The Sikh's Society in Zahedan and Their Multilingualism

The social state of the Sikh‟s society and their language(s) in Zahedan, located in southeastern Iran, are studied in this paper. The study communicates general information about the Sikhs in this city such as the formation of this society and their population in Zahedan, their social life, and the languages they speak; some of them resulted from the language contacts. The data was gathered by interviewing eight middle-aged Sikh males and from the Documents Center and National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Zahedan. The investigation reveals that almost a large number of Sikhs have migrated from India to Iran, for a better life, during the early years of the 20th century, and that different factors have gradually caused their population to decrease severely. The Sikhs have been prosperous sellers, and their social communication has been highly limited among themselves. Sikhs, who were already multilingual, have added the languages of Persian, Balochi, and the Sistani dialect, all spoken in Zahedan, to their list of multilinguality. Among these varieties, they can speak Persian, the dominant language, more fluently. The phenomenon of language contact has had a lexical influence on the Panjabi spoken by the Sikhs in Zahedan.