Languages of Pakistan: Full List With Speaker Percentages

Pakistan has 81 living languages. Urdu is the national language, and Punjabi is the most spoken, claimed as a mother tongue by 36.98% of the population per the 2023 census.

The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics recorded a mother tongue for every one of the 241,499,431 people counted in the 7th Population and Housing Census, the first digital census held in South Asia, and published the result in Table 4.14 of the National Census Report 2023. This article lists every language that census counted, the share and speaker number attached to each, the regions where each language concentrates, and the script each language is written in.

Languages of Pakistan by Share of Speakers

The table below ranks every mother tongue recorded in the 2023 census by its share of the population. All percentages come from Table 4.14 of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics National Census Report 2023.

Table 4.14 covers the four provinces and Islamabad Capital Territory. Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan were enumerated under a separate exercise, so speakers living inside those two territories are not carried in the national percentages above.

How Many Languages Are Spoken in Pakistan?

Pakistan has 81 living languages, 68 of them indigenous and 13 non-indigenous, according to Ethnologue. The 2023 census counted 14 named mother tongues and grouped the remainder under Others.

Ethnologue grades those languages by vitality. Four are institutional, 24 are developing, 30 are vigorous, 15 are in trouble, and 4 are dying. Weak institutional support places 18 indigenous languages in the endangered band, Brahui, Shina, and Burushaski among them.

The languages of Pakistan come from five separate groupings rather than one. Punjabi, Sindhi, Saraiki, Hindko, Kashmiri, Shina, and Kohistani are Indo-Aryan. Pashto and Balochi sit in the Iranian branch of Indo-European. Brahui is Dravidian. Balti is Tibetic and therefore Sino-Tibetan. Burushaski, spoken in Hunza and Nagar, is a language isolate with no proven relative anywhere in the world.

What Is the Most Spoken Language in Pakistan?

Punjabi is the most spoken language in Pakistan, recorded as the mother tongue of 36.98% of the population, or 88,915,544 people, per the 2023 census. Pashto ranks second at 18.15% and Sindhi third at 14.31% per the 2023 census.

Older pages claim that 60% of Pakistanis speak Punjabi. That number appears because those pages fold Saraiki and Hindko back into Punjabi and treat them as dialects. The census treats all three as separate mother tongues, and the three shares add to 51.30% per the 2023 census rather than 60%. Saraiki has held its own census category since 1981, and Hindko has been counted on its own line for decades.

Major Languages of Pakistan and Where They Are Spoken

Each language below carries its 2023 census share, its language family, the districts where it concentrates, and its writing system. Language boundaries track the provinces of Pakistan and their culture closely, so most of these languages map onto a single province.

Punjabi

Punjabi is the mother tongue of 36.98% of Pakistanis, or 88,915,544 speakers, per the 2023 census. Punjabi belongs to the Indo-Aryan family and concentrates in Punjab province, Islamabad, and the industrial districts of urban Sindh.

Majhi is the standard dialect, spoken around Lahore, Sialkot, and Gujranwala, and Punjabi publishing and broadcasting use Majhi as the reference variety. Pothwari covers Rawalpindi, Jhelum, and Chakwal. Jhangvi, Shahpuri, and Dhanni run through the central and western districts of the province.

Pakistani Punjabi is written in Shahmukhi, a Perso-Arabic script. Indian Punjabi uses Gurmukhi, which is why one spoken language appears in two alphabets across the border.

The Punjabi share fell from 38.78% in the 2017 census to 36.98% per the 2023 census, the largest single movement recorded between the two counts.

Pashto

Pashto is the mother tongue of 18.15% of Pakistanis, or 43,633,946 speakers, per the 2023 census. Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European family and is also one of the two official languages of Afghanistan.

Pashto concentrates in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the merged tribal districts, northern Balochistan around Quetta and Pishin, and the Pashtun neighbourhoods of Karachi. Northern speakers pronounce the name Pukhto and southern speakers say Pashto.

Pashto has three dialect groups. Northern Pashto covers Peshawar, Mardan, Swat, and eastern Afghanistan. Southern Pashto covers Quetta, Pishin, and Kandahar. Central Pashto covers Waziristan, Bannu, and Karak, all of which sit inside Pakistan.

Pashto uses a Perso-Arabic script extended with letters for the retroflex consonants that Arabic and Persian do not carry.

Sindhi

Sindhi is the mother tongue of 14.31% of Pakistanis, or 34,401,564 speakers, per the 2023 census. Sindhi is an Indo-Aryan language and the provincial language of Sindh, where it is a compulsory school subject.

Sindhi in Pakistan is written in a Perso-Arabic alphabet of 52 letters, standardised in 1853, which adds graphemes for the implosive and retroflex sounds Arabic script lacks. Sindhi communities in India also use Devanagari, and that second alphabet is the source of the frequent claim that Sindhi is written in two scripts.

