Pakistani Languages (Saraiki)

Sarāikī (Perso-Arabic: سرائیکی, Gurmukhi: ਸਰਾਇਕੀ, Devanagari: सराइकी), sometimes spelled Siraiki and Seraiki, is a language of Pakistan belonging to theIndo-Aryan branch of Indo-European. It is part of the Lahnda macrolanguage that also includes Western Panjabi. Saraiki itself has a group of dialects.

It is spoken in the southern half of Punjab Province and in adjacent parts ofSindh and Balochistan Province by nearly 14 million people (1998 Population and Housing Census, Pakistan), as well as by nearly 70,000 emigrants and their descendants in India (Census of India, 2001), and a minority in Afghanistan.

However the development of the standard language of Saraiki distinguished from Western Panjabi, a process which began after the founding of Pakistan in 1947, has been driven by a regionalist political movement. Since 1981, the national census of Pakistan has tabulated Saraiki among the nation's mother tongues.

Geographic distribution and number of speakers:

Saraiki is native to what is now the southwestern half of Punjab Province in Pakistan. In 1919, Grierson maintained that the dialects this area constituted a dialect cluster, which he designated "Southern Lahnda" within a putative "Lahnda language". Subsequent linguists have confirmed the reality of this dialect cluster, even while rejecting other aspects of Grierson's scheme of classification, including Grierson's name for it. Saraiki is also spoken in Sindh Province, particularly the north of that province.

In India, Saraiki is spoken by the Saraikis who settled mostly in the urban areas of the states of Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Gujarat after the partition of India in 1947.According to the Indian census of 2001, Saraiki is spoken by about 70,000 people spread throughout northwest and north central India.

In Afghanistan, Kandahari, a dialect of Multani/Saraiki is a mother tongue ofAfghan Hindus.

Number of speakers of Saraiki dialects:

The national census of Pakistan included Saraiki for the first time in the census of 1981. In that year, the percentage of respondents nationwide reporting Saraiki as their mother tongue was 9.83. In the census of 1998, it was 10.53 out of a national population of 132 million, for a figure of 13.9 million Saraiki speakers resident in Pakistan. Also according to the 1998 census, 12.8 million of those, or 92%, lived in the Province of Punjab. The next census of Pakistan will be conducted in October 2008.

In India, the Multani dialect of Saraiki is spoken by 56,096 persons and theBahawalpuri dialect is spoken by 11,873 individuals. Other dialects of Saraiki that are spoken by Indian Saraikis include Derawali Jafri, Siraiki Hindki, Thali, and Jatki.