"Balochi Language: Where It Is Spoken and Useful Phrases"

The Balochi language is the mother tongue of the Baloch, spoken across most of Balochistan, along the Makran coast, in Baloch neighbourhoods of Karachi and in the Dera Ghazi Khan side of south Punjab. The 2023 census counted 8,117,795 Balochi speakers in Pakistan, about 3.38 per cent of the population, and 5,811,185 of them live in Balochistan, where it is the largest single mother tongue. It is an Iranian language, a distant cousin of Persian and Kurdish, and it is also spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Oman and Turkmenistan.

This guide covers where Balochi is spoken, its three main dialects, how it is written, the poetry and songs that carry it, and a short list of phrases a traveller can use.

Where is Balochi spoken in Pakistan?

Balochistan is the centre, but Balochi does not cover the whole province. Out of 14.9 million people counted there in 2023, about 5.8 million speak Balochi, 5.0 million Pashto and 2.5 million Brahui. Broadly, Pashto dominates the north around Quetta, Zhob and Loralai; Brahui the central highlands around Kalat and Khuzdar; and Balochi the south, the west and the east.

In practice a traveller hears Balochi in:

• Makran and the coast: Gwadar, Pasni, Turbat and Panjgur.
• The west: Kharan, Chagai and Nushki, towards the Iran and Afghanistan borders.
• The east: the Kachhi plains, towards Sindh and Punjab.
• Karachi: Lyari, one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, is the best-known Baloch area.
• South Punjab and upper Sindh: Dera Ghazi Khan, Taunsa, Rajanpur and Jacobabad, where Baloch tribes settled long ago.

What are the dialects of Balochi?

Balochi is a dialect continuum: speech changes gradually from one valley to the next. Linguists group it into three main varieties, plus one outlier.

• Eastern, or Sulemani: spoken in eastern Balochistan and across the border into Punjab and Sindh, in places such as Quetta, Kalat, Khuzdar, Lasbela, Chagai, Nushki, Kharan, Mastung, the Kachhi plains, Dera Ghazi Khan, Taunsa, Rajanpur and Jacobabad.
• Southern, or Makrani: spoken in Makran and along the coast, including Gwadar, Pasni and Turbat, and in Karachi.
• Western, or Rakhshani: spoken mainly in western Balochistan, Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province and Afghanistan, with sub-dialects such as Panjguri and Sarhaddi.
• Koroshi: an isolated variety spoken among the Qashqai tribes in Fars province, Iran.

Makrani and Rakhshani are close to each other. Sulemani speakers usually find the others harder to follow, because Eastern Balochi has absorbed more from Brahui, Pashto, Sindhi and Punjabi. A coastal Baloch from Gwadar and a Baloch from Dera Ghazi Khan will understand each other, but with effort.

Is Balochi related to Urdu or Persian?

It is related to both, but much more closely to Persian. Balochi belongs to the Northwestern Iranian group, the same broad branch of Indo-European as Kurdish, while Urdu is Indo-Aryan. A Persian speaker will recognise many Balochi words: the numbers yakk, do, say, char, panch (one to five) are near-identical to Persian.

Some features a listener notices:

• Eight vowels, five long and three short, which give Balochi a distinctive sound.
• Verb at the end, as in Urdu: subject, then object, then verb.
• Split ergativity: in the past tense, the subject of a transitive verb changes form, much as Urdu uses ne.
• No grammatical gender, unlike Urdu: there is no masculine or feminine form to get right.

How is Balochi written?

Balochi was mostly an oral language until the 19th century. Persian script was used when something needed writing down, and British officers first wrote Balochi in the Latin alphabet; Mansel Longworth Dames published his study of northern Balochi in 1881.

Modern written Balochi began in Pakistan around 1950. In 1951 Mir Gul Khan Nasir published Gulbang, the first collection of Balochi poetry in Arabic script. The Balochi Academy was founded in Quetta in 1961 and has published Balochi literature and research since. Today:

• Perso-Arabic script is standard in Pakistan, with extra letters for Balochi sounds. A 29-letter form was standardised by the Balochi Academy in Sarbaz, Iran.
• A Latin alphabet was agreed at a workshop at Uppsala University in 2000 and is used by some writers and online.

As the scholar Brian Spooner noted, most Balochi speakers learn to read and write in Urdu in Pakistan and in Persian in Iran and Afghanistan, not in Balochi itself.

What is Balochi poetry and music like?

Balochi literature was carried for centuries by its singers. Epic ballads about Mir Chakar Rind, Mir Gwahram Khan Lashari and Hammal Jiand were performed by professional epic singers known as pahlawan. Jam Durrak, court poet to Nasir Khan of Kalat in the 18th century, wrote love poetry that is still collected and read, and Mast Tawakali is counted among the great classical poets. In the 20th century Gul Khan Nasir led a modern revival, and Syed Zahoor Shah Hashmi wrote a history of Balochi language and literature.

Songs carry the language as much as books do. Zahirok, a melancholy form that some scholars trace to the 15th century, is often called the original Balochi music; lewa songs are upbeat and sung at weddings; and the suroz, a bowed fiddle played upright, accompanies much of it. Our guide to Balochi chap and lewa dances covers the music and dance together, and our Baloch Culture Day guide explains the 2 March celebrations where all of it comes out in public.

Useful Balochi phrases

The phrases below come from Wikivoyage's Balochi phrasebook, which follows Southern (Makrani) usage of the kind heard in Karachi and on the coast. Eastern speakers around Quetta or Dera Ghazi Khan may say some of them differently.

In reality assalam-o-alaikum is the greeting you will hear most, and Urdu is spoken by shopkeepers, drivers and hotel staff in every Balochi-speaking town. A mennatwár after a cup of tea will be noticed. Our Urdu phrases for travellers covers the language you will actually use.

Where will you hear Balochi on a trip?

For most Pakistani travellers the easiest place is Karachi. Lyari and the city's older Baloch neighbourhoods are where Balochi is the street language, and on Baloch Culture Day on 2 March the city's Baloch community celebrates in public.

Beyond Karachi, the Makran coast is Balochi country: Pasni and Gwadar along the coastal highway, and Turbat inland. Our guides to Gwadar's history and the Makran Coastal Highway cover the route. In south Punjab, Balochi is heard in Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur districts.

The UK government currently advises against all travel to Balochistan, including the coast. Pakistani visitors do travel to Gwadar and along the coastal highway, but check local news and police advice before setting out. Overseas visitors should know that their government's advice may say not to go, and that travelling against it can void travel insurance. Our guide on whether Balochistan is safe to travel has the current picture.

Is it worth learning some Balochi?

As a practical tool, only a little. Urdu gets you everywhere in Balochistan, Karachi and south Punjab, and you will rarely meet a Balochi speaker in a shop or hotel who does not also speak Urdu.

As a way into the region, it is worth knowing more. The language explains why a Baloch in Lyari, a fisherman in Gwadar and a tribesman near Dera Ghazi Khan see themselves as one people, and it is the key to the songs and ballads at any Baloch wedding or festival. For the wider picture, see our guides to the languages of Pakistan and the Brahui language of central Balochistan, and our Pakistan travel guide for the practical basics of any trip.

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