Languages of Pakistan (Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu)
The main language families in Pakistan are Indo-Aryan, Iranian,
Dravidian and Nuristani. Most of the languages of Pakistan are part of
the family of Indo-European languages and span the Indo-Iranian range of
that family with the Indo-Aryan languages predominant in the east and
the Iranian languages the most significant in the west as well as Dardic
languages in the north and northwest. English can mainly be heard with a
few other languages. Officially Pakistan has 80 spoken tongues in the
country excluding Urdu and English.
Punjabi is spoken as a first language by ~44% of Pakistanis,
mostly in Punjab as well as by a large number of people in Karachi. It
is an important language since Punjabi is spoken by about half of
Pakistanis. However, Punjabi does not have any official status in
Pakistan. The exact numbers of Punjabi speakers in Pakistan is hard to
find since there are many dialects/languages, such as Saraiki, which
some regard as part of Punjabi and others regard as separate language.
Punjabi is spoken by almost 60% of the population in Pakistan. The
standard Punjabi dialects is from Lahore, Sialkot, Gujranwala and
Sheikhupura districts of the Pakistani Punjab which was used by Waris
Shah (1722–1798) in his famous book "Heer" and is also now days language
of Punjabi literature, film and music; such as Lollywood. Other dialects
are Multani or Saraiki in West and South, Pothowari in North, Dogri in
the Kashmir areas and Shahpuri in Sargodha area.
Sindhi is spoken as a first language by 14% of Pakistanis, in
Sindh and parts of Balochistan. Sindhi has very rich literature and is
used in schools. Sindhi language contains Arabic words and is affected
by Arabic language to a great extent. The reason being Arab ruled Sindh
for more than 150 years. Muhammad bin Qasim entered Sindh and conquered
it in 712 AD. He remained here for three years and set up Arabic rule in
the area. According to historians, the social fabric of Sindh comprises
elements of Arabic society. Sindhi is spoken in Pakistan and is also one
of the constitutional languages of India. It is spoken by about 20
million people in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh, and by about
2½ million more across the border in India. In Pakistan it is written in
the Arabic script with several additional letters to accommodate special
sounds. The largest Sindhi-speaking city is Hyderabad, Pakistan. Sindhi
literature is also spiritual in nature and Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai
(1689–1752) was one of its legendary poets who wrote Sassi Punnun, Umar
Marvi in his famous book "Shah Jo Risalo".
Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It developed under Persian and to a lesser degree Arabic and Turkic influence on apabhramshas during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire (1526–1858 AD) in South Asia.
Standard Urdu has approximately the twentieth largest population of native speakers, among all languages. It is the national language of Pakistan as well as one of the 23 official languages of India.
Urdu is often contrasted
with Hindi, another standardised form of Hindustani. The main differences
between the two are that Standard Urdu is conventionally written in Nastaliq
calligraphy style of the Perso-Arabic script and draws vocabulary more
heavily from Persian and Arabic than Hindi, while Standard Hindi is conventionally
written in Devanagari and draws vocabulary from Sanskrit comparatively
more heavily. Linguists nonetheless consider Urdu and Hindi to be two
standardized forms of the same language.[5]
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