Pashto (Naskh: پښتو - ; also transliterated Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, or Pushtu), also known as Afghani, is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. The number of Pashto-speakers is estimated to be 30-40 million, and as defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, Pashto is an official and national language of the country.

Geographic distribution

In Afghanistan, Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south and southwest, but also in some northern and northwestern parts as a result of recent relocation. No exact numbers are available, but the CIA World Factbook 2009 estimates that 65% of the population speak Pashto as their first language. According to an older, but scholarly, estimate by the Encyclopaedia Iranica, Pashto is the native language of 60 to 65 percent of the population, and spoken by less than 20 percent as a second language. According to "A survey of the Afghan people - Afghanistan in 2006", Pashto is the first language of 60% of the population, while additional 28% also speak the language (combined 88%).

In Pakistan, Pashto is spoken by about 27 million people (15% of the total population) in the North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Balochistan. Modern Pushtun speaking communities are also found in Sindh (Karachi and Hyderabad). With an estimated 4 million ethnic Pashtuns, Karachi hosts one of the largest Pashtun populations in the world.

Other communities of Pashto-speakers are found in northeastern Iran, primarily in South Khorasan Province to the east of Qaen, near the Afghan border, and in Tajikistan. There are also Pashtun communities in Uttar Pradesh as well as the southwestern part of Jammu & Kashmir in India.

Sizable Pashto-speaking communities also exist in the Middle East, especially in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States, particularly California, and in the United Kingdom, Thailand, Canada and Australia.

Official status

In Afghanistan, Pashto is promoted as the first state language, and article 20 of the Constitution of Afghanistan states that the Afghan National Anthem "shall be in Pashto..." Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan that are used for the administration of the government throughout the country. Pashto is also used in education, literature, office and court business, media, and in religious institutions, etc. It is a repository of the cultural and social heritage of the country. In Pakistan, Pashto is not an official language, but it is one of the provincial languages spoken by the Pashtuns living in Pakistan, in the NWFP, FATA and Balochistan.

Grammar

Pashto is an S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masc./fem.), two numbers (sing./plur.), and four cases (direct, oblique I, oblique II and vocative). The verb system is very intricate with the following tenses: present, subjunctive, simple past, past progressive, present perfect and past perfect. In any of the past tenses (simple past, past progressive, present perfect and past perfect), Pashto is an ergative language; i.e., transitive verbs in any of the past tenses agree with the object of the sentence

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close
Mid
Open

Pashto also has the diphthongs .

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal
Plosive
Affricate
Fricative
Approximant
Rhotic

The phonemes tend to be replaced by .

The retroflex lateral flap ( ) is pronounced as retroflex approximant when final.

The retroflex fricatives that are preserved in southern dialects are replaced by palatal fricatives in west-central dialects, velars in northern dialects, and postalveolars in southeastern dialects.

The velars followed by the close back rounded vowel assimilate into the labialized velars .

Vocabulary

In Pashto, most of the native elements of the lexicon are related to other Eastern Iranian languages; those words can be easily compared to those known from Farsi, Avestan, Ossetic and Pamir languages. However, a remarkably large number of words is special to Pashto. Post 7th century borrowings came primarily from Arabic. Modern borrowings come from Persian and Urdu (In Pakistan) with the modern educated speech borrowing words from English, French, and German.

Writing system

Pashto employs the Pashto alphabet, a modified form of the Arabic alphabet with extra letters added for Pashto-specific sounds. As of the 17th century Pashto has been primarily written in the Naskh Arabic script, rather than the Nasta'liq script used for neighboring Persian and Urdu languages. The Pashto alphabet consists of 46 letters, and 4 diacritic marks. The following table gives the letters' isolated forms, along with IPA values for the letters' typical sounds:

ا	ب	پ	ت	ټ	ث	ج	ځ	چ	څ	ح	خ
د	ډ	ﺫ	ﺭ	ړ	ﺯ	ژ	ږ	س	ش	ښ
ص	ض	ط	ظ	ع	غ	ف	ق	ک	ګ	ل	م
ن	ڼ	و	ؤ	ه	ۀ	ی	ي	ې	ۍ	ئ

Dialects

As a consequence of life in areas of rugged terrain, there are many dialects of Pashto language. The two main dialects are soft or southern dialect and hard or northern dialect. Paktika is roughly the dividing line. One of the primary features of the dialects is the differences in the pronunciation of these seven phonemes (all sounds in IPA):

Southern Abdali (in Kandahar, Zabul):
Southeastern (in Quetta):
Central Wannetsi (Harnai, Sinjawi):
Central Marwati (in Laki):
Central Khattak (in Karak):
Central Banuci (in Banu):
Central Waziri (in Wanna):
Central Khosti (in Khost):
Central Dzadrani (in Dzadran, Paktia):
Central Afridi (in Tirah, Jamrud):
Northwestern (Ghazni, Logar):
Northwestern Wardaki (Wardak):
Northwestern (Central Ghilzai):
Northern (in Nangarhar, Kabul):
Northeastern (Yusufzai, Peshawar):

The differences between the southern dialects and the northern dialects are primarily phonological and there are simple conversion rules. The morphological differences between them are very few and unimportant. However, the east-central dialects are lexicologically different and very varied. The southern dialect of Kandahar is the most conservative with regards to phonology, retaining the retroflex fricatives and the alveolar affricates, which have not merged with other phonemes. The Pashto alphabet reflects the southern dialect. Certain dialects show many archaic features, some of which are discarded by the literary language.

