Pakistan is a multilingual country with over 70 languages spoken as first languages .[3] [4] The majority of Pakistan's languages belong to the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family .[5] [6]
[7]
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.[3] [4] Numerous regional languages are spoken as first languages by Pakistan's various ethnolinguistic groups . Languages with more than a million speakers each include Punjabi , Pashto , Sindhi , Saraiki (Punjabi variety [e] ), Urdu , Balochi , Hindko (Punjabi variety[f] ) and Brahui .[8] There are approximately 60 local languages with fewer than a million speakers.[10]
^ "Article: 251 National language" . Retrieved 23 July 2018 .
^ Singh, Shashank, and Shailendra Singh. "Systematic review of spell-checkers for highly inflectional languages." Artificial Intelligence Review 53.6 (2020): 4051-4092.
^ a b Ashraf, Hina (22 March 2022). "The ambivalent role of Urdu and English in multilingual Pakistan: a Bourdieusian study" . Language Policy . 22 (1): 25–48. doi :10.1007/s10993-022-09623-6 . ISSN 1573-1863 . PMC 8939399 . PMID 35340722 .
^ a b Ashraf, Muhammad Azeem; Turner, David A.; Laar, Rizwan Ahmed (January 2021). "Multilingual Language Practices in Education in Pakistan: The Conflict Between Policy and Practice" . SAGE Open . 11 (1): 215824402110041. doi :10.1177/21582440211004140 . ISSN 2158-2440 . S2CID 232484396 .
^ Rengel, Marian (15 December 2003). Pakistan: A Primary Source Cultural Guide . The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-8239-4001-1 .
^ Kachru, Braj B.; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S. N. (27 March 2008). Language in South Asia . Cambridge University Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-139-46550-2 .
^ Ur Rehman, Shahzaib. "Pakistan Language" . Our Pakistan . Ourpakistan. Retrieved 18 June 2024 .
^ "POPULATION BY MOTHER TONGUE, SEX AND RURAL/ URBAN" (PDF) . www.pbs.gov.pk . Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
^ "Endangered Languages Project - Torwali - Challenges to the linguistic diversity of North Pakistan" . www.endangeredlanguages.com . Retrieved 11 June 2023 .
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha>
tags or {{efn}}
templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}}
template or {{notelist}}
template (see the help page ).