Sindhi Alphabet

Sindhi is written right to left in an extended form of the Perso-Arabic script. Its alphabet was standardised in 1853, under British rule, with 52 letters, and it is still taught that way in Sindh. Unlike Urdu, which is printed in slanting Nastaliq, Sindhi is normally printed in upright Naskh, which keeps its many dotted letters easy to tell apart. There are no capital letters. Letters join up and change shape at the start, middle and end of a word; Unicode stores one code per letter and the font draws the joined forms, so the plain letters on this page are the ones to copy.

In Sindhi order the letters are ا ب ٻ ڀ ت ٿ ٽ ٺ ث پ ج ڄ جھ ڃ چ ڇ ح خ د ڌ ڏ ڊ ڍ ذ ر ڙ ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ڦ ق ڪ ک گ ڳ گھ ڱ ل م ن ڻ و ه ء ي. The order follows shape families, which is why پ comes after the whole ت family instead of straight after ب. Two of the 52 are pairs: جھ (jh) and گھ (gh) are written as ج or گ followed by ھ, so they have no code of their own. CLDR's Sindhi exemplar set includes آ and ھ among characters in use, and marks جھ and گھ as sequences; its character repertoire is not identical to this 52-entry alphabet list.

Several letters are kept for Arabic and Persian loanwords and names and share a sound with a native letter: ث ص are said like س, ذ ض ظ like ز, ط like ت and ح like ه. Sindhi writes two everyday letters in their Arabic forms: h is ه and y is ي, as in سنڌي (Sindhī), while Urdu writes ہ and ی. Text typed on an Urdu keyboard therefore looks slightly wrong to a Sindhi reader even when every word is spelled right.

Sindhi letters and pronunciation: implosives, ڪ and ک, ڻ ڃ ڱ

Sindhi is famous among the languages of South Asia for its implosive consonants, said while the voice box drops so that air is briefly drawn in. It has four, each with its own letter: ٻ (ɓ) as in ٻار (ɓār, child), ڄ (ʄ) as in ڄاڻ (ʄāṇ, knowledge), ڏ (ɗ) as in ڏينهن (ɗīnhan, day) and ڳ (ɠ) as in ڳالهه (ɠālh, talk). Each is an ordinary letter with extra dots, so ٻ and ب, ڏ and د, ڳ and گ are different sounds and different words.

Sindhi has two k letters. The plain k is ڪ, the swash kaf (U+06AA), as in ڪراچي (Karachi), and ک is the aspirated kh, as in کاڌو (khādho, food); Urdu and Persian use ک for plain k, so readers who know them often mix the two up. Aspirated sounds mostly have letters of their own too: ڀ bh, ٿ th, ٺ ṭh, ڌ dh, ڍ ḍh, ڇ ch, ڦ ph; only jh and gh are written as pairs, جھ and گھ. That is why the name of the language, سنڌي, has ڌ in it.

The retroflex consonants, said with the tongue curled back, are ٽ ṭ, ڊ ḍ, ڙ ṛ and ڻ ṇ, as in پاڻي (pāṇī, water) and موهن جو دڙو (Mohenjo-daro). Two more nasals have letters: ڃ for ñ, the ny sound, and ڱ for ṅ, the ng of sing. Finally, Unicode has two signs that exist only for Sindhi: ۽ (U+06FD) is the word "and", as in سنڌ ۽ هند (Sindh and Hind), and ۾ (U+06FE) is the word "in", as in ڪراچي ۾ (in Karachi). Both are written as single marks, so copy them rather than building them from other letters.

How to type Sindhi: keyboard, MS Word and phone

On Android, add the Sindhi keyboard in Gboard; on iPhone, use Apple's built-in Sindhi (Arabic) keyboard. Do not use the Urdu keyboard as a stand-in: it lacks most Sindhi letters and gives Urdu ک ہ ی where Sindhi needs ڪ ه ي. On a computer, install a Sindhi Unicode keyboard layout and a Sindhi Naskh font; in apps that do not know Sindhi, copying letters from this page works everywhere.

To type a single letter in Microsoft Word, type its code and press Alt + X: 06AA ڪ, 06BB ڻ, 067B ٻ, 0684 ڄ, 068F ڏ, 06B3 ڳ, 0683 ڃ, 06B1 ڱ, 06FD ۽, 06FE ۾. On a Mac, switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type the same four digits. In HTML write the code as an entity, for example ڪ for ڪ. If a letter shows as a box, the font lacks it: pick a font made for Sindhi rather than a general Arabic or Urdu one.

For full words, the vowel marks zabar َ (a), zer ِ (i), pesh ُ (u), jazm ْ (no vowel) and shad ّ (doubled consonant) go right after the letter they belong to. Everyday writing leaves most of them out; dictionaries and schoolbooks add them to show exactly how a word is said. Sindhi uses the Arabic-script comma ،, semicolon ؛ and question mark ؟, and ends sentences with the Urdu-style full stop ۔ or a plain dot.

Sindhi numbers 1 to 10, money and words to copy

The numbers 1 to 10 show off the special letters: هڪ (hik, 1), ٻه (ɓa, 2), ٽي (ṭe, 3), چار (chār, 4), پنج (panj, 5), ڇهه (chaha, 6), ست (sat, 7), اٺ (aṭh, 8), نوَ (nava, 9), ڏهه (ɗaha, 10). Figures are written with 0–9 or with Arabic-script digits, left to right even inside Sindhi text.

Money in Pakistan is the rupee, written Rs or with the sign ₨; Sindhis in India use the Indian rupee sign ₹. A few words worth having ready: ڀلي ڪري آيا (bhalī karī āyā, welcome), مهرباني (meharbānī, thank you), عيد مبارڪ (Eid Mubarak, spelled with ڪ), and سائين (sāīn), the respectful "sir" heard all over Sindh.

Where Sindhi is spoken, and its neighbours

Sindhi is the language of Sindh, the lower Indus valley of Pakistan 🇵🇰, where Sindhi is the provincial language and is spoken in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and the villages of the Indus and the Thar desert. CLDR estimates about 42 million speakers: around 38 million in Pakistan and about 3.7 million in India 🇮🇳. Those are broad estimates, and counts vary.

Many Sindhi families moved from Sindh to India at Partition in 1947, and Sindhi communities live in Gujarat, Maharashtra (Ulhasnagar near Mumbai above all), Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. Sindhi was added to the Eighth Schedule of India's constitution in 1967, and there it is written both in this script and in Devanagari, which has its own implosive letters ॻ ॼ ॾ ॿ: see the Sindhi (Devanagari) collection. Kachhi, spoken in Kutch, is a close relative. Saraiki, to the north, also has implosives and shares ٻ ڄ ڳ; Urdu, Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Baluchi and Brahui are the other neighbours, and the Pakistan and India collections have the countries' flags and emoji.

One of the best-loved Sindhi books is Shah Jo Risalo, the poetry of the Sufi poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (شاهه عبداللطيف ڀٽائي, 1689–1752), still sung every evening at his shrine in Bhit Shah. Each December, Sindhi Culture Day fills social media with the block-printed ajrak shawl and the mirrored Sindhi topi cap; Unicode has no emoji for either, so people write the words, اجرڪ ۽ ٽوپي, next to 🇵🇰 and a 🌴 or 🥭 for Sindh's dates and mangoes.