Notable phonological and lexicological differences

Kandahar	Quetta	Harnai	Bannu	Wana	Khost	Tirah	Wardak	Kabul	Peshawar	Translation
Pa to	Pašto	Pa to	Pāšte	Pāšte		Pāxto		Paxto	Puxto	Pashto
war	war	war	tāmbə	tāmbə, wār		wār, tāmbə	war	war	war	door
	pša	, γədəi	pšā	pšā		pxā		pxa	xpa	foot
lmar	lmar	mer	myerə stərgā	γormə, myerə stərgā	myerə stərgā	myer, myerə stərga	nmar	nmar	nwar	sun
halək	halək	čora					halək	halək	halək	boy
		čuwara								girl
yaw	yaw	yo	ye	yo	ye	yo	yaw	yaw	yaw	one
calor	calor	čalor	sāler	cālwer	cāler	cālwor	calor	calor	salor	four
pinjə	pinjə	/pinjə	pinzə	pinzə	pinjə	pinzə	pinjə	pinzə	pinzə	five
špa	špaž	špo	špež	špež	špeg	špeg		špag	špag	six
cok	cok	čok	sek	cek	cek	cok	cok	cok	sok	who
mu	muž	mu	miž	miž	mig	mu		mung	mung	we
zmā	zmā	zmā	emo	emo	emo	emo	zmā	zəmā	zəmā	my
stā	stā	stā	eto	eto	eto	eto	stā	stā	stā	your
										very, many
lə	ləž	lə	ləški	ləški	ləg	ləg		ləg	ləg	little, less
č əl	čšəl	γwətəl		čšəl		cəxəl		ckəl/čixəl	skəl	to drink
ho	ho	ho	ey	ey	ey	ey	ho	ho	ao	yes
yəm	yəm	yəm	yə	yə	yə	yəm	yəm	yəm	yəm	I am
jəm	jəm	, druməm	drimə, sə	drimə, cə	drimə, cə	cəm, druməm	jəm	zəm	zəm	I go
žəba	žəba	zbə	žəbā	žəbā	žəbā		žəba	žəba		tongue, language
kor	kor	kor	ker	ker	ker	kolə	kor	kor	kor	home
bega	bega	bega	vega	vega	vega	vega	bega	bega	bega	evening
sta	sta	sta	štā	štā	stā	štā	sta	šta	šta	it exists
plār	plār	pyār	plor	plor	plor	plor	plār	plār	plār	father

See also

• Iranian Languages vocabulary comparison table
• List of Pashto language poets
• List of Pashto language singers

Notes and references

1. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 03 Jan. 2008. Dictionary.com Link.
2. "afghan." WordNet 3.0. Princeton University. 03 Jan. 2008. Word Net Link
3. UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile
4. Nicholas Sims-Williams, "'Eastern Iranian Languages'", Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, available at www.iranica.com, Link
5. CIA Factbook 2009; "Afghanistan - People"
6. Ch. M. Kieffer, "'AFGHANISTAN v. Languages'", Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, available at www.iranica.com, Link
7. "A survey of the Afghan people - Afghanistan in 2006", The Asia Foundation, technical assistance by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS; India) and Afghan Center for Socio-economic and Opinion Research (ACSOR), Kabul, 2006, PDF
8. Government of Pakistan: Population by Mother Tongue
9. Languages of Iran, ethnologue report
10. "Pashto, Southern: a language of Afghanistan", Ethnologue, accessed 6 June 2009
11. Walter R Lawrence, Imperial Gazetteer of India. Provincial Series, pg 36-37, Link
12. ethnologue report for Languages of United Arab Emirates
13. ethnologue report for Languages of United Kingdom
14. Constitution of Afghanistan (2004)
15. Emeneau, M. B. (1962) "Bilingualism and Structural Borrowing" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106(5): pp. 430-442, p. 441
16. Michael M.T. Henderson, Four Varieties of Pashto
17. G. Morgenstierne, "'AFGHANISTAN vi. Paṧtō'", Encyclopaedia Iranica Online, available at www.iranica.com, Link

Bibliography

• Gusain, Lakhan (2008??) " A Grammar of Pashto". Ann Arbor, MI: Northside Publishers. ISBN ??
• Georg Morgenstierne (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9
• Herbert Penzl A Grammar of Pashto A Descriptive Study of the Dialect of Kandahar, Afghanistan ISBN 0923891722
• Herbert Penzl A Reader of Pashto ISBN 0923891714

External links

• H. G. Raverty. A Dictionary of the Puk'hto, Pus'hto, or Language of the Afghans. Second edition, with considerable additions. London: Williams and Norgate, 1867.
• The Pashto software localization and development
• پښتو ليکلاﺭ ښود, by Prof Zyar (Pashto)
• D. N. MacKenzie, "A Standard Pashto", Khyber.org
• Orthography and Phonemes in Pashto (Afghan)
• Freeware Online Pashto Dictionaries
• A Pashto Word List