Abstract :
During the course of History Sindhi has been able to assimilate hordes of words, terms and ideas from the concurrent languages. But during the course of years since Urdu was adopted as the sole national language of Pakistan the extent and degree of bilingualism has increased rapidly in Sindh, with exposure to Urdu involving most sections of the speech community. Suffice it to say; today in the urban areas of Sindh, virtually every one has a command of Urdu. The paper investigates the extent of linguistic change in Sindhi speech community as a result of bilingualism, taking linguistic variable diphthongs (au) and (ai) in account and their correlation with social variables of age and education. The study investigates the change in Sindhi spoken in two different speech communities in a province of Pakistan, Sindh. One is urban, the other rural. By an analysis of the speech of the urban area, Hyderabad, and the rural community, Old Hala, it is hoped to investigate linguistic change in both speech communities and effect a comparison of the two sets of changes.
