An Indo-Aryan language of the Indus delta — spoken by about 36 million people in Pakistan's Sindh province and the Indian diaspora, with rich Sufi poetic tradition.
Where it’s spoken
Sindhi is the official language of Pakistan’s Sindh province, where it is the mother tongue of about 70% of the population. In India, Sindhi is one of the 22 scheduled languages, spoken mainly by Hindu Sindhi diaspora communities that moved after the 1947 partition. Sindhi-speaking communities also live in the UAE, the UK, the US, and Singapore.
What it sounds like
Sindhi has implosive consonants (ɓ, ɗ, ɠ, ʄ) — a feature it shares with Saraiki but is rare among Indo-Aryan languages. It distinguishes dental, alveolar, and retroflex stops and has phonemic vowel length. The language is non-tonal.
How it’s written
Sindhi has two main scripts: in Pakistan, a Perso-Arabic script of 52 letters (more than any other Arabic-derived script) standardized in 1853; and in India, Devanagari (sometimes with diacritics for sounds like the implosives). Both scripts are taught in their respective countries.
History
Sindhi has a literary tradition spanning over a thousand years. The 18th-century mystic poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai composed the Shah Jo Risalo, one of South Asia’s great Sufi works. The 1853 standardization of the Sindhi alphabet established the modern written language.
Find more languages by letter
Sindhi starts with S and ends with I. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Sindhi":