Karachi Culture - Language

Language

Historically, Sindhi and Balochi were spoken by the native population before the British conquest in 1843 by Charles James Napier. During British rule, many Gujrati and Parsi business families and Christian Goans bureaucracy migrated from Bombay Presidency to Karachi as it was being developed as a major port. After independence of Pakistan in 1947, Muslim refugees (Muhajirs) migrated to Karachi. The vast majority of Muhajirs spoke Urdu. Today Karachi is predominantlry Urdu speaking city with many other languages also spoken in the city. The Pashtuns (Pakhtuns or Pathans), originally from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA and northern Balochistan, are now the city's third largest ethnic group in Karachi after Muhajirs. With as high as 7 million by some estimates, the city of Karachi in Pakistan has the largest concentration of urban Pakhtun population in the world, including 50,000 registered Afghan refugees in the city. As per current demographic ratio Pashtuns are about 12% of Karachi's population.

According to the census of 1998 linguistic distribution of the city is: Urdu: 38.52%; Sindhi: 27.34%;Punjabi: 13.64%; Pashto: 11.96%‎; Balochi: 4.34%; Saraiki: 2.11%; others: 2.09%. The others include Dari, Gujarati, Dawoodi Bohra, Memon, Marwari, Brahui, Makrani, Khowar, Burushaski, Arabic, Persian and Bengali.