English: **This map shows the percentage of people in each district of Pakistan who spoke a language other than Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki, Urdu, Balochi, or Brahui (all languages significant enough in 1998 to be counted separately on the Pakistan census) as their mother tongue at the time of the 1998 census.**

The templates used to make this map can be found here.

The source for the data used in the creation of this file can be found here (must be accessed through Google Earth or another application which opens .SHP files). All the data is adjusted for 2020 district borders.

The image was created with Gimp and a calculator.

---

In 1998, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics conducted a population census in which one question asked about the mother tongues of the participants. There were seven possible answers to the question: Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Saraiki, Urdu, Balochi (Brahui included), and "Other". There are, however, dozens of other languages in Pakistan, with Ethnologue listing 74 and Glottolog listing 83.

In this map, I have highlighted some of the larger lesser-known languages of Pakistan:

• Hindko: A Punjabic language spoken by about 2.7 million people in 1998 on the fringes of Punjab. Although it is mutually intelligible with Punjabi, its speakers maintain strong linguistic identities and in 2017, Hindko was considered significant enough to have its own category on the census question about mother tongue.

• Kohistani: A Dardic language spoken by about 450,000 people in 1998 in the mountainous Kohistan region in northern Hazara Division.

• Khowar: A Dardic language spoken by about 300,000 people in 1998 in the Chitral region in the far north of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

• Languages of Karachi: Significant communities speaking Gujarati and Bengali live in Karachi, among speakers of multiple other languages. Karachi is one of Pakistan's most linguistically diverse cities.

• Hazaragi: Large numbers of ethnic Hazaras speaking the Hazaragi dialect of Farsi live in Quetta and Mastung districts. They can be estimated to have numbered around 150,000 at the time of the 1998 census.

• Khetrani: A north-west Indo-Aryan language that closely related to Sindhi and Saraiki, but isn't mutually intelligible with either. Approximately 30,000 people living in Barkhan District in Eastern Balochistan in 1998 and the surrounding areas speak Khetrani natively.

• Torwali: A Dardic language closely related to Kalami and Kohistani spoken by about 65,000 people in 1998 in central Swat District, in the Bahrain and Chail regions.

• Kalami: A Dardic language closely related to Kohistani and Torwali spoken by about 55,000 people in 1998 in the far norther reaches of Swat and Upper Dir Districts in Northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa