This article containsSindhi text, written from right to left with some letters joined. Without properrendering support, you may see unjoined letters or other symbols instead ofSindhi script.
Sindhi has a number ofdialects and an establishedstandard form, referred to asStandard Sindhi, which is based on the dialect ofHyderabad and surrounding areas of central Sindh. The primary regulatory agency for the development and promotion of the language is theSindhi Language Authority, an autonomous institution of thegovernment of Sindh.[8]
Like other languages of the Indo-Aryan family, Sindhi is descended from Old Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) via Middle Indo-Aryan (Pali, secondary Prakrits, andApabhramsha). 20th century Western scholars such asGeorge Abraham Grierson believed that Sindhi descended specifically from the Vrācaḍa dialect of Apabhramsha (described byMarkandeya as being spoken inSindhu-deśa, corresponding to modern Sindh)[11][12] but later work has shown this to be unclear.[13]
The sound changes that characterise the development of Sindhi from Middle Indo-Aryan are:
Development ofimplosives fromgeminate and initial stops (e.g.g-,-gg >ɠ); this is a highly distinctive sound change in NIA[14]
Shortening of geminates (e.g. MIAakkhi > Sindhiakhi "eye")[15]
Voicing of post-nasal consonants (e.g. MIAdanta > Sindhiɗ̣andu "tooth")[15][16]
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.[5] Historically,Isma'ili religious literature and poetry in India, as old as the 11th century CE, used a language that was closely related to Sindhi andGujarati; at this point in time, Sindhi was not clearly established as an independent literary language. Much of this work is in the form ofginans (a kind of devotional hymn).[24][25]
Additionally, the KoreanBuddhist monkHyech'o mentions the unique language of Sindh in his travelogue:
From Takka I walked towards the West for another month and arrived at the country of Sindhukula. The dress, customs, climate, and temperature are similar to north India, althoughthe language is slightly different.
Medieval Sindhi literature is of a primarily religious genre, comprising a syncreticSufi andAdvaita Vedanta poetry, the latter in the devotionalbhakti tradition. The format of this poetry is thebayt, indicating significant influence from Arabic and Persian. The earliest known Sindhi poet of the Sufi tradition isQazi Qadan (1493–1551). Other early poets wereShah Inat Rizvi (c. 1613–1701) andShah Abdul Karim Bulri (1538–1623). These poets had a mystical bent that profoundly influenced Sindhi poetry for much of this period.[24]
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 asSassui Punnhun,Sohni Mahiwal,Momal Rano,Noori Jam Tamachi,Lilan Chanesar, and others.[28]
The greatest poet of Sindhi wasShah Abdul Latif Bhittai (1689/1690–1752), whose verses were compiled into theShah Jo Risalo by his followers. While primarily Sufi, his verses also recount traditional Sindhi folktales and aspects of the cultural history of Sindh.[24]
The first attested Sindhi translation of the Quran was done byAkhund Azaz Allah Muttalawi (1747–1824) and published inGujarat in 1870. The first to appear in print was by Muhammad Siddiq in 1867.[29]
In 1843, theBritish conquest of Sindh led the region to become part of theBombay Presidency. Soon after, in 1848, Governor George Clerk established Sindhi as the official language in the province, removing the literary dominance ofPersian. 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.[30] In 1868, theBombay Presidency assignedNarayan Jagannath Vaidya to replace theAbjad used in Sindhi with theKhudabadi script. The script was decreed a standard script by the Bombay Presidency thus inciting anarchy in theMuslim majority region. A powerful unrest followed, after which TwelveMartial Laws 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 inBombay beginning in 1867. These included Islamic stories set in verse byMuhammad Hashim Thattvi, one of the renowned religious scholars of Sindh.[28]
ThePartition of India in 1947 resulted in most Sindhi speakers ending up in the new state ofPakistan, commencing a push to establish a strong sub-national linguistic identity for Sindhi. This manifested in resistance to the imposition ofUrdu and eventuallySindhi nationalism in the 1980s.[31]
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.[32]
Sindhi is the official language of the Pakistani province ofSindh[33][2] and one of the scheduled languages of India, where it does not have any state-level status.[34] Prior to the inception of Pakistan, Sindhi was the national language of Sindh.[35][36][37][38]
In Pakistan, Sindhi is the first language of 34.40 million people, or 14.6% of the country's population as of the 2023 census. 33.46 million of these are found inSindh, where they account for 60% of the total population of the province.[39] There are 0.55 million speakers in the province ofBalochistan, especially in theKacchi Plain.
