127 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 R. A. Giri et al. (eds.), Functional Variations in English, Multilingual Education 37, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52225-4_9 Chapter 9 English in Pakistan: Past, Present and Future Tariq Rahman 9.1 Introduction A traveller from an English-speaking country fnds it easy to travel in Pakistan. The PIA (Pakistan International Airline), if that is the traveller’s carrier to Pakistan, makes announcements in English in addition to Urdu, the national language. The air hostesses speak in English to the passengers. The immigration offcials speak the requisite few phrases in English and even the taxi drivers and porters know enough English to serve the traveller. Out in the street, on the way to a hotel, the shops have signs in English as well as Urdu. Sometimes, confusingly enough, there are Urdu words written in the Roman script and vice versa. The hotel, if it is in an upscale locality, functions in English. In short, the penetration of English in Pakistani soci- ety, at least in the urban areas, is visible everywhere in the country. In short, the linguistic landscape—‘the publicly visible bits of written language’ as Blommaert describes it (Blommaert 2013, p. 1), reveals the linguistic history of this land: the Sanskritic presence (words originating from Sanskrit); the local contributions (words coming from the various Prakrits); the Arab and Turkish rule (words of Arabic and Persian in Urdu and the Perso-Arabic script itself) and, fnally, the British colonial rule and American cultural domination (the Roman script and words of British and American English. T. Rahman (*) Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, Pakistan e-mail: tariq.rahman@bnu.edu.pk