"Brahui Language: Where It Is Spoken and Useful Words"

The Brahui language is spoken mainly in central Balochistan, in a belt that runs from Quetta and Mastung south through Kalat to Khuzdar. The 2023 census counted 2,778,670 people in Pakistan with Brahui as their mother tongue, about 1.16 per cent of the country, and 2,507,157 of them live in Balochistan. What makes it unusual is its family: Brahui is a Dravidian language, related to the languages of south and central India rather than to Balochi, Pashto or Urdu around it.

This guide covers where Brahui is spoken, the puzzle of how it got there, how it is written, its place beside Balochi, and a short list of everyday words with a reliable source behind them.

Where is Brahui spoken?

Brahui is the language of the highland country between Quetta and Khuzdar. Wikipedia, citing the linguistic literature, lists it as the majority language in the districts of Kalat, Khuzdar, Mastung, Quetta, Bolan (now Kachhi), Nasirabad, Nushki and Kharan. On the ground, that means the towns along the N25 from Quetta to Khuzdar: Mastung, Kalat, Surab and Khuzdar itself.

The old division of this country still shapes the language. Sarawan, the northern territory around Kalat, and Jhalawan, the southern territory around Khuzdar, were the two divisions of the Brahui tribes under the Khanate of Kalat. The two main dialects take their names from them:

• Sarawani, the northern dialect, centred on Kalat.
• Jhalawani, the southern dialect, centred on Khuzdar.

They differ mainly in how they treat the h sound. Outside Pakistan there are smaller Brahui communities in Iranian Baluchestan, in southern Afghanistan and around Merv in Turkmenistan, and migrant workers in the Gulf.

Why is a Dravidian language spoken in Balochistan?

This is the question linguists have argued about for over a century. The nearest other Dravidian languages are more than 1,500 km away, in central and southern India. Brahui's closest relatives are Kurukh and Malto, both northern Dravidian languages spoken in eastern India.

The family resemblance shows in basic words. Omniglot gives these pairs between Brahui and Kannada, a south Indian Dravidian language:

There are two broad explanations. One holds that Brahui speakers are a remnant of Dravidian peoples who lived in the north-west long before Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages arrived, possibly as early as the third millennium BC. The other holds that they migrated from central India much later, perhaps after 1000 CE. Phonological links with Kurukh and Malto support the later migration theory, but genetic studies, including one published in 2025, find no recent shared ancestry with those groups and show Brahui speakers to be very close to their Baloch, Pashtun and Sindhi neighbours. The question is still open.

How does Brahui relate to Balochi?

Very closely, in daily life. Centuries of living alongside Balochi speakers have left a deep mark: one estimate of the Brahui vocabulary puts it at 35 per cent Perso-Arabic, 20 per cent Balochi, 20 per cent Indo-Aryan and only 15 per cent Dravidian, with 10 per cent of unknown origin. The everyday word for good, jwan, is borrowed from Balochi, as are words for cloud, earth and bone. Brahui has also lost the short e and o vowels under the influence of its neighbours.

Identity follows the same pattern. Most Brahuis describe themselves as Baloch to outsiders, many Brahui tribesmen speak Balochi rather than Brahui at home, and the two communities share dress, food and customs. That overlap is one reason census counts of Brahui speakers vary from one census to the next: the 2017 census recorded 1.24 per cent of Pakistanis as Brahui speakers, and the 2023 census 1.16 per cent. Older sources call the language Kurdgali, after the Kurd tribe; the name Brahui came into wider use under British rule.

Brahui and the Khanate of Kalat

The Khanate of Kalat began in the 1660s as a confederacy of Brahui tribes under Mir Ahmad Khan I and reached its height under Nasir Khan I in the late 18th century. The khans themselves used Balochi at home and Persian for written business, which says a lot about how the languages of the region have always mixed. Our guide to Kalat and the history of the Khanate covers the state and the town.

How is Brahui written?

For most of its history Brahui was spoken, not written. The earliest known work is Tuhfat al-Ajaib, translated from Persian around 1759 or 1760 by Malik Dad, a court poet and scholar of Kalat. A fuller Perso-Arabic script developed around 1900 through the work of religious scholars who used it to spread Islamic teaching.

Today there are two scripts:

• Perso-Arabic, the usual one, with extra letters for Brahui sounds. Brahui is the only Dravidian language written mainly in the Arabic script. Its most distinctive letter, ڷ, stands for a voiceless lateral fricative, a breathy l sound like the Welsh ll, found in no other language of the region.
• Brolikva, short for Brahui Roman Likvar, a Latin alphabet developed by the Brahui Language Board at the University of Balochistan. The Brahui newspaper Talar uses it.

The Brahui Academy in Quetta publishes literature in the language, and the University of Balochistan in Quetta has a Department of Brahui that teaches up to PhD level.

Is Brahui an endangered language?

UNESCO classes Brahui as vulnerable, the least severe of its danger levels, and a 2009 UNESCO report listed it among 27 languages of Pakistan at some risk. Brahui has no official status and is not used in school teaching or government business, so most Brahui speakers read and write in Urdu. Children still learn it at home in its heartland, which is why it remains among the larger regional languages of Pakistan.

Useful Brahui words

Phrasebooks for Brahui are hard to find, and we have not found a reliable published list of everyday phrases such as "how are you". The words below come instead from Denys Bray's The Brahui Language (1934), still the standard dictionary, based on the Kalat dialect, as compiled in the Starostin wordlist. Spellings are simplified for English readers.

In practice, greet people with assalam-o-alaikum and carry on in Urdu. Shopkeepers, drivers and hotel staff in Quetta, Mastung, Kalat and Khuzdar all speak Urdu, and many speak Balochi and Pashto as well. A single Brahui word such as jwan will be noticed and appreciated, but it will not get you further than Urdu does. Our Urdu phrases for travellers is the more useful list to carry.

Where would a traveller hear Brahui?

Anyone driving the N25 between Quetta and Khuzdar passes through the Brahui heartland: Mastung, Kalat with its old Miri fort, Surab and Khuzdar. Quetta itself is mixed, with Pashto, Brahui, Balochi, Hazaragi and Urdu all heard in its bazaars. Our guide to places to visit in Khuzdar covers the southern end of this belt.

Travel here needs care. The UK government currently advises against all travel to Balochistan, and Pakistani visitors do use the N25, but check local news and police advice before setting out, including any current rules on travel after dark, which our guide to the Balochistan night travel ban explains. 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 sets out the current position.

Is it worth learning about Brahui before a trip?

If you are heading to Kalat, Khuzdar or Mastung, a little background helps. Knowing that the people around you may speak a Dravidian language, and that their tribes were the core of the Khanate of Kalat, makes the region's history far easier to follow.

As a practical tool, though, Brahui is not where to spend your effort. Urdu works throughout the Brahui belt, and a few words of Balochi will travel further across the province as a whole. For the wider picture of who speaks what across the country, see our guide to the languages of Pakistan and our Balochi language guide; for the practical basics of any trip, our Pakistan travel guide is the place to start.

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