Linguistic
Punjabi, with its many dialects, is the most spoken language in Pakistan and fourth most common language in India. According to the Ethnologue 2005 estimate, there are 88 million native speakers of the Punjabi language, which makes it the twelfth most widely spoken language in the world. According to the 2008 Census of Pakistan, there are approximately 76,335,300 native speakers of Punjabi in Pakistan, and according to the Census of India, there are over 29,102,477 Punjabi speakers in India. Punjabi is also spoken as a minority language in several other countries where Punjabis have emigrated in large numbers, such as the United Kingdom (where it is the second most commonly used language) and Canada, in which Punjabi has now become the fourth most spoken language after English, French and Chinese, due to the rapid growth of immigrants from Pakistan and India. There are also sizable communities in the United States, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Persian Gulf countries, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
Punjabis are linguistically and culturally related to the other Indo-Aryan peoples of South Asia. There are an estimated 120 million Punjabis around the world. If regarded as an ethnic group, they are among the worlds' largest. In South Asia, they are the second largest ethnic group after the Bengali People.
The main language of the Punjabi people is Punjabi and its associated dialects, which differ depending on the region of Punjab the speaker is from; there are notable differences in the Lahnda languages, spoken in the Pakistani Punjab. In the Pakistani Punjab Urdu is spoken by nearly all, and the vast majority still speak Punjabi, even though the language have no governmental support. In the Indian Punjab, most people speak Punjabi. English is sometimes used, and people may also speak Hindi and older people who lived in the undivided Punjab may be able to speak and write in Urdu. There is a significant hindi and other Indian languages influence in Punjabi. In India Sanskrit vocabulary have been adopted, due to the national status of Hindi language. The Punjabi languages have always absorbed numerous loanwords from surrounding areas and provinces (and from English).
Read more about this topic: Punjabi People
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