Pashto

As a national language of Afghanistan,[18] Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south, and southwest, but also in some northern and western parts of the country. The exact number of speakers is unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 45–60%[19][20][21][22] of the total population of Afghanistan.

In Pakistan, Pashto is spoken by 15% of its population,[23][24] mainly in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern districts of Balochistan province. Pashto-speakers are found in other major cities of Pakistan, most notably in Karachi, Sindh.[25]

Other communities of Pashto speakers are found in India, Tajikistan,[26] and northeastern Iran (primarily in South Khorasan Province to the east of Qaen, near the Afghan border).[27] In India most ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) peoples speak the geographically native Hindi-Urdu language instead of Pashto. However small numbers of Pashto speakers exist in India, namely the Sheen Khalai in Rajasthan,[28] and the Pathan community in the city of Kolkata, often nicknamed the Kabuliwala ("people of Kabul").[29][30]

In addition, sizable Pashtun diaspora also exist in Western Asia, especially in the United Arab Emirates[31] and Saudi Arabia. The Pashtun diaspora speaks Pashto in countries like the United States, United Kingdom,[32] Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Qatar, Australia, Japan, Russia, New Zealand, etc.

Inscription in Greek by Sophytos, 2nd century BCE, Kandahar.

Some linguists have argued that Pashto is descended from Avestan or a variety very similar to it.[12][56] However, the position that Pashto is a direct descendant of Avestan is not agreed upon. What scholars agree on is the fact that Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language sharing characteristics with Eastern Middle Iranian languages such as Bactrian, Khwarezmian and Sogdian.[57]

Strabo, who lived between 64 BC and 24 CE, explains that the tribes inhabiting the lands west of the Indus River were part of Ariana. This was around the time when the area inhabited by the Pashtuns was governed by the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. From the 3rd century CE onward, they are mostly referred to by the name Afghan (Abgan).[58][59][60][8]

Abdul Hai Habibi believe that the earliest modern Pashto work dates back to Amir Kror Suri of the early Ghurid period in the 8th century, and they use the writings found in Pata Khazana. Pə́ṭa Xazāná (پټه خزانه) is a Pashto manuscript[61] claimed to be written by Mohammad Hotak under the patronage of the Pashtun emperor Hussain Hotak in Kandahar; containing an anthology of Pashto poets. However, its authenticity is disputed by scholars such as David Neil MacKenzie and Lucia Serena Loi.[62][63]

From the 16th century, Pashto poetry become very popular among the Pashtuns. Some of those who wrote in Pashto are Bayazid Pir Roshan (a major inventor of the Pashto alphabet), Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba, Nazo Tokhi, and Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of Afghanistan or the Durrani Empire.

In modern times, noticing the incursion of Persian and Arabic vocabulary, there is a strong desire to "purify" Pashto by restoring its old vocabulary.[64][65][66]

Pashto is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masc./fem.),[67] two numbers (sing./plur.), and four cases (direct, oblique, ablative and vocative). There is also an inflection for the subjunctive mood. The verb system is very intricate with the following tenses: present, simple past, past progressive, present perfect, and past perfect. The possessor precedes the possessed in the genitive construction. The verb generally agrees with the subject in both transitive and intransitive sentences. An exception occurs when a completed action is reported in any of the past tenses (simple past, past progressive, present perfect, or past perfect). In such cases, the verb agrees with the subject if it is intransitive, but if it is transitive, it agrees with the object,[18] therefore Pashto shows a partly ergative behaviour. Unlike most other Indo-Iranian languages, Pashto uses all three types of adpositions – prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions.

In Pashto, most of the native elements of the lexicon are related to other Eastern Iranian languages. However, a remarkably large number of words are unique to Pashto.[72][73][56] Post-7th century borrowings came primarily from Persian language and Hindi-Urdu, with Arabic words being borrowed through Persian,[74] but sometimes directly.[75][76] Modern speech borrows words from English, French, and German.[77]

Here is an exemplary list of Pure Pashto and borrowings:[78][79][80][81][82]

Pashto employs the Pashto alphabet, a modified form of the Perso-Arabic alphabet or Arabic script.[87] In the 16th century, Bayazid Pir Roshan introduced 13 new letters to the Pashto alphabet. The alphabet was further modified over the years.

