Sarāikī (Perso-Arabic: سرائیکی, Gurmukhi: ਸਰਾਇਕੀ, Devanagari: सराइकी), sometimes spelled Siraiki and Seraiki, is an old language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European. It is part of the Lahnda macrolanguage that also includes Western Panjabi. Saraiki itself has a group of dialects. There are 15 million fluent speakers worldwide. Saraiki is the most spoken language in Pakistan and the 30th most spoken language in the world.
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Sarāikī (Perso-Arabic: سرائیکی, Gurmukhi: ਸਰਾਇਕੀ, Devanagari: सराइकी), sometimes spelled Siraiki and Seraiki, is an old language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European. It is part of the Lahnda macrolanguage that also includes Western Panjabi. Saraiki itself has a group of dialects. There are 15 million fluent speakers worldwide. Saraiki is the most spoken language in Pakistan and the 30th most spoken language in the world.
It is spoken in the southern half of Punjab Province and in adjacent parts of Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP Provinces by nearly 14 million people (1998 Population and Housing Census, Pakistan), as well as by nearly 70,000 emigrants and their descendants in India (Census of India, 2001),, 30,000 in the United Kingdom and a minority in Afghanistan.
However the development of the standard language of Saraiki distinguished from Western Panjabi, a process which began after the founding of Pakistan in 1947, has been driven by a regionalist political movement....
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