The Pakistan Sindh Assembly has ordered compulsory teaching of the Sindhi language in all private schools in Sindh.[40] 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.[41] 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.[42] Sindhi is taught in all provincial private schools that follow the Matric system and not the ones that follow the Cambridge system.[43]
The Indian Government has legislated Sindhi as a scheduled language inIndia, making it an option for education. Despite lacking any state-level status, Sindhi is still a prominent minority language in the Indian states ofGujarat,Rajasthan andMaharashtra.[48] In India, Sindhi mother tongue speakers were distributed in the following states:
InMalaysia,Indonesia, andSingapore (where Sindhi has no official status), ethnics Sindhis are largely shifting toEnglish 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 withMalay andIndonesian.[50][51][52][53] Similar shift to English is found in the smallerHong Kong Sindhi community.[54]
Sindhi has many dialects, and forms adialect continuum at some places with neighboring languages such asPunjabi to the north andGujarati to the south, but not withMarwari to the east.[7] Some of the documented dialects of Sindhi are:[59][60][61][7][62]
Vicholi: The prestige dialect spoken aroundHyderabad and central Sindh (theVicholo region), on which the literary standard is based.
Uttaradi: The dialect of northern Sindh (Uttaru, meaning "north"), with minor differences inLarkana,Shikarpur and in parts ofSukkur andKandiaro.[63]
Siroli (alsoSiraiki,Ubheji): The dialect of northernmost Sindh (Siro, meaning "head").[64] Spoken in smaller number all over Sindh but mainly inJacobabad andKashmore districts, it may be transitional with theSaraiki language variety of southernPunjab[65] and has variously been treated either as a dialect of Saraiki or as a dialect of Sindhi.[66]
Lasi: The dialect ofLasbela,Hub andGwadar districts in Balochistan, closely related to Lari and Vicholi, and in contact withBalochi.
Firaqi: The dialect of theKachhi plains the north eastern districts of Balochistan, where it is referred to as Firaqi Sindhi or commonly just Sindhi.[67][68]
Thareli (alsoTharechi): Spoken in the northeasternThar desert of Sindh, but mainly spoken in the western part ofJaisalmer district ofRajasthan, India by many Sindhi Muslims.[69][70]
The retroflex consonants areapicalpostalveolar and do not involve curling back of the tip of the tongue,[80] so they could be transcribed[t̠,t̠ʰ,d̠,d̠ʱn̠n̠ʱɾ̠ɾ̠ʱ] in phonetic transcription. The affricates/tɕ,tɕʰ,dʑ,dʑʱ/ are laminal post-alveolars with a relatively short release. It is not clear if/ɲ/ is similar, or truly palatal.[81]/ʋ/ is realized as labiovelar[w] or labiodental[ʋ] in free variation, but is not common, except before a stop.
The vowels are modal length/ieæɑɔou/ and short/ɪʊə/. Consonants following short vowels are lengthened:/pət̪o/[pət̪ˑoː] 'leaf' vs./pɑt̪o/[pɑːt̪oː] 'worn'.
Sindhi nouns distinguish twogenders (masculine and feminine), twonumbers (singular and plural), and fivecases (nominative, vocative, oblique, ablative, and locative). This is a similar paradigm toPunjabi. 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.[82] 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 (ABL) and-i (LOC).
A few nouns representing familial relations take irregular declensions with an extension in-r- in the plural. These are the masculine nounsڀاءُ भाउbhāu "brother",پِيءُ पिउ pīu "father", and the feminine nounsڌِيءَ धीअdhīa "daughter",نُونھَن नूंहंnū̃hã "daughter-in-law",ڀيڻَ भेण bheṇa "sister",ماءُ माउ māu "mother", andجوءِ जोइ'joi "wife".[82]
Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Sindhi has first and second-personpersonal pronouns as well as several types of third-person proximal and distaldemonstratives. 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 जोjo for the rest. The personal pronouns are listed to the right.[83][84]
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 toڪو कोko "someone" areھَرڪو हरकोhar-ko "everyone",سَڀڪو सभकोsabh-ko "all of them",جيڪو जेकोje-ko "whoever" (relative), andتيڪو तेकोte-ko "that one" (correlative).[83]
Most nominal relations (e.g. thesemantic 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 theaccusative case markerکي खेkhe.[85]
The postpositions are divided intocase markers, which directly follow the noun, andcomplex postpositions, which combine with a case marker (usually the genitiveجو जोjo).
