Sindlish is a new programming language that lets developers write code using Sindhi keywords instead of English. The project, available as open source with a VS Code extension, targets the more than 30 million Sindhi speakers worldwide who have been locked out of mainstream programming by the English-language barrier. It is not a toy. Sindlish includes a bytecode virtual machine, a native object model, and memory management designed for production use.

The language uses Roman Sindhi keywords. You write likh to print, agar for if, kaam for function, lafz for string, and adad for number. The syntax is familiar to anyone who has used C-style languages, but the vocabulary is Sindhi. A hello world program in Sindlish reads like a sentence in the language its speakers actually think in.

kaam salam() {
  likh("Bhale Kare Aya!")
}

agar (sach) {
  salam()
}

The point is not to replace English keywords with Sindhi ones for novelty. The point is that English proficiency is a prerequisite for learning to program in virtually every mainstream language. For millions of Sindhi speakers, that prerequisite creates an unnecessary barrier. Sindlish removes it.

Why a Sindhi programming language matters

Sindhi is spoken by more than 30 million people, primarily in Pakistan and India. It has a rich literary tradition and a large diaspora. But it has no presence in the programming language ecosystem. Every mainstream language uses English keywords, English documentation, and English community forums. If you do not speak English, your options for learning to program are severely limited.

This is not a new problem. Projects like Hindi Python, Arabic programming languages, and others have attempted to address it before. Most remain experimental or abandoned. Sindlish takes a different approach by building a complete language with modern tooling instead of just translating an existing language's keywords.

The educational focus is deliberate. Sindlish is designed for students who want to learn programming concepts without first mastering English. Variables, conditionals, loops, functions, and object-oriented programming all work the same way they do in other languages. The logic transfers. The syntax transfers. Only the vocabulary changes.

What is under the hood

Sindlish is not a thin wrapper around another language. It includes a custom bytecode virtual machine optimized for rapid instruction processing and complex logic. The VM handles execution, and the native object system uses protocol-based dispatch for fast object interaction. Memory management is handled natively, preventing leaks in long-running processes.

These are the components that determine whether a language can be used for real work or remains a proof of concept. A bytecode VM means Sindlish compiles to an intermediate representation before execution, which is faster than interpreting source code line by line. Protocol-based dispatch is how languages like Rust and Go handle polymorphism efficiently. Native memory management means the language tracks allocations and deallocations without relying on a garbage collector that might pause execution unpredictably.

The execution layer is designed for performance and reliability. For a language targeting education, this matters more than it might seem. Students learning to program do not want to wait for slow execution or deal with crashes caused by memory issues in the runtime itself. Sindlish aims to provide a smooth experience from the first line of code.

The developer experience

Sindlish ships with a VS Code extension that provides syntax highlighting through a custom TextMate grammar. The grammar maps Sindlish keywords and operators specifically, so you get proper highlighting for likh, agar, kaam, and the rest instead of generic text coloring. The extension includes native error handling that surfaces problems clearly in the editor.

The documentation is written in Roman Sindhi, not English. This is a small decision with large implications. Most programming documentation assumes English literacy. Tutorials explain concepts in English, code comments are in English, and community discussions happen in English. Sindlish breaks that assumption by meeting its audience where they are.

The project is open source, which means the community can contribute to the language, the tooling, and the documentation. For a language targeting a specific linguistic community, open source is essential. The people who will use Sindlish are the best positioned to improve it, and the AGPL-3.0 license ensures that improvements remain available to everyone.

What Sindlish is not

Sindlish is not competing with Python, JavaScript, or Rust for production workloads. It is not trying to replace English as the language of software engineering. It is filling a gap that the industry has ignored: the gap between knowing how to think logically and knowing how to express that logic in English keywords.

For Sindhi-speaking students, that gap is the difference between learning to program and never starting. Sindlish does not solve every problem in programming education. It solves the language barrier, which is the first and largest obstacle for millions of potential developers.

The project also does not pretend that learning English is unnecessary for a career in software. English remains the dominant language of documentation, Stack Overflow, and open-source collaboration. But there is a difference between learning English as a professional skill and requiring English as a prerequisite for understanding what a loop does. Sindlish addresses the second, not the first.

Where this fits in the broader movement

Programming has been an English-dominated field since its inception. The keywords, the documentation, the communities, the conferences, all English. This has worked well for the English-speaking world and created friction for everyone else. Projects like Sindlish are part of a growing movement to change that.

The technical implementation matters here. Sindlish is not just translating Python keywords into Sindhi. It is building a language from scratch with its own VM, its own object model, and its own memory management. That gives it the foundation to grow beyond an educational tool into something that can support real applications if the community decides to take it there.

For developers who speak Sindhi or who work with Sindhi-speaking teams, Sindlish is worth exploring. For the broader programming community, it is a reminder that the English assumptions baked into our tools and languages are not inevitable. They are choices, and they can be made differently.