Languages of Sindh

Languages of Sindh

1. Saqib Iqbal LANGUAGES OF SINDH By : Roll no. : 14-CS-07

2. SINDHI LANGUAGE: Sindhi is the language of the historical Sindh region, spoken by the Sindhi people. It is spoken by 53,410,910 people in Pakistan and some 5,820,485 people in India. It is the official language of the province of Sindh. In India, Sindhi is one of the scheduled languages officially recognized by the federal government. Abroad there are some 2.6 million Sindhis . Sindhi is an Indo-European language, linguistically considered to be the sister language of Sanskrit. Balochi , Gujarati, Rajasthani language have influences of Sindhi and Sanskrit however accommodating substantial Persian, Turkish and Arabic words. In Pakistan Sindhi is written in a modified Arabic script, where the majority of the Sindhi population is Muslim. Hindu Sindhis who migrated to India after independence (currently are about 6 million) still register their mother tongue as Sindhi, meanwhile 7 million Hindu Sindhis are living in Pakistan. 59% of people of Sindh speaks Sindhi.

3. Urdu Language:   The word Urdu means “army”. It was awarded with this name because it was developed by the army of first Mughal King Babar. When Babar invaded south Asia, he had a large army which included soldiers from many different countries. They were from Turkey, Arab, Iran, Russia, Afghanistan, South Asia and many other countries. The soldiers had problems in intra-army communication because of language variation. These soldiers gradually developed a new language containing words from languages of all soldiers. This new language seemed like an army of words from different languages and hence, it was called Urdu. Early Urdu was quite different from today’s and was not very fine form. Like all other languages, Urdu had to go through the stages of evolution. New words were created which belonged only to Urdu, thence Urdu began to become famous because of its flexibility. About 31% of people of Sindh speaks Urdu.  

4. PUNJABI LANGUAGE: Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by 130 million native speakers worldwide, making it the 9th most widely spoken language (2013) .in the world. It is the native language of the Punjabi people who inhabit the historical Punjab region of Pakistan and India The major dialects of Punjabi include Majhi , Doabi , Malwai , Powadhi , Pothohari , and Multani . The dialects in the Lahnda dialect continuum, including Saraiki and Hindko , are considered as dialects of Punjabi by many linguists but as distinct languages by others About 10% of people of Sindh speaks Punjabi.

5. Pashto language : Pashto also known as historically as Afghani and Pathani , is the native language of the Pashtun people of South-Central Asia. Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, and is also spoken as a regional language in western and northwestern Pakistan and among the Pashtun diaspora around the world. In Pakistan , Pashto is the regional language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , Federally Administered Tribal Areas and northern Balochistan . Only 4% of people of Sindh speaks Pashto

6. Balochi language : Balochi is a Northwestern Iranian language. It is the principal language of the Baloch of Balochistan . It is also spoken as a second language by some Brahui . It is designated as one of nine official languages of Pakistan.Balochi is closely related to other Northwestern Iranian languages such as Kurdish. It has influences on other languages in Pakistan, including Sindhi. Only 2% of people of Sindh speaks Balochi .

7. Other languages : Only 4% people of Sindh speaks other languages include Kashmiri, Gujarati, Memoni , Persian, Kutchi , Khowar , Shina , Bangali , Thari , Luri and Brahui .   i) Kashmiri language: Kashmiri is spoken primarily in the Kashmir Valley, in Jammu and Kashmir. There are approximately 5,527,698 speakers throughout India, according to the Census of 2001. Most of the 105,000 speakers in Pakistan are émigrés from the Kashmir Valley after the partition of India   ii) Gujrati language: Gujarati is a modern Indo-Aryan language evolved from Sanskrit. Gujrati is an Indo-Aryan language native to the west Indian region of Gujarat. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 4.5% of population of India (1.21 billion according to 2011 census) speaks Gujarati, which amounts to 54.6 million speakers in India. There are about 65.5 million speakers of Gujarati worldwide, making it the 26th most spoken native language in the world  

8. iii ) Memoni language: The Memon or Memoni language is the language of Memons historically associated with Kathiawar, in West India, a Memon subgroup. Many Memons have settled in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan since the independence in 1947. The Memon community is generally divided into three major subgroups: Kathiawadi Memons , Sindhi Memons (who speak the Sindhi language) and Kutchi Memons (who speak Kutchi ) The first category ( Memons originating in Kathiawar) are simply called Memons , and they speak the Memon language.   iv) Persian language: Persian ( فارسی ) is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran (Persia), and the neighbouring Afghanistan . There are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide. Persian is used as a liturgical language of Islam in not only Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, but also in Pakistan and North India .   v ) Kutchi language: Kutchi s an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Kutch region of the Indian state of Gujarat as well as in the Pakistani province of Sindh. Kachhi is similar to Sindhi, which is spoken in neighboring Sindh, Pakistan and parts of India. It has borrowed some vocabulary from Gujarati, because the Kutch District is geographically between Sindh and Gujarat

9. vi) Khowar language: Khowar , also known as Chitrali , is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic branch, spoken by more 500,000 people in Chitral in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , in the Ghizer district of Gilgit-Baltistan and in Sindh   vii) Shina language: Shina is a language from the Dardic sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken by the Shina people, a plurality of the people in the Gilgit–Baltistan autonomous territory of Pakistan, formerly known as the Northern Areas of Pakistan .   viii) Bangali language: Bengali is the language native to the region of Bengal, which comprises present-day Bangladesh and the Indian states West Bengal, Tripura and southern Assam. It is written using the Bengali script. With about 220 million native and about 250 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the most spoken languages, ranked seventh in the world  

10. ix) Thari language: Thari , is one of the Rajasthani languages of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. It is most closely related to Marwari. Thari is spoken in western parts of Jaisalmer and Barmer districts of Rajasthan in India and eastern parts of Sindh province of Pakistan by about 2,000,000 people in all   x) Luri language: Luri is a Southwestern Iranian language spoken mainly by the Lur and Bakhtiari peoples of the Iranian provinces of Lorestan , Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari . It is also spoken in Sindh province of Pakistan .   xi) Brahui language: Brahui is a Dravidian language spoken by the Brahui people in the central Balochistan region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and by expatriate Brahui communities in Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Iran. Brahui is mainly spoken in Balochistan and Sindh. The 2013 edition of Ethnologue reports that there are some 4.2 million speakers; 4 million live in Pakistan, mainly in the province of Balochistan .