Saraiki Language

Saraiki Language

Saraiki (Shahmukhi: سرائیکی, Gurmukhi: ਸਰਾਇਕੀ, Devanagari: सराइकी), also spelled Siraiki and Seraiki, is a standardized written language belonging to the Indo-Aryan (Indic) language family. It is spoken in the South Punjab of Indian sub-continent. No mention of Saraiki as a unified identity is ever been made before the creation of Pakistan. Saraiki is based on a group of vernacular, historically unwritten dialects spoken by over 25 million people across the southernmost half and the northwest of Punjab Province, southern districts of Dera Ismail Khan and Tank of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, the adjacent border regions of the Sindh and Balochistan provinces, and nearly 70,000 migrants and their descendants in India, who migrated as a result of the partition of India, and about a million population of Pakistani and Indian diaspora in different parts of the world especially the Middle East. Saraiki is also spoken by some Hindus in Afghanistan, albeit the total number of speakers there is still unknown.

The development of the standard written language began after the founding of Pakistan in 1947, driven by a regionalist political movement. The national census of Pakistan has tabulated the prevalence of Saraiki speakers since 1981. Saraiki is the fourth most widely spoken language in Pakistan after Punjabi, Pashto, and Sindhi; and within Punjab Province it is one of the two major languages. Saraiki is ranked 52nd largest language of the world.