Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language like many other modern languages of South Asia. It is a descendant of the Shauraseni language, which was the chief language of medieval northern India.

Punjabi emerged as an independent language in the 11th century. The first traces of Punjabi can be found in the works of the Nath yogis Gorakshanath and Charpatnath in the 9th and 10th century. The linguist George Abraham Grierson in his multivolume Linguistic Survey of India (1904–1928) used the word "Punjabi" to refer to several languages spoken in the Punjab region: the term "Western Punjabi" (ISO 639-3 pnb) covered dialects (now designated separate languages) spoken to the west of Montgomery and Gujranwala districts, while "Eastern Punjabi" referred to what is now simply called Punjabi (ISO 639-3 pan) After Saraiki, Potwari and Hindko (earlier categorized as "Western Punjabi") started to be counted as separate languages, the percentage of Pakistanis recorded as Punjabi speakers was reduced from 59% to 44%. Although not an official language, Punjabi is still the predominant language of Pakistan.

Contemporary Punjabi is not the predominant language of the Sikh scriptures (which though in Gurmukhi script are written in several languages). Many portions of Guru Granth Sahib use Punjabi dialects, but the book is interspersed with several other languages including Brajbhasha, Khariboli, Sanskrit and Persian. Guru Gobind Singh, the last Guru of the Sikhs composed Chandi di Var in Punjabi, although most of his works are composed in other languages like Braj bhasha and Persian.

After the partition of India, the Punjab region was divided between Pakistan and India. Although the Punjabi people formed the 2nd biggest linguistic group in Pakistan after Bengali, Urdu continued as the national language of Pakistan, and Punjabi still did not get any official status, as it got in India. As Urdu is historically associated with Muslims of South Asia, the rational of the Pakistani establishment was to make this, the sole official language, so that citizens of the newly created state of Pakistan, begin to see themselves as Pakistani, rather than Pashtoon, Muhajir, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Baloch or Punjabi. The lack of acceptance of this concept, has led to massive ethnic conflicts across the country.