Urdu is the national language and the lingua franca of Pakistan, and while sharing official status with English, it is the preferred and dominant language used for inter-communication between different ethnic groups.[2][3] Numerous regional languages are spoken as first languages by Pakistan's various ethnolinguistic groups.
The 2022 edition of Ethnologue lists 80 established languages in Pakistan. Of these, 68 are indigenous and 12 are non-indigenous. In terms of their vitality, 4 are classified as 'institutional', 24 are 'developing', 30 are 'vigorous', 15 are 'in trouble', and 4 are 'dying'.[7]
Urdu (اردو) is the national language (قومی زبان) and lingua franca of Pakistan.[14] According to the 2023 census, only about 9.25% of Pakistanis reported it as their first language. However, it is widely spoken and understood as a second language across the country and serves as a symbol of national identity for all the Pakistanis.[15][16]
Urdu was chosen as a symbol of unity for the new state of Pakistan in 1947, because the linguistic patriotism of Indian Muslims over Urdu played a significant role in the formation of Pakistan, and it also had already served as a lingua franca among Muslims in north and northwest British India.[17] It is written, spoken and used in all provinces/territories of Pakistan, and together with English as the main languages of instruction,[18] although the people from differing provinces may have different native languages.[19]
Urdu is taught as a compulsory subject up to higher secondary school in both English and Urdu medium school systems, which has produced millions of second-language Urdu speakers among people whose native language is one of the other languages of Pakistan – which in turn has led to the absorption of vocabulary from various regional Pakistani languages,[20] while some Urdu vocabularies has also been assimilated by Pakistan's regional languages.[21][22]
English is a co-official language of Pakistan and is widely used in the executive, legislative and judicial branches as well as to some extent in the officer ranks of Pakistan's armed forces. Pakistan's Constitution and laws were written in English and are now being re-written in the local languages. It is also widely used in schools, colleges and universities as a medium of instruction. English is seen as the language of upward mobility, and its use is becoming more prevalent in upper social circles, where it is often spoken alongside native Pakistani languages. In 2015, it was announced that there were plans to promote Urdu in official business, but Pakistan's Minister of Planning Ahsan Iqbal stated, "Urdu will be a second medium of language and all official business will be bilingual." He also went on to say that English would be taught alongside Urdu in schools.[23]
Punjabi (پنجابی) is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the Punjab province of Pakistan, with the prominent dialect being the Majhi dialect, written in the Shahmukhi script. Punjabi is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan. It is spoken as a first language by 36.98% of Pakistanis.[6] The language is spoken among a significant overseas diaspora, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Punjabi is unusual among the Indo-Aryan languages and the broader Indo-European language family in its usage of lexical tone.[24]
Pashto (پښتو) is an Iranian language spoken as a first language by more than 18.15% of Pakistanis, mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in northern Balochistan as well as in ethnic Pashtun communities in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi and most notably Karachi,[25][26][27][28] which may have the largest Pashtun population of any city in the world.[29] There are three major dialect patterns within which the various individual dialects may be classified; these are the Pakhto variety of Northern (Peshawar) variety, the southern Pashto spoken in the vicinity of Quetta, and the Wanetsi or Tareeno variety of northern Balochistan.
