The Balochi vowel system has at least eight vowels: five long and three short. These are,,,,,, and. The short vowels have more centralized phonetic quality than the long vowels. The variety spoken in Karachi also has nasalized vowels, most importantly and.
Consonants
The following table shows consonants which are common to both Northern and Southern Balochi. The consonants /s/, /z/, /n/, /ɾ/ and /l/ are articulated as alveolar in Western Balochi. The plosives /t/ and /d/ are dental in both dialects.
Labial
Dental
Alveolar
Retroflex
Palato- alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
Stop
Affricate
Fricative
Tap
Nasal
Approximant
;Notes In addition, occurs in a few words in Southern Balochi. in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to in Western Balochi; and in some loanwords in Southern Balochi corresponding to in Western Balochi. In Eastern Balochi, it is noted that the stop and glide consonants may also occur as aspirated allophones in word initial position as and. Allophones of stops in postvocalic position include for voiceless stops, and for voiced stops. are also dentalized as.
There are two main dialects: the dialect of the Mandwani tribes and the dialect of the Domki tribes. The dialectal differences are not very significant. One difference is that grammatical terminations in the northern dialect are less distinct compared with those in the southern tribes. An isolated dialect is Koroshi, which is spoken in the Qashqai tribal confederation in the Fars province. Koroshi distinguishes itself in grammar and lexicon among Balochi varieties.
Writing system
Balochi was not a written language before the 19th century, and the Persian script was used to write Balochi wherever necessary. However, Balochi was still spoken at the Baloch courts. British colonial officers first wrote Balochi with the Latin script. Following the creation of Pakistan, Baloch scholars adopted the Persian alphabet. The first collection of poetry in Balochi, Gulbang by Mir Gul Khan Nasir was published in 1951 and incorporated the Arabic Script. It was much later that Sayad Zahoor Shah Hashemi wrote a comprehensive guidance on the usage of Arabic script and standardized it as the Balochi Orthography in Pakistan and Iran. This earned him the title of the 'Father of Balochi'. His guidelines are widely used in Eastern and Western Balochistan. In Afghanistan, Balochi is still written in a modified Arabic script based on Persian. In 2002, a conference was held to help standardise the script that would be used for Balochi.
Orthography
The following alphabet was used by Syed Zahoor Shah Hashmi in his lexicon of Balochi Sayad Ganj . آ، ا، ب، پ، ت، ٹ، ج، چ، د، ڈ، ر، ز، ژ، س، ش، ک، گ، ل، م، ن، و، ھ ہ، ء، ی ے
