Amid nation-wide lockdown and outspread of COVID-19, Sindhi
community found an interesting way to engage the children in their family by
educating them about their language and history on Friday. The community was
celebrating Sindhi day or Sindhi Language Day.
Sindhi Day is celebrated on 10 April every year, as Sindhi
Language was included to Eight Schedule of Indian constitution on was April 10,
1967.
State President of Sindhi Council of India MP Shankar
Lalwani sent out a message to community members informing them about quick way
to teach Sindhi language to their kids. He also quoted the importance keeping
the language alive for Sindhi culture.
President of Bhartiya Sindhu Sabha Naresh Fundwani said, “Sindhi
alphabet has maximum 52 letters as compared to other languages. The Sindhi
language looks like Urdu in writing, but there is a great difference in dialect.”
To develop the dialect in children, the community members organised
various games that were to be played in Sindhi language only.
“Starting from meaning of ‘Mohenjo-daro’ its meaning and how
we are earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent to playing
Sindhi word dumb charades were some highlights of our day,” Fundwani said.
“According to many
recognized scholars, in modern Indian languages, Sindhi is closest to Sanskrit
as a dialect. About 70 percent of Sindhi words are of Sanskrit origin,” Manish
Devnani, community language promoter, said.
He added that in Kutch district of Gujarat, Sindhi language
is called Kutchi language. “It belongs to the Arya language family at the level
of linguistic family which includes Hindi, Punjabi and Gujarati languages
including Sanskrit,” Devnani said.
“Sindhi has a relatively large inventory of both consonants
and vowels compared to other languages. Sindhi has 46 consonant phonemes and 16
vowels,” shared women coordinator Sona Kasturi.
She shared that Khojki, Gurmukhi, Perso-Arabic, Devanagari,
Gujarati, and Roman Sindhi script is used to write Sindhi, mainly in the North
of Sindh, and also by Hindu women.