Sindhi language

Sindhi (/ˈsɪndi/ SIN-dee; Sindhi: سِنڌِي‎ (Perso-Arabic) or सिन्धी (Devanagari), pronounced [sɪndʱiː]) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by more than 30 million people in the Pakistani province of Sindh, where it has official status, as well as by 1.7 million people in India, where it is a scheduled language without state-level official status. Sindhi is primarily written in the Perso-Arabic script in Pakistan, while in India, both the Perso-Arabic script and Devanagari are used.

Sindhi is a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language, and thus related to, but not mutually intelligible with, Saraiki and Punjabi. Sindhi has several regional dialects.

The earliest written evidence of modern Sindhi as a language can be found in a translation of the Qur’an into Sindhi dating back to 883 AD. Sindhi was one of the first Indo-Aryan languages to encounter influence from Persian and Arabic following the Umayyad conquest in 712 AD. 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.