Sindhi language

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Sindhi 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 17 million people in Pakistan, and 2.8 million in India; it is also a recognised official language in both of these countries. Most Sindhi speakers in Pakistan are concentrated in Sindh. The remaining speakers are found spread throughout the many areas of the world (mainly other parts of India) to which members of an ethnic group migrated when Sindh became a part of Pakistan during the partition of British India in 1947. The language can be written using the Devanagari or Arabic scripts.

Table of contents

1 Geographical distribution 2 History 3 Sounds 3.1 Consonants 3.2 Vowels 4 Writing system 5 References 6 External links

Geographical distribution

Sindhi is taught as a first language in the schools of south-east Pakistan, except in large metropolises like Karachi. Sindhi language has a vast vocabulary; this has made it a favourite of many writers and so a lot of literature and poetry has been written in Sindhi.

History

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.

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.

Sounds

Sindhi has a very rich sound inventory. It has 46 distinctive consonant phonemes (more than all the phonemes of English combined) and a further 10 vowels. All plosives, affricates, nasals, the retroflex flap and the lateral approximant /l/ have aspirated or breathy voiced counterparts. The language also features four seperate implosives.

Consonants

	Bilabial		Labiodental		Dental		Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Plosives	p ph	b bɦ			t th	d dɦ			ʈ ʈh	ɖ ɖɦ			k kh	g gɦ
Implosives		ɓ						ɗ				ʄ		ɠ
Affricates											c ch	ɟ ɟɦ
Nasals	m mɦ						n nɦ		ɳ ɳɦ		ɲ		ŋ
Fricatives			f				s	z	ʂ				x	ɣ	h
Taps and flaps							r		ɽ ɽɦ
Approximants			ʋ								j
Lateral approximants					l lɦ

The phoneme /r/ is usually pronuncounced as an alveolar tap {}, though occasionaly reminscent of a trill with two or more contacts. The affricates are pronounced with a relatively short release and corresponding plosives symbols have therefor been used. can be realized as either /w/ or with free variation.

Vowels

Writing system

Sindhi has its own script which is similar to that of Arabic but with many extra accents and phonetics. There are 52 characters in the Sindhi language, it is also written in Devnagari script in India.

References

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

External links

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