The Pashto alphabet consists of 45 letters[88] and 4 diacritic marks.In the Latin transliteration, stress is represented by the following markers over vowels: ә́, á, ā́, ú, ó, í and é. The following table gives the letters' isolated forms, along with the Latin equivalents [not officially recognised] and typical IPA values:

Pashto dialects are divided into two varieties, the "soft" southern variety Paṣ̌tō, and the "hard" northern variety Pax̌tō (Pakhtu).[9] Each variety is further divided into a number of dialects. The southern dialect of Wanetsi is the most distinctive Pashto dialect.

1. Southern variety

• Durrani or Kandahar dialect (or South Western dialect)
• Kakar dialect (or South Eastern dialect)
• Shirani dialect
• Mandokhel dialect
• Marwat-Bettani dialect
• Wanetsi dialect
• Southern Karlani group [aka. Central Dialects: Wazirwola and Banunchi]

• Khattak dialect
• Wazirwola dialect

• Dawarwola dialect
• Masidwola dialect

• Banuchi dialect

2. Northern variety

• Central Ghilji dialect (or North Western dialect)

• Wardak dialect

• Yusufzai or Yusapzai dialect (or North Eastern dialect)
• Northern Karlani group

• Taniwola dialect
• Mangal tribe dialect
• Khosti dialect
• Zadran dialect
• Bangash-Orakzai-Turi-Zazi- dialect
• Afridi dialect
• Khogyani dialect

The newly formed Standard Pashto Language Alphabets

Standard Pashto is the standardized variety of Pashto which serves as a prestige Pashto dialect, and is based on the North Western dialect, spoken in the central Ghilji region, including the Afghan capital Kabul and some surrounding region. Standard Pashto's vocabulary, however, also derives from Southern Pashto. This dialect of Pashto has been chosen as standard because the it is generally understandable. Standard Pashto is the literary variety of Pashto used in Afghan media.

Standard Pashto has been developed by Radio Television Afghanistan and Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan in Kabul. It has adopted neologisms to coin new terms from already existing words or phrases and introduce them into the Pashto lexicon. Educated Standard Pashto is learned in the curriculum that is taught in the primary schools in the country. It is used for written and formal spoken purposes, and in the domains of media and government.[89]

There has also been an effort[90] to adopt a written form based on Latin script,[91][92][93][94] but the effort of adapting a Roman alphabet has not gained official support.

Pashto-speakers have long had a tradition of oral literature, including proverbs, stories, and poems. Written Pashto literature saw a rise in development in the 17th century mostly due to poets like Khushal Khan Khattak (1613–1689), who, along with Rahman Baba (1650–1715), is widely regarded as among the greatest Pashto poets. From the time of Ahmad Shah Durrani (1722–1772), Pashto has been the language of the court. The first Pashto teaching text was written during the period of Ahmad Shah Durrani by Pir Mohammad Kakar with the title of Maʿrifat al-Afghānī ("The Knowledge of Afghani [Pashto]"). After that, the first grammar book of Pashto verbs was written in 1805 under the title of Riyāż al-Maḥabbah ("Training in Affection") through the patronage of Nawab Mahabat Khan, son of Hafiz Rahmat Khan, chief of the Barech. Nawabullah Yar Khan, another son of Hafiz Rahmat Khan, in 1808 wrote a book of Pashto words entitled ʿAjāyib al-Lughāt ("Wonders of Languages").

• Schmidt, Rüdiger (ed.) (1989). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ISBN 3-88226-413-6.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
• Georg Morgenstierne (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9
• Daniel G. Hallberg (1992) Pashto, Waneci, Ormuri (Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan, 4). National Institute of Pakistani Studies, 176 pp. ISBN 969-8023-14-3.
• Herbert Penzl A Grammar of Pashto: A Descriptive Study of the Dialect of Kandahar, Afghanistan, ISBN 0-