Siraiki language
| Saraiki | |
|---|---|
| سرائیکی | |
|
|
| Native to | Pakistan |
| Region | mainly South Punjab |
| Ethnicity | Saraiki people |
|
Native speakers
|
20 million (2013) |
| Dialects | |
| Perso-Arabic (Saraiki alphabet) | |
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | No official regulation |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | sera1259 |
Saraiki (سرائیکی Sarā'īkī, also spelt Siraiki, or less often Seraiki) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Lahnda (Western Punjabi) group, spoken in the south-western half of the province of Punjab in Pakistan. Saraiki is to a high degree mutually intelligible with Standard Punjabi and shares with it a large portion of its vocabulary and morphology. At the same time in its phonology it is radically different (particularly in the lack of tones, the preservation of the voiced aspirates and the development of implosive consonants), and has important grammatical features in common with the Sindhi language spoken to the south.
The Saraiki language identity arose in the 1960s, encompassing more local earlier identities (like Multani or Riasti), and distinguishing itself from broader ones like that of Punjabi.
Saraiki is the first language of 20 million people in Pakistan: across the South Punjab, southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and border regions of North Sindh and Eastern Balochistan.
The present extent of the meaning of Sirāikī is a recent development, and the term most probably gained its currency during the nationalist movement of the 1960s. It has been in use for much longer in Sindh to refer to the speech of the immigrants from the north, principally Siraiki-speaking Baloch tribes who settled there between the 16th and the 19th centuries. In this context, the term can most plausibly be explained as originally having had the meaning "the language of the north", from the Sindhi word siro 'up-river, north'. This name can ambiguously refer to the northern dialects of Sindhi, but these are nowadays more commonly known as "Siroli" or "Sireli".
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