Sindhi language

Sindhi (English pronunciation: /ˈsɪndi/;[4] Sindhi: سنڌي‎ (Perso-Arabic); (Devanagari): सिंधी; Sindhi pronunciation: [sɪndʱiː]) 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.

Quick facts: Sindhi, Native to, Region, Ethnicity, Na... ▼

Sindhi
Sindhī
سنڌي‎ • सिंधी
Sindhi written in Perso-Arabic script
Native to	Pakistan and India
Region	Sindh and neighbouring regions (e.g. Kutch and Balochistan)
Ethnicity	Sindhis
Native speakers	c. 32 million (2017)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Northwestern Sindhic languages Sindhi
Writing system	Perso-Arabic (Naskh), Devanagari (India) and others
Official status
Official language in	Pakistan  Sindh[2][3]  India[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2]
Regulated by	Sindhi Language Authority (Pakistan) National Council for Promotion of Sindhi Language (India)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sd
ISO 639-2	snd
ISO 639-3	snd
Glottolog	sind1272  Sindhi
Linguasphere	59-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 in the category of 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.

Table info: Part of a series on, Constitutionally recogni... ▼

Part of a series on
Constitutionally recognised languages of India
Category
22 Official Languages of the Indian Republic
Assamese  · Bengali  · Bodo  · Dogri  · Gujarati Hindi  · Kannada  · Kashmiri  · Konkani  · Maithili Malayalam  · Marathi  · Meitei (Manipuri)  · Nepali Odia  · Punjabi  · Sanskrit  · Santali  · Sindhi Tamil  · Telugu  · Urdu
Related
Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India Official Languages Commission Classical Languages of India List of languages by number of native speakers in India
Asia portal  India portal  Language portal  Politics portal

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 has an attested history from the 10th century CE. 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.