While Punjabi has more native speakers, Urdu is the national language and the medium of communication between different ethnic groups.

Shahmukhi is a Perso-Arabic script used to write Punjabi in the Punjab province of Pakistan.

Punjabi is written in the Gurmukhi script in India (Sikh religion) and the Shahmukhi script (a Perso-Arabic variant) in Pakistan, making it a major language spanning both countries.

Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam are the four major languages of the Dravidian family, spoken predominantly in Southern India. Marathi, Punjabi, and Odia are all Indo-Aryan languages.