Sindhi (سنڌي) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken as a first language by almost 15% of Pakistanis, mostly in the Sindh province of Pakistan. The name "Sindhi" is derived from Sindhu, the original name of the Indus River.[30]
Like other languages of this family, Sindhi has passed through Old Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) and Middle Indo-Aryan (Pali, secondary Prakrits, and Apabhramsha) stages of growth. 20th century Western scholars such as George Abraham Grierson believed that Sindhi descended specifically from the Vrācaḍa dialect of Apabhramsha (described by Markandeya as being spoken in Sindhu-deśa) but later work has shown this to be unlikely.[31] It entered the New Indo-Aryan stage around the 10th century CE.[32][33]
The six major known dialects of the Sindhi language are Siroli, Vicholi, Lari, Thari, Lasi and Kutchi.[34]
Saraiki (سرائیکی) is an Indo Aryan language of the Lahnda group spoken in central and southeastern Pakistan, primarily in the southern part of the province of Punjab. Saraiki is to a high degree mutually intelligible with Standard Punjabi[35] and is coshares with it a large portion of its vocabulary and morphology. At the same time in its phonology it is radically different.[36]
Balochi (بلوچی) is an Iranian language spoken as a first language by about 3% of Pakistanis, mostly in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. Rakshani is the major dialect group in terms of numbers. Sarhaddi is a sub-dialect of Rakshani. Other sub-dialects are Kalati (Qalati), Chagai-Kharani and Panjguri. Eastern Hill Balochi or Northern Balochi is very different from the rest.
Hindko (ہندکو) is an Indo-Aryan language group of Lahnda spoken in several discontinuous areas in northwestern Pakistan, primarily in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.Hindko is mutually intelligible with Punjabi and Saraiki,[38]The word Hindko, commonly used to refer to a number of Indo-Aryan languages spoken in the neighbourhood of Pashto, likely originally meant "the Indian language" (in contrast to Pashto).[39] An alternative local name for this language group is Hindki.[40][f]
Vulnerable - "most children speak the language, but it may be restricted to certain domains (e.g., home)"
Definitely endangered – "children no longer learn the language as mother tongue in the home"
Severely endangered – "language is spoken by grandparents and older generations; while the parent generation may understand it, they do not speak it to children or among themselves"
Critically endangered – "the youngest speakers are grandparents and older, and they speak the language partially and infrequently"
Extinct – "there are no speakers left; included in the Atlas if presumably extinct since the 1950s"
The list below includes the findings from the third edition of Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (2010; formerly the Red Book of Endangered Languages), as well as the online edition of the aforementioned publication, both published by UNESCO.[44]
Arabic is used as a religious language by Muslims. The Quran, Sunnah, Hadith and Muslim theology is taught in Arabic with Urdu translation. Arabic is taught as a religious language in mosques, schools, colleges, universities and madrassahs. A majority of Pakistan's Muslim population has had some form of formal or informal education in the reading, writing and pronunciation of Arabic as part of their religious education. However, Pakistanis do not speak Arabic.[46]
Arabic is mentioned in the constitution of Pakistan. It declares in article 31 No. 2 that "The State shall endeavour, as respects the Muslims of Pakistan (a) to make the teaching of the Holy Quran and Islamiat compulsory, to encourage and facilitate the learning of Arabic language ..."[47]
The National Education Policy 2017 declares in article 3.7.4 that: "Arabic as compulsory part will be integrated in Islamiyat from Middle to Higher Secondary level to enable the students to understand the Holy Quran." Furthermore, it specifies in article 3.7.6: "Arabic as elective subject shall be offered properly at Secondary and Higher Secondary level with Arabic literature and grammar in its course to enable the learners to have command in the language." This law is also valid for private schools as it defines in article 3.7.12: "The curriculum in Islamiyat, Arabic and Moral Education of public sector will be adopted by the private institutions to make uniformity in the society."[48]
Persian was the official of the region up until the late 19th century when the English passed several laws to replace it with local languages. Persian had a long history in the lands of Pakistan and was the cultural language of the erstwhile Mughal Empire, a continuation since the introduction of the language by Central AsianTurkic invaders who migrated into the Indian Subcontinent,[49] and the patronisation of it by the earlier Turko-Persian Delhi Sultanate. Persian was officially abolished as a language of administration with the arrival of the British: in Sindh in 1843 and in Punjab in 1849.
Today the eastern Dari dialect of Persian is spoken by refugees from Afghanistan and a small number of local Balochistani Hazara community. A larger number of Pakistani Hazaras speak Hazaragi dialect.[50] In the Madaklasht valley of Chitral, the Madaklashti dialect of Tajik Persian is spoken by the descendants of ironmongers from Badakhshan who settled there in the eighteenth century.
