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Sindhi linguistic data
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Common questions about Sindhi
What linguistic data does this Sindhi page show?
Word order, tone, gender count, case marking, adposition direction, syllable structure, consonant inventory traits (implosives), vowel system, morphological alignment, script, register stratification, speaker count, and geographic area. Each row is one feature with Sindhi's value visible; you can add other languages to read the same feature side by side.
Where do the Sindhi data points come from?
Typological features are merged from URIEL+ (Mortensen et al.) and a curated set authored against descriptive grammars. Speaker counts come from Ethnologue and Glottolog. Geographic area is computed from the Asher 2007 world language atlas. Similarity scores combine genetic distance, typological overlap, and lexical-borrowing data.
What are implosive consonants?
Sounds produced with an inward-moving airstream (the larynx pulls down, creating reduced air pressure inside the mouth) instead of the outward-moving airstream of typical voiced stops. Sindhi has four implosives — ɓ, ɗ, ʄ, ɠ — that contrast with their plain voiced counterparts (b, d, j, g). Implosives are common in African languages but rare in Indo-Aryan.
Why is Sindhi written in two different scripts?
In Pakistan (where most Sindhi speakers live), Sindhi uses the Perso-Arabic script with extra letters for Sindhi-specific sounds, including the implosives. In India (smaller diaspora population), Sindhi has been historically written in Devanagari since the 1948 partition. Both scripts have official status in their respective countries.
Why does Sindhi cluster with Saraiki and Punjabi on similarity scores?
Saraiki (spoken in southern Punjab/Pakistan) shares the implosive consonant series with Sindhi — a regional feature concentrated around the lower Indus valley. Both also share the broader Indo-Aryan typology with Punjabi. The factor breakdown chip on the row tells you which dimensions contributed most.
Sources for Sindhi
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Trumpp, Ernest (1872). "Grammar of the Sindhi Language." Trübner and Co., London. — Consulted directly: noun gender (pp.31-41), plural (pp.104-111), cases (pp.111-128), compound verbs Ch.XVII (pp.338-344, PDF pp.410-416).
- Yegorova, R. P. (1971). "The Sindhi Language." Nauka Publishing, Moscow. — Consulted directly: noun gender/case (pp.36-43), pronouns (pp.56-68), verbs (pp.74-91), Past Perfective paradigm of halaṇu (pp.88-89: 1SG.M haliuse, 2SG.M halē), compound nominal verbs (pp.107-108).
- Khubchandani, Lachman M. (2003). "Sindhi." In George Cardona & Dhanesh Jain (eds.), "The Indo-Aryan Languages." Routledge. — Consulted directly: §4.3.2 nouns, §4.3.3 pronouns Table 17.5, §4.4.2 moods, Table 17.6 (subjunctive), Table 17.7 (verb in indicative mood: 1SG.M -UsI, 2SG.M -ẽ), §4.4.3 compound verbs, §5.5 bound-pronouns Table 17.8.
- Cole, R. A. (1904). "An Elementary Sindhi Grammar." Oxford University Press.