biruni has described many Sindhi words leading to the conclusion that the Sindhi language was widely spoken and rich in vocabulary in his time.

Sindhi was a very popular literary language between the 14th and 18th centuries. This is when sufis such as Shah Abdul Latif, Sachal Sarmast,Lal Shahbaz Qalandar (as well as numerous others) narrated their theosophical poetry depicting the relationship between humans and God.

During the British period, traders and common people -- including Khojas and Memons -- were using Devanagari, Modi or Vanika scripts, without any vowels for writing Sindhi, while government employees used some kind of Arabic script.

In 1849 the first English-Sindhi dictionary was written in the Devanagari script.

Arabic Influence

Saddee for a hundred years is from Persian. Qaran is about 60 to 100 years from Arabic word for horn of an animal and its various-- like one life-time. Dahar is about forty years. Asar is time, a definite time of the afternoon. For one thousand years, on the other hand, in the Indian Sub-continent, as in the Middle East, people usually use the word Alif. Alif is the same that we in Sindhi have the first letter, Alif for Akh (eye) or Alif (anb) depending on who your teacher was. In Abjad Alif stands for one as well as thousand, but Quran uses the word for one thousand-- as one hundred thousand (in Sindhi one Lakh) is alif mia't, (referring to the population of Nineveh). And He says,"Those who associate desire, each one of them, that he had a thousand years' life ." This expression of Alfa sinatin recurs at a number of places.

Basic Phrases

• Keeyen aahyo?- "how are you?" (general greeting)
• Aaon/Maa theek aahiyan - "Very well".
• Tawhanjo naalo cha aahaye - "What is your name?"
• Munhenjo naalo ______ aahaye. - "My name is _____."
• Tawhan ker aahayo - "Who are you?"

• Meherbani - "Thank you"
• Meherbani karay - "Please"
• Ha - "Yes"
• Na - "No"
• Keeyen ahyo/Kehra haal aahin - "How are you?"
• Aaon/Maa teekh ahyaan - "I'm fine"
• Allah wahi - "Goodbye" (used to end a conversation by Muslim Sindhis)
• Theekh aahe- "Okay" (used to end a conversation by Hindu Sindhis)
• Hik - "One"
• Ba - "Two"
• Tey - "Three"
• Aaon/Maa Sindh jo aahya/ Aaon/Maa Sindh man ahyaa - "I am from Sindh"
• Aaon/Maa musulman aahyan / hindhu aahyan - "I am Muslim / Hindu"
• Aaon/Maa Sindhi aahya / Assin Sindhi aahyon - "I am Sindhi" / "We are Sindhis"
• Allah Hafiz - "God bless you"
• Ma thoke hik vado chamaat deendhus! - "I will give you a big slap"
• Jeay Sindh- "Long Live Sindh"

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

The retroflex consonants are apical postalveolar, as they are throughout northern India, and so could be transcribed /t̠, t̠ʰ, d̠, d̠ʱ n̠ n̠ʱ s̠ ɾ̠ ɾ̠ʱ/. The affricates /t̠ɕ, t̠ɕʰ, d̠ʑ, d̠ʑʱ/ are laminal post-alveolars with a relatively short release. It is not clear if /ɲ/ is similar, or truly palatal. /ʋ/ is realized as labiovelar or labiodental in free variation. /n/ occurs, but is not common, except before a stop (/nd/ etc).

Vowels

The vowels are modal length /i e æ ɑ ɔ o u/ and short /ɪ̆ ʊ̆ ɐ̆/. (Note /æ ɑ ɐ̆/ are imprecisely transcribed as /ɛ a ə/ in the chart.) Consonants following short vowels are lengthened: 'leaf' vs. 'worn'.

Writing system

Arabic Script

In Pakistan, Sindhi is written in a variant of the Persian alphabet, 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, augmenting the Persian with digraphs and eighteen new letters, ڄ ,ٺ ,ٽ ,ٿ ,ڀ ,ٻ ,ڙ ,ڍ ,ڊ ,ڏ ,ڌ ,ڇ ,ڃ ,ڦ ,ڻ ,ڱ ,ڳ ,ڪ for sounds particular to Sindhi and other Indo-Aryan languages. Some letters that are distinguished in Arabic or Persian are homophones in Sindhi.

Devanagari Script

In India, the Devanagari script is used. It was re-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 . Diacritical bars below the letter are used to mark implosive consonants, and dots called nukta are used to form other additional consonants.

See also

• Sindhology
• Institute of Sindhology
• List of Sindhi-language films
• Languages of Pakistan
• Provincial languages of Pakistan
• Languages of India
• List of national languages of India
• List of Indian languages by total speakers

External links

• Let's Learn Sindhi CD ROM from Sindhi Sangat - promoting & preserving Sindhi language Worldwide.
• Institute of Sindhology, Pakistan
• SINDH REVIEW(website in sindhi language)
• Sindhi Literature Magazine in Sindhi Language
• Indian institute of Sindhology
• SindhiLanguage.com
• Sindhi Script History and Script
• http://sindhipatrika.blogspot.com Complete Sindhi Tipno, Patrika, Almanac, listing festivities, rituals related to Hindu Sindhi Culture
• Daily Sindh Hyderabad A Newspaper in sindhi Language

References

1. http://yangtze.cs.uiuc.edu/~jamali/sindh/sammelan/04.html
2. The Sindhu World
3. The IPA Handbook uses the symbols c, cʰ, ɟ, ɟʱ, but makes it clear this is simply tradition and that these are neither palatal nor stops, but "laminal post-alveolars with a relatively short release". Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:83) confirm a transcription of and further remarks that "/ʄ/ is often a slightly creaky voiced palatal approximant" (caption of table 3.19).

Sources

• International Phonetic Association (1999) Handbook of the International Phonetic Association ISBN 0-521-63751-1
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
• Sindhi Alphabet with example words
• Sindhi Alphabet with Devanagari equivalents
• M. Qasim Bughio, The Diachronic Sociolinguistic Situation in Sindh in Web Journal on Cultural Patrimony (Fabio Maniscalco ed.), vol. 1, January-June 2006
• Trumpp P., Grammar of the Sindhi Language, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück, Reprinted in 1970 (original edition 1872)

• Indo-Aryan languages
• Languages of Pakistan
• Languages of India
• Sindh
• Sindhi