The postpositions with the suffix-o decline in gender and number to agree with their governor, e.g.ڇوڪِرو جو پِيءُ छोकिरो जो पीउchokiro j-o pīu "the boy's father" butڇوڪِر جِي مَاءُ छोकिरो जी माउchokiro j-ī māu "the boy's mother".
There are severalablative case markers formed from the spatial postpositions and the ablative ending-ā̃. These indicate complex motion such as "from inside of".[85]: 400
Ablative case markers
Marker
Example
English
کَان खां khā̃
ڇوڪِري کَان छोकिरे खां chokire khā̃
from the boy
مَان मां mā̃
ڇوڪِري مَان छोकिरे मां chokire mā̃
from inside the boy
تَان तां tā̃
ڇوڪِري تَان छोकिरे तां chokire tā̃
from upon the boy
ڏَانھَان ॾांहां ḍā̃hā̃
ڇوڪِري ڏَانھَان छोकिरे ॾांहां chokire ḍā̃hā̃
from the direction of the boy
Finally, some case markers are found in medieval Sindhi literature and/or modern poetic Sindhi, and otherwise not used in standard speech.
According to historianNabi Bux Baloch, most Sindhi vocabulary is from ancientSanskrit. 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 andHindustani. Today, Sindhi in Pakistan is slightly influenced byUrdu[citation needed], with more borrowed Perso-Arabic elements, while Sindhi in India is influenced by Hindi[citation needed], with more borrowedtatsam Sanskrit elements.[86]
Sindhis in Pakistan use a version of thePerso-Arabic script with new letters adapted to Sindhi phonology, while in India a greater variety of scripts are in use, includingDevanagari,Khudabadi,Khojki, andGurmukhi.[87] Perso-Arabic for Sindhi was also made digitally accessible relatively earlier.[88]
The earliest attested records in Sindhi are from the 15th century.[32] Before the standardisation of Sindhi orthography, numerous forms ofDevanagari andLaṇḍā scripts were used for trading. For literary and religious purposes, aPerso-Arabic script developed byAbul-Hasan as-Sindi andGurmukhi (a subset of Laṇḍā) were used. Another two scripts, Khudabadi and Shikarpuri, were reforms of the Landa script.[89][90] During British rule in the late 19th century, the Perso-Arabic script was decreed standard over Devanagari.[91]
During theBritish Raj, a variant of thePersian 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 withdigraphs 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.
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 areligatures serving a grammatical function. These ligatures include the۽, which is pronounced as [ãĩ̯] and representsand, and the۾, which is pronounced as [mẽ] and it creates a locative relationship between words.
The orthography of the letterhāʾ in Sindhi, especially as it comes to typing as opposed to handwriting, has been a source of confusion for many. Especially because whereas inArabic andPersian, there exists one single letter forhāʾ, inUrdu, the letter has diverged into two distinct variants:gol he ("round he") anddo-cašmi he ("two-eyed he"). The former is written is written round and zigzagged as "ہـ ـہـ ـہ ہ", and can impart the "h" (/ɦ/) sound anywhere in a word, or the long "a" or the "e" vowels (/ɑː/ or/eː/) at the end of a word. The latter is written in Arabic Naskh style (as a loop) (ھ), 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 letterhāʾ is also used in Sindhi to represent the sound [h] in native Sindhi words, in Arabic and Persian loanwords, and to represent vowels (/ə/ or/əʰ/) 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 ofhāʾ across these languages for whichUnicode 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.[92][93]
Forming part of digraph for representation of other aspirated consonants ([ɽʰ], [lʱ], [mʰ], [nʰ], [ɳʰ]). Inisolated andfinal positions, an extrahāʾـہ (U+06C1) is added
The punctuation of Sindhi Perso-Arabic script differs slightly from that ofUrdu,Persian, andArabic. Namely, instead of using the typicalinverted comma (، [U+060C]) common in these mentioned alphabet, areversed comma (⹁ [U+2E41]) is used, although many documents do indeed incorrectly use Urdu punctuations.[94]
In India, the Devanagari script is also used to write Sindhi.[95] 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.[96] Devanagari was seen as the most practical option for Sindhi language in India.[1]Diacritical bars below the letter are used to mark implosive consonants, anddots callednukta are used to form other additional consonants.
