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Sindhis of Malaysia
A Sociolinguistic Study
By Maya Khemlani David
December 2001
Asean Academic Press
ISBN: 1-901919-13-7
213 pages, Illustrated, 5 3/4" x 8 3/4"
$77.50 hardcover
This sociolinguistic study of the Sindhi-Hindu community in Malaysia investigates language maintenance and shift of this group. The Sindhis are an urban, ethnolinguistic minority comprising less than a thousand people in multilingual Malaysia. The author provides a detailed ethnography of communication in Sindhi homes in choice preferences and code switching strategies. This study offers a substantial amount of systematically intra-community interactions and in the public domain is investigated. The Sindhi community has shifted from Sindhi to an international language, English and, to some extent, Malay. However, the Sindhi language still has some functional uses and Sindhi words are retained in mixed English-Malay speech. This shift reflects the utilitarian and pragmatic attitude of this upwardly-mobile community.
Linguistics; Sociology