Vicholi in central Sindh supplies the literary standard. Lari covers Karachi and the lower delta, Siroli covers upper Sindh, Thari and Thareli cover Tharparkar, Lasi is spoken in Lasbela district of Balochistan, and Kachhi is spoken across the border in Kutch.

Saraiki

Saraiki is the mother tongue of 12.00% of Pakistanis, or 28,849,579 speakers, per the 2023 census. Saraiki is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group and has been recorded as a separate mother tongue since the 1981 census rather than filed under Punjabi.

Saraiki covers southern Punjab from Multan, Bahawalpur, and Rahim Yar Khan through to Dera Ghazi Khan, plus Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the northern districts of Sindh, and the eastern edge of Balochistan. Older names for the same language include Multani, Riasti, Derawali, and Thalochi.

Saraiki uses a Perso-Arabic script carrying four extra letters for implosive consonants. The Sufi poetry of Khwaja Ghulam Farid forms the best known body of Saraiki literature.

Urdu

Urdu is the mother tongue of 9.25% of Pakistanis, or 22,249,307 speakers, per the 2023 census. Urdu native speakers concentrate in Karachi, Hyderabad, Islamabad, and the larger cities of Punjab, and Urdu serves as the working lingua franca everywhere else.

Urdu is the national language of Pakistan under Article 251 of the 1973 Constitution, which also permits English for official purposes until Urdu replaces it. A separate article sets out the history and legal position of the national language of Pakistan in full.

Urdu belongs to the Indo-Aryan family and layers Persian, Arabic, and Turkish vocabulary over an Indo-Aryan base. Urdu is written in the Nastaliq style of the Perso-Arabic script, which slopes each word downward and separates Urdu typography from Arabic and Persian at a glance.

Urdu was the only major language to gain ground between the two most recent counts, rising from 7.08% in the 2017 census to 9.25% per the 2023 census.

Balochi

Balochi is the mother tongue of 3.38% of Pakistanis, or 8,117,795 speakers, per the 2023 census. Balochi belongs to the Northwestern Iranian branch of the Indo-European family, which places Balochi closer to Kurdish than to Punjabi or Sindhi.

Balochi covers most of Balochistan, the coastal districts of Sindh, and the western neighbourhoods of Karachi. Balochi speakers also live in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and the Gulf states.

Balochi has three dialect zones, and their geography is often reported backwards. Eastern Balochi is spoken inside Pakistan across the Marri, Bugti, and Mazari tribal belt, Sibi, Dera Ghazi Khan, and upper Sindh. Western Balochi, also called Rakhshani, runs through Kharan, Chagai, and Noshki and continues into Iran and Afghanistan. Southern Balochi, also called Makrani, follows the Makran coast through Gwadar, Turbat, and Pasni.

Balochi has been written in a Perso-Arabic script since the middle of the twentieth century. The Balochi share rose from 3.02% in the 2017 census to 3.38% per the 2023 census.

Hindko

Hindko is the mother tongue of 2.32% of Pakistanis, or 5,590,559 speakers, per the 2023 census. Hindko is a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group and is not a dialect of Sindhi, a claim that circulates widely and has no basis in the classification of either language.

Hindko sits in the same Lahnda cluster as Saraiki and shares a long contact zone with Punjabi. Sindhi belongs to a different branch of Indo-Aryan and is separated from Hindko by roughly a thousand kilometres of Saraiki and Punjabi speaking territory.

Hindko speakers, called Hindkowans, concentrate in the Hazara division districts of Abbottabad, Mansehra, and Haripur, in Peshawar city, in Kohat, and in Attock district of Punjab. Hazara Hindko in the north and the Peshawari and Kohati varieties in the south are the two main forms.

Hindko is written in a Perso-Arabic script, and the Gandhara Hindko Board in Peshawar publishes dictionaries and literature in the language.

Brahui

Brahui is the mother tongue of 1.16% of Pakistanis, or 2,778,670 speakers, per the 2023 census. Brahui belongs to the Northern Dravidian branch and is the only Dravidian language spoken in Pakistan, which corrects the common description of Brahui as an Indo-Iranian language.

Brahui concentrates in central Balochistan around Kalat, Khuzdar, Mastung, and Nushki, with smaller communities in Sindh, Iran, and Afghanistan. The nearest related Dravidian languages sit more than 1,500 kilometres away in southern India, which leaves Brahui isolated among Indo-Iranian neighbours.

Brahui has borrowed heavily from Balochi and Sindhi and is written in a Perso-Arabic script. Ethnologue classes Brahui as endangered because the language carries almost no institutional support.

Smaller Languages Counted for the First Time in 2023

The 2023 census added five mother tongues that earlier counts never listed on their own line. The five additions and their shares per the 2023 census are listed below.

