[15][16] Urdu was chosen as a symbol of unity for the new state of Pakistan in 1947, because it had already served as a lingua franca among Muslims in north and northwest British India.

[25] Pashto (پښتو) is an Iranian language spoken as a first language by more than 18.24% of Pakistanis, mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in northern Balochistan as well as in ethnic Pashtun communities in the cities of Islamabad, Rawalpindi and most notably Karachi,[26][27][28][29] which may have the largest Pashtun population of any city in the world.

20th century Western scholars such as George Abraham Grierson believed that Sindhi descended specifically from the Vrācaḍa dialect of Apabhramsha (described by Markandeya as being spoken in Sindhu-deśa) but later work has shown this to be unlikely.

[33][34] The six major known dialects of the Sindhi language are Siroli, Vicholi, Lari, Thari, Lasi and Kutchi.

[35] Saraiki (سرائیکی) is a collective term for Southern-Punjabi dialects of the Lahnda group, spoken in central and southeastern Pakistan, primarily in the southern part of the province of Punjab.

Saraiki is to a high degree mutually intelligible with Standard Punjabi[36] and is coshares with it a large portion of its vocabulary and morphology.

At the same time in its phonology it is radically different[37] (particularly in the lack of tones, the preservation of the voiced aspirates and the development of implosive consonants) Saraiki is spoken by approximately 26 million people in Pakistan, ranging across southern Punjab, southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and border regions of northern Sindh and eastern Balochistan.

Hindko (ہندکو)is an Indo-Aryan language group of Lahnda dialects spoken in several discontinuous areas in northwestern Pakistan, primarily in the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.

Brahui is spoken in the central part of Pakistani Balochistan, mainly in Kalat, Khuzdar and Mastung districts, but also in smaller numbers in neighboring districts, as well as in Afghanistan which borders Pakistani Balochistan; however, many members of the ethnic group no longer speak Brahui.

2 that "The State shall endeavour, as respects the Muslims of Pakistan (a) to make the teaching of the Holy Quran and Islamiat compulsory, to encourage and facilitate the learning of Arabic language ..."[50] The National Education Policy 2017 declares in article 3.7.4 that: "Arabic as compulsory part will be integrated in Islamiyat from Middle to Higher Secondary level to enable the students to understand the Holy Quran."

"[51] Persian was the official of the region up until the late 19th century when the English passed several laws to replace it with local languages.

Persian had a long history in the lands of Pakistan and was the cultural language of the erstwhile Mughal Empire, a continuation since the introduction of the language by Central Asian Turkic invaders who migrated into the Indian Subcontinent,[52] and the patronisation of it by the earlier Turko-Persian Delhi Sultanate.

Today the eastern Dari dialect of Persian is spoken by refugees from Afghanistan and a small number of local Balochistani Hazara community.

[53] In the Madaklasht valley of Chitral, the Madaklashti dialect of Tajik Persian is spoken by the descendants of ironmongers from Badakhshan who settled there in the eighteenth century.

One of these is Lahnda,[62] and includes Saraiki (spoken mostly in southern Pakistani Punjab by about 26 million people), the diverse varieties of Hindko (with almost five million speakers in north-western Punjab and neighbouring regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, especially Hazara), Pahari/Pothwari (3.5 million speakers in the Pothohar region of Punjab, Azad Kashmir and parts of Indian Jammu and Kashmir), Khetrani (20,000 speakers in Balochistan), and Inku (a possibly extinct language of Afghanistan).

The Mughal Empire adopted Persian as the court language during their rule over South Asia as did their predecessors, such as the Ghaznavids.

During this time, the Nastaʿlīq style of the Perso-Arabic script came into widespread use in South Asia, and the influence remains to this day.

In Pakistan, almost everything in Urdu is written in the script, concentrating the greater part of Nastaʿlīq usage in the world.

It has a total of 52 letters, augmenting the Urdu with digraphs and eighteen new letters (ڄ ٺ ٽ ٿ ڀ ٻ ڙ ڍ ڊ ڏ ڌ ڇ ڃ ڦ ڻ ڱ ڳ ڪ) for sounds particular to Sindhi and other Indo-Aryan languages.