The most endangered of Pakistan’s dialects are now spoken by only a few hundred people, such as Domaaki, an Indo-Aryan languages confined to a handful of villages in remote northern Gilgit-Baltistan.
Even regional languages spoken by tens of millions like Sindhi and Punjabi are no longer as vigorous as they once were.
“There is not a single newspaper or magazine published in Punjabi for the 60 million-plus Punjabi speakers,” wrote journalist Abbas Zaidi in an essay, despite it being the language of the nationally revered Sufi poet Bulleh Shah and the native-tongue of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
