Pakistan has two official languages. Urdu became the official language of the region during the 11th Century. The rulers of the region urged the many different tribes to learn and use Urdu.
Spoken Urdu had been used by residents in neighboring Afghanistan from the time of Alexander the Great. He had marched east from Persia, bringing elements of the Farsi language with him. As Farsi blended with other tribal languages, Urdu was created.
Then during the Islamic conquests, those crusaders intent on spreading the Muslim religion journeyed into what is now Pakistan. They entered the region under the control of the Mughal Empire. They wanted to present the Islamic teachings to the diverse people in that region.
Urged on, no doubt, by the Islamic crusaders, the leaders of the Mughal Empire tried to unite the many diverse tribes, tribes that respected the leaders' right to rule the region. The Mughal leaders thus made Urdu the official language.
The written Urdu language uses the same letters as both the Farsi language and the Arabic language. The Urdu speaker, however, does not pronounce each letter the same way that an Arabic speaker pronounces that letter Urdu has been based on the alphabet used by Farsi speakers.
Urdu has the same words that one finds in Farsi. Still, Urdu differs from Farsi. Not every Urdu word represents the same thing to both a Farsi speaker and a speaker of Urdu.
In the Twentieth Century, as Pakistan strived to become a participant in world events, Pakistan's rulers discovered the benefits of knowing how to converse in English. Thus English became yet another official language of Pakistan. Today government officials in Pakistan conduct business in English.
By the same token, those business leaders who took part in commerce between Pakistan and other countries chose to carry-out their transactions in English. That fact underscored the veracity of claims that English had become an official language of Pakistan. Urdu had evolved into an official language and a national language.
Now the various regions and provinces of Pakistan have not abandoned all of the languages that so challenged the rulers of the Mughal Empire. Moreover, each of the tribes within any region or province has adopted its own version of the regional or provincial language. That adopted language is called a dialect.
In order to fully appreciate the great diversity among the languages of Pakistan, one should look at the languages spoken in the Province of Punjab. When listening to the residents of Punjab, one soon discovers that there is no one way to speak Punjabi. In fact, there are 36 different Punjabi dialects.
All of the languages of Pakistan belong under the heading "Indo-European languages." Still, not all of them belong within the same language family. The long history of both Arabic and Persian has caused those languages to be viewed as classical languages by the people of Pakistan.
Religion and literature have influenced greatly the development of the languages of Pakistan. All three dialects of Balochi, a well-recognized provincial language, are found in the Province's Sunni Muslim literature.
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