Orthography

The orthographic issues of Balochi have always been in debate among Baloch linguists, scholars, writers, language activists, etc. Several orthographies in Roman and Arabic scripts have been created in the last six decades. Even though Sayed Zahoor Shah Hashmi's Arabic based orthography does not represent all of the Balochi vowels and nasal consonants, it has become the most widely used but non-standard orthography in the Balochi language. The absence of a standard orthography leads several writers to use their own ways of spelling some words out.

Some modifications to the Hashmi's orthography have been proposed by a group of Baloch linguists, scholars and writers, but have not been distributed to a broad group of users for a consensus and are yet to be accepted by all of the stakeholders. Until the newer version of the orthography is accepted, this dictionary uses the current orthography.

This orthography does include some borrowed Arabic letters for consonantal sounds which are used in Arabic borrowed words such as names of people and places.

The Balochi-to-English part of the dictionary is arranged alphabetically according to the following order.

آ، ا،  ب، پ، ت، ٹ، ث، ج، چ، ح، خ، د، ڈ، ر، ز، س، ش، ص،ض، ط، ظ، ع، غ، ف، ق، ک، گ، ل، م، ن، و، ء، ہ، ی، ے