• Mewati holds 0.46% and 1,094,219 speakers per the 2023 census, used by Meo communities in Punjab and Sindh.
• Kohistani holds 0.43% and 1,039,007 speakers per the 2023 census, used across the Indus Kohistan districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
• Shina holds 0.05% and 116,951 speakers per the 2023 census, a Dardic language of Gilgit-Baltistan and the Kohistan belt.
• Balti holds 0.02% and 52,134 speakers per the 2023 census, a Tibetic language of Skardu, Shigar, and Khaplu.
• Kalasha holds under 0.01% and 7,466 speakers per the 2023 census, used in the Kalash valleys of Chitral.

Kashmiri was counted before 2023 and stands at 0.11% with 274,080 speakers per the 2023 census. The Others category holds 1.39% and 3,337,268 speakers per the 2023 census, covering Burushaski, Khowar, Torwali, Gujari, Wakhi, Memoni, Dhatki, Gujarati, and Bengali among many more.

Which Is the Sweetest Language in Pakistan?

Saraiki is the language Pakistanis name most often as the sweetest, followed by Urdu and Punjabi. No linguistic measurement ranks sweetness, so the order below reflects how speakers and Pakistani media commonly rank the languages, with the feature each language is praised for.

1. Saraiki carries soft address forms such as saeen and meda, and a Sufi poetry tradition that gives the language its wide reputation for sweetness.
2. Urdu draws its reputation from Nastaliq calligraphy and a ghazal tradition built on Persian vocabulary.
3. Punjabi earns the label through the folk verse of Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah and through its open vowel endings.
4. Sindhi is tied to the poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai and to a large inventory of vowel sounds.
5. Hindko is described as softer than neighbouring Punjabi because Hindko drops several hard consonant clusters.
6. Kashmiri is named for its pitch pattern and a long tradition of devotional verse.
7. Balochi is cited for rhythmic oral epics and a long ballad form carried by professional singers.
8. Pashto is named for the landay, a two line couplet form recited across Pashtun households.
9. Shina is noted for the melodic tone of Gilgit-Baltistan folk singing.
10. Balti is named for a Tibetic sound system unlike anything else spoken in the country.

The sweetest-language label rests on public perception rather than measurement. No census body and no linguistic authority ranks one Pakistani language as sweeter than another.

How Pakistan’s Language Shares Changed Between 2017 and 2023

Nine languages appear in both the 2017 and the 2023 counts, and the table below shows how each share moved. Both columns come from Table 4.14 of the National Census Report 2023.

Urdu and Balochi were the only two languages to gain share. The Urdu rise of 2.17 percentage points tracks urban migration and the growing number of households that raise children in Urdu instead of a regional language. The Punjabi fall of 1.80 percentage points is the largest movement in the table.

Any page still quoting the 2017 shares, or the older figures from the 1998 count, is describing a Pakistan that the census has already replaced. Language statistics published before August 2023 do not reflect the current numbers.

FAQs About the Languages of Pakistan

What are the top three languages spoken in Pakistan?

Punjabi, Pashto, and Sindhi are the top three. Punjabi holds 36.98%, Pashto holds 18.15%, and Sindhi holds 14.31% of mother-tongue speakers per the 2023 census.

Is Hindko a dialect of Sindhi?

No. Hindko is a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda group and sits closer to Punjabi and Saraiki. Sindhi belongs to a different branch of Indo-Aryan and is a separate language.

Are Urdu and Hindi the same language?

Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible in speech and share a grammar, but the two use different scripts and different formal vocabulary. Urdu uses the Perso-Arabic script and Hindi uses Devanagari.

Are Urdu and Arabic similar?

Urdu borrows heavily from Arabic vocabulary and uses a script derived from Arabic, but the two languages are unrelated. Urdu belongs to the Indo-Aryan family and Arabic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family.

Do people speak Farsi in Pakistan?

Farsi is spoken by a small minority in Pakistan, mainly Afghan-origin and Hazara families in Quetta. Farsi served as the court language of the Mughal Empire but holds no official role in Pakistan today.

Which languages are spoken in Gilgit-Baltistan?

Shina, Balti, Burushaski, Wakhi, and Khowar are the main languages of Gilgit-Baltistan. Shina is the most widespread of the five, and Burushaski has no known relative in any language family.

Last Thoughts on the Languages of Pakistan

The 2023 census settles the questions that older pages about the languages of Pakistan answer badly. Punjabi leads at 36.98%, Pashto follows at 18.15%, and Sindhi takes third at 14.31% per the 2023 census, while Saraiki and Hindko stand as separate mother tongues rather than Punjabi dialects. Brahui is Dravidian, Balti is Tibetic, and Burushaski belongs to no family at all, which gives Pakistan one of the more varied linguistic maps in Asia for its size. Every figure on this page comes from Table 4.14 of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics National Census Report 2023, so these numbers replace the 1998 and 2017 figures still circulating elsewhere. Language policy and the education system of Pakistan decide which of these 81 living languages reach a classroom, and 15 of them are already classed as in trouble.