Foreign languages
As of 2017[update] some Pakistanis are learning Mandarin to do business with companies from the People's Republic of China.[51]
Classification
Indo-Iranian
Most of the languages of Pakistan belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.[52][53] The common ancestor of all of the languages in this family is called Proto-Indo-Iranian—also known as Common Aryan—which was spoken in approximately the late 3rd millennium BC. The three branches of the modern Indo-Iranian languages are Indo-Aryan, Iranian, and Nuristani. A fourth independent branch, Dardic, was previously posited, but recent scholarship in general places Dardic languages as archaic members of the Indo-Aryan branch.[54]
Indo-Aryan
Majority of the languages spoken in eastern regions of Pakistan belong to the Indo-Aryan group.
Majority of the languages spoken in western regions of Pakistan belong to the Iranic group. There are several dialects continuums in this family as well: Balochi, which includes Eastern, Western and Southern Balochi;[62] and Pashto, and includes Northern, Central, and Southern Pashto.[63]
Other
The following three languages of Pakistan are not part of the Indo-European language family:
Brahui (spoken in central Balochistan province) is a Dravidian language. Its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by Balochi. It is an individual language in the Dravidian language family and does not belong to any subgrouping in that language family.
Burushaski (spoken in Hunza, Nagar, Yasin, and Ishkoman valleys in Gilgit–Baltistan) is a language isolate with no indigenous written script and instead currently uses Urdu script, based on the Perso-Arabic script.
An English-Urdu bilingual sign at the archaeological site of Sirkap, near Taxila. The Urdu says: (right to left) دو سروں والے عقاب کی شبيہ والا مندر, dō sarōñ wālé u'qāb kī shabīh wāla mandir. "The temple with the image of the eagle with two heads."
Most languages of Pakistan are written in the Perso-Arabic script. The Mughal Empire adopted Persian as the court language during their rule over South Asia as did their predecessors, such as the Ghaznavids. During this time, the Nastaʿlīq style of the Perso-Arabic script came into widespread use in South Asia, and the influence remains to this day. In Pakistan, almost everything in Urdu is written in the script, concentrating the greater part of Nastaʿlīq usage in the world.
The phrase zubān-e-Urdū-e-muʿallā ("the language of the exalted camp") written in Nastaʿlīq script[65]Lashkari Zabān title in Naskh script
Sindhi adopted a variant of the Persian alphabet as well, in the 19th century. The script is used in Pakistan today, albeit unlike most other native languages of Pakistan, the Naskh style is more common for Sindhi writing than the Nasta'liq style. It has a total of 52 letters, augmenting the Urdu with digraphs and eighteen new letters (ڄ ٺ ٽ ٿ ڀ ٻ ڙ ڍ ڊ ڏ ڌ ڇ ڃ ڦ ڻ ڱ ڳ ڪ) for sounds particular to Sindhi and other Indo-Aryan languages. Some letters that are distinguished in Arabic or Persian are homophones in Sindhi.
Usually, bare transliterations of Urdu into Roman letters, Roman Urdu, omit many phonemic elements that have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the Latin script.[citation needed] The National Language Authority of Pakistan has developed a number of systems with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but these can only be properly read by someone already familiar with Urdu.
Maps
This is a series of maps which shows the distribution of different languages in Pakistan as of the 2017 Pakistan Census. These all refer to the mother tongues of individuals only.
^ abUrdu and English have official status all around the country under the provisions of the Pakistani constitution
^Sindh's official language is Sindhi. It is the only province in the country that has its own official language, alongside the nationally official languages Urdu and English
^The term Hindki normally refers to a Hindko speaker and Shackle (1980, p. 482) reports that in Pashto the term has slightly pejorative connotations, which are avoided with the recently introduced term Hindkūn.
