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Article published In:
Written Language & Literacy
Vol. 21:2 (2018) ► pp.169–197

Variation in Perso-Arabic and Devanāgarī Sindhī orthographies

An overview

| University of New England

The Sindhī language has been written in numerous scripts throughout its history. However, in the twentieth century, Perso-Arabic and Devanāgarī emerged as the dominant scripts for the language. Today, Perso-Arabic is the sole official script for Sindhī in Pakistan, while both Perso-Arabic and Devanāgarī are in concurrent use for the language in India. This paper identifies and analyses areas of orthographic standardisation and variation in the Perso-Arabic and Devanāgarī scripts for Sindhī, focusing primarily on practices in the Indian context. It first classifies orthographic variation into that stemming from phonological ambiguity, and that which is purely graphematic. The former includes the representation of reduced vowels, gemination, vocalic endings, loanwords, consonant clusters and sounds of unclear phonemic status. The latter includes the shapes and positioning of diacritics, allographs, derivative graphemes and collation orders. The paper concludes by summarising the possible pedagogical implications of such orthographic standardisation and variation.

Keywords: script, orthography, standardisation, Sindhi, Perso-Arabic, Devanagari
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The Sindhī language
    • 1.2Phonology
    • 1.3Scripts
  • 2.Perso-Arabic Sindhī
    • 2.1Structure
    • 2.2Salient features
    • 2.3Standardisation
      • 2.3.1Reduced vowels
      • 2.3.2Gemination and vocalic endings
      • 2.3.3Loanword spellings
      • 2.3.4Consonant clusters
      • 2.3.5Diacritics
      • 2.3.6Allographs and derivative graphemes
      • 2.3.7Ambiguous phonemes
      • 2.3.8Collation order
  • 3.Devanāgarī Sindhī
    • 3.1Structure
    • 3.2Salient features
    • 3.3Standardisation
      • 3.3.1Reduced vowels
      • 3.3.2Loanword spellings
      • 3.3.3Derivative graphemes
      • 3.3.4Grapheme homophony
      • 3.3.5Ambiguous phonemes
      • 3.3.6Collation order
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00014.iye
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