Balochi is spoken in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, the Gulf States, Turkmenistan, India and East Africa by at least 10 million people. Balochi is not an official language in any of these countries. Some attention was given to Balochi in British India during colonial times, and there has also been more of a movement to read and write Balochi in Pakistan than in Iran, where any use of regional languages in written form has been a suspect activity ever since the days of the Pahlavi monarchy. For this reason, as well as because of the lower level of education in Pakistan than in Iran, Balochi has remained stronger in Pakistan than in Iran. In today’s Iran, many Baloch parents speak Persian rather than Balochi to their children. The purpose of this article is to discuss the status and vitality of Balochi, mainly in Iran and Pakistan, and to describe the desire to preserve and promote Balochi among its speakers. Balochi as a language with a long oral literary tradition, as well as recent attempts towards developing a standard written language will also be addressed.