^Division, Population Census Organisation Statistics; Pakistan, Government of; Islamabad (December 1981). 1981 Census Report of Pakistan. Population Census Organisation Statistics Division, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad.
^Muzaffar, Sharmin; Behera, Pitambar (2014). "Error analysis of the Urdu verb markers: a comparative study on Google and Bing machine translation platforms". Aligarh Journal of Linguistics. 4 (1–2): 1. Modern Standard Urdu, a register of the Hindustani language, is the national language, lingua-franca and is one of the two official languages along with English in Pakistan and is spoken in all over the world. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages and officially recognized languages in the Constitution of India and has been conferred the status of the official language in many Indian states of Bihar, Telangana, Jammu, and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and New Delhi. Urdu is one of the members of the new or modern Indo-Aryan language group within the Indo-European family of languages.
^"PAKISTAN". Official U.S. Marine Corps. Archived from the original on 31 January 2022. Retrieved 10 May 2022.
^"EDUCATION SYSTEM PROFILES Education in Pakistan". World Education Services. 25 February 2020. English has been the main language of instruction at the elementary and secondary levels since colonial times. It remains the predominant language of instruction in private schools but has been increasingly replaced with Urdu in public schools. Punjab province, for example, recently announced that it will begin to use Urdu as the exclusive medium of instruction in schools beginning in 2020. Depending on the location and predominantly in rural areas, regional languages are used as well, particularly in elementary education. The language of instruction in higher education is mostly English, but some programs and institutions teach in Urdu.
^Bhatia, Tej (1999). "Lexican Anaphors and Pronouns in Punjabi". In Lust, Barbara; Gair, James (eds.). Lexical Anaphors and Pronouns in Selected South Asian Languages. Walter de Gruyter. p. 637. ISBN978-3-11-014388-1. Other tonal Indo-Aryan languages include Hindko, Dogri, Western Pahari, Sylheti and some Dardic languages.
^Marian Rengel Pakistan: A Primary Source Cultural Guide page 38 ISBN0823940012, 9780823940011
^Mukhtar Ahmed Ancient Pakistan - an Archaeological History pages 6-7 ISBN1495966437, 9781495966439
^Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World (page 283)
^Burde, Jayant (2004). Rituals, Mantras, and Science: An Integral Perspective. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. p. 3. ISBN978-81-208-2053-1. The Aryans spoke an Indo-European language sometimes called the Vedic language from which have descended Sanskrit and other Indic languages ... Prakrit was a group of variants which developed alongside Sanskrit.
^Jain, Danesh; Cardona, George (26 July 2007). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. p. 163. ISBN978-1-135-79711-9. ... a number of their morphophonological and lexical features betray the fact that they are not direct continuations of R̥gvedic Sanskrit, the main base of 'Classical' Sanskrit; rather they descend from dialects which, despite many similarities, were different from R̥gvedic and in some regards even more archaic.
^Chamber's Encyclopaedia, Volume 7. International Learnings Systems. 1968. Most Aryan languages of India and Pakistan belong to the Indo-Aryan family, and are descended from Sanskrit through the intermediate stage of Prakrit. The Indo-Aryan languages are by far the most important numerically and the territory occupied by them extends over the whole of northern and central India and reaches as far south as Goa.
Rahman, Tariq (1996) Language and Politics of Pakistan Karachi: Oxford University Press. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2007.
Rahman, Tariq (2002) Language, Ideology and Power: Language-learning among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India Karachi: Oxford University Press. Rev.ed. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2008.
Rahman, Tariq (2011) From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History Karachi: Oxford University Press.
Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2017). "Pahari-Potwari". Ethnologue (20 ed.). (access limited).
Rensch, Calvin R. (1992). "The Language Environment of Hindko-Speaking People". In O'Leary, Clare F.; Rensch, Calvin R.; Hallberg, Calinda E. (eds.). Hindko and Gujari. Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan. Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguistics. ISBN969-8023-13-5.
