The most widely spoken language of Pakistan — known there as Punjabi or sometimes Lahnda — written in the Perso-Arabic Shahmukhi script and spoken by over 100 million people.
Where it’s spoken
Western Punjabi (also called Lahnda or simply Punjabi in Pakistan) is spoken across the Pakistani province of Punjab and neighboring areas, including dialect groups like Saraiki, Hindko, and Pothohari that linguists sometimes treat separately. Roughly half of Pakistan’s population speaks a Western Punjabi variety, though Urdu remains the national language.
What it sounds like
Punjabi is unique among Indo-Aryan languages for its lexical tone system, distinguishing high, low, and level tones that arose from the loss of voiced aspirated consonants. Word stress and rhythmic phrasing give the language its distinctive cadence in folk music and qawwali singing.
How it’s written
In Pakistan, Punjabi is written in Shahmukhi, a Perso-Arabic script. Sikh and Indian-Punjab Punjabi uses Gurmukhi (an indigenous Brahmic script). The two scripts encode the same language with minor orthographic differences.
History
Punjabi grew out of dialects spoken in the historical Punjab region. The 16th-century Sikh gurus elevated the eastern variety as a sacred liturgical language, while Muslim Sufis composed devotional Western Punjabi poetry from the 12th century onward.
Find more languages by letter
Western Punjabi starts with W and ends with I. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Western Punjabi":