The most spoken language of Pakistan is not its national language, Urdu, it is Punjabi!
According to Geo News, the latest census (2023) statistics published by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Sunday, November 17, 2024, revealed that Punjabi is the “most spoken language” of the country.
As per the stats, 36.98% of the population in Pakistan speaks Punjabi while in the province of Punjab, it is spoken by 67% of the population, followed by Islamabad at 50% while the second most spoken language in Pakistan is Pashto which is spoken by 81% of the people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Surprisingly, Urdu is not among the top three most spoken languages of Pakistan because Sindhi is the third most popular language in the South Asian country.
In Sindh, 60% of the population speaks Sindhi and 22.30% of the people speak Urdu.
Moreover, the results of Census 2023 showed Urdu came in the fourth spot with 9.25% of the speaking Urdu nationwide, up from 7.08% in 2017.
Sindh has the largest number of Urdu speakers followed by 15.72 % of the federal capital Islamabad.
Meanwhile, in Balochistan, Balochi is the most popular language spoken by 39.91% of the population, followed by Pashto at 34.30%.
