Pakistan Culture & Language

Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, but it is the first language of few; Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Saraiki and the languages of the mountain north -- including Burushaski in Hunza, related to nothing else -- are what people speak at home, and English carries the law and the universities. Islam is the state religion and the frame of public life: the call to prayer sets the day, Ramadan the month, and the law follows, from the alcohol licence to the blasphemy statute.

Lahore is the cultural capital: the Mughal city of Akbar, the centre of Qawwali music and of the country's Punjabi film industry, a place of shrines, food streets and a walled city that is Pakistan's best-known image after its mountains. The north is the other pole -- Hunza's mostly Ismaili people, Baltistan's Tibetan-speaking valleys, the Kalash of Chitral -- with a hospitality tradition that survives on the fact that so few visitors arrive.

Behaviour matters. The British advisory's summary is that being considerate of others is important in Pakistani culture and loud or rowdy behaviour attracts a negative response; the Canadian one adds that women travelling alone may face harassment. Dress modestly, carry ID, photograph people only with permission and never the military, and treat religion as the one subject on which there is no such thing as a private joke.

Urdu is the national language and lingua franca, understood everywhere though the first language of a minority; English is the language of law, higher education and business and is spoken widely in the cities and the tourist north. At home people speak Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi and, in the mountains, Shina, Balti, Wakhi and Burushaski, the last related to no other language on earth. Assalam-o-alaikum (peace be upon you) opens every exchange, shukriya is thank you, and a visitor who manages both will be forgiven the rest.