Karachi’s Urdu-speaking community is diminishing with its citizens opting to converse in other languages, according to Pakistan’s 2017 census results that were recently released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
Previous census data had shown Karachi as a linguistically diverse region that was inhabited by mostly Urdu speakers. However, cultural shifts caused by migrations over the last 40 years have transformed many communities that now have more speakers of Pashto, Sindhi, and Saraiki than speakers of Urdu and Punjabi.
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The PBS’s findings indicate that Karachi’s Urdu-speaking population is 6,779,142. There had been a substantial decline from 54.34 percent to 48.52 percent in the number of Urdu speakers between 1981 and 1998 that had further collapsed to 42 percent by 2017.
Conversely, other languages have grown quite popular in the port city. Pashto is the second-most widely spoken language in Karachi, with its speakers having been recorded at a total of 2,406,011. This number had grown by almost 15 percent between 1998 and 2017.
The Punjabi-speaking population constitutes 13.64 percent of the metropolis despite declining by 10.73 percent within almost two decades to 1,719,636 speakers.
Additionally, the Saraiki-speaking population is 798,031, Hindko 679,539, Balochi 648,964, and Kashmiri 63,784.
The number of Sindhi speakers has grown significantly in the region since 1998. According to the PBS census, Karachi’s Sindhi-speaking population has risen by 10.67 percent to 1,709,877.
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Besides these major languages, 1,123,790 citizens of Karachi speak other minor and lesser-known languages such as Gujarati, Marwari, and Bengali.
