Sindhi language

Not to be confused with Hindi.
Sindhi
  • Sindhī
  • سِنڌِي‎
  • सिन्धी
Sindhi written in Perso-Arabic script and Devanagari
PronunciationIPA: [sɪndʱiː]
Native to
RegionSindh and near the border in neighbouring regions such as Kutch and Balochistan
EthnicitySindhis
Native speakers
c. 32 million (2011–2017)
Naskh script, Devanagari and others[1]
Official status
Official language in
Regulated by
Language codes
ISO 639-1sd
ISO 639-2snd
ISO 639-3snd
Glottologsind1272  Sindhi
Linguasphere59-AAF-f
The proportion of people with Sindhi as their mother tongue in each Pakistani District as of the 2017 Pakistan Census
Sindhi is not endangered according to the classification system of the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
This article contains Sindhi text, written from right to left with some letters joined. Without proper rendering support, you may see unjoined letters or other symbols instead of Sindhi script.

Sindhi (/ˈsɪndi/ SIN-dee;[3] Sindhi: سِنڌِي‎ (Perso-Arabic) or सिन्धी (Devanagari), pronounced [sɪndʱiː])[a] is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about 30 million people in the Pakistani province of Sindh, where it has official status. It is also spoken by a further 1.7 million people in India, where it is a scheduled language, without any state-level official status. The main writing system is the Perso-Arabic script, which accounts for the majority of the Sindhi literature and is the only one currently used in Pakistan. In India, both the Perso-Arabic script and Devanagari are used.

Sindhi is first attested in historical records within the Nātyaśāstra, a text thought to have been composed between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. 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.[4] Sindhi was one of the first Indo-Aryan languages to encounter influence from Persian and Arabic following the Umayyad conquest in 712 CE. 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.

  1. ^ a b Iyengar, Arvind; Parchani, Sundri (2021). "Like Community, Like Language: Seventy-Five Years of Sindhi in Post-Partition India". Journal of Sindhi Studies. 1: 1–32. doi:10.1163/26670925-bja10002. ISSN 2667-0925. S2CID 246551773. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  2. ^ "Sindhi Language". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  3. ^ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference ELL was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).