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 thePartition of India in 1947.[97]
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.[99][100]
In 1972, a bill was passed by the provincial assembly of Sindh which saw Sindhi, given official status thus becoming the firstprovincial language inPakistan to have its own official status.
Sindhi language was made the official language ofSindh according toLanguage Bill.
All Educational institutes in Sindh are mandated to teach Sindhi as per the bill.
By 2001,Abdul-Majid Bhurgri[failed verification] had coordinated with Microsoft to develop Unicode-based Software in the form of thePerso-Arabic Sindhi script which afterwards became the basis for the communicated use by Sindhi speakers around the world.[101] In 2016, Google introduced the first automated translator for Sindhi language.[102][103] Later on in 2023 an offline support was introduced byGoogle Translate.[104][105] Which was followed byMicrosoft Translator strengthening support in May of same year.[106][107]
In June 2014, theKhudabadi script of the Sindhi language was added toUnicode, However as of now the script currently has no proper rendering support to view it in unsupported devices.
^In Pakistan, only the Perso-Arabic form of Sindhi is used. On the other hand, in India, both Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts are used.
^/ˈsɪndi/SIN-dee;[3] In some instances, the diasporic Sindhi population in India uses theDevanagari script to write the language in which 'Sindhi' is written as:सिन्धी In less commonly used scripts:ਸਿੰਧੀ (Gurmukhi),𑈩𑈭𑈴𑈝𑈮 (Khojki),𑋝𑋡𑋟𑋐𑋢 (Khudabadi)
^Southern Pakistan constitutes the southern provinces, i.e.Sindh andBalochistan.
^This is the number of people who identified their mother-tongue as "Sindhi"; it does not include speakers of related languages, likeKutchi.
^Grierson, G. A. (1902)."Vrācaḍa and Sindhī".The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland:47–48.JSTOR25208372. Retrieved6 June 2025.
^"The Imposition Of Urdu". NAWAIWAQT GROUP OF NEWSPAPERS. September 10, 2015. Archived fromthe original on 11 September 2015. Retrieved12 September 2015.
^Nihalani, Paroo. (1999).Handbook of the International Phonetic Association (Sindhi). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
^Nihalani, Paroo (December 1, 1995). "Illustration of the IPA – Sindhi".Journal of the International Phonetic Association.25 (2):95–98.doi:10.1017/S0025100300005235.S2CID249410954.
^The IPAHandbook uses the symbolsc,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[t̠ɕ,t̠ɕʰ,d̠ʑ,d̠ʑʱ] and further remarks that "/ʄ/ is often a slightly creaky voiced palatal approximant" (caption of table 3.19).
^Ismaili, Imdad Ali (2011)."Design & Development of the Graphical User Interface for Sindhi Language".Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology.The idea is to provide a software platform to the people of Sindh as well as Sindhi diasporas living across the globe to make use of computing for basic tasks such as editing, composition, formatting, and printing of documents in Sindhi by using GUISL. The implementation of the GUISL has been done in the Java technology to make the system platform independent.
Cole, Jennifer S (2001). "Sindhi". In Garry, Jane; Rubino, Carl (eds.).Facts About the World's Languages. H W Wilson. pp. 647–653.ISBN0-8242-0970-2.
International Phonetic Association. Cambridge University Press. 1999.ISBN0-521-63751-1.
Khubchandani, Lachman M (2003)."Sindhi". In Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh (eds.).The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. pp. 622–658.ISBN978-0-415-77294-5.
Masica, Colin P. (1991).The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge University Press. p. 443.ISBN978-0-521-23420-7.
Shackle, Christopher (2007). "Pakistan". In Simpson, Andrew (ed.).Language and national identity in Asia. Oxford linguistics Y. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-922648-1.
Chopra, R. M (2013). "Persian in Sindh".The rise, growth, and decline of Indo-Persian literature (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Iran Culture House.OCLC909254259.
