A Phonological View of Sindhi

Of the more than two million Sindhi living in India, 93 percent are Hindu and a 3.8 minority are Muslim. Sir Richard F. Burton (1973), during his travels throughout India and Asia, commented that the Sindhi speak a unique language which can be characterized as a dialect or recognized as an autonomous language of its own. Burton (1973) also noted that under the rubric of Sindhi are several disparate dialects, many of which trace their roots to specific clan or tribal groups. Additionally, Burton (1973) maintained that Sindhi is a language that has many features or words or entire phrases that are similar to Arabic, Persian, and other Hindi dialects. Consequently, Sindhi is a complex language that owes much to its interaction with other languages and cultures.

The purpose of this report is to provide a historical overview of Sindhi. The report will draw upon the literature to further present

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t, representing a limited number of events. Interestingly, English also contains such implosives though they are restricted to imitative and onomatopoeic words. Thus, a major similarity between Sindhi and English is the use of implosives although the only common implosive found in both languages is G. According to Bordie (1981), Sindhi has for many centuries been strongly been influenced by Persian in its daily public and private life. Despite this contact, the ties of Sindhi to Persian are less immediate than they are to Sanskrit. When one examines language usage, Persian is found to be used on the formal, literary, and poetic level. On a less formal level, the older Sanskritic and Avestanic terms found in Sindhi appear to be maintained. Bordie (1981) says that such a situation is known as Diglossia to indicate the presence of two quite distinct levels within a monolingual community. Overall, Sindhi has many more affinities with its northern and southern neighbors than with its western neighbors (Bordie, 1981). English and Sindhi Sound Inventory Bordie (1981) discussed the similarities in sounds between English and Sindhi largely with respect to the use of implosives. As noted above, the phonemes sub
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Sindhi Malay, Sindhi English, Bond Lai, India Sindhi, Dobrovolsky Aronoff, Malaysian Sindhis, English Sindhi, Arabic Persian, Persian Arabic, Switching Code, code switching, bordie 1981, burton 1973, david 2001, beames 1986, sindhi language, sindhi speakers, sindhi bhil, arabic persian, english sindhi, code switching borrowing, bond lai 1986, sindhi language 2004, politically culturally dominant, karachi oxford university,
Approximate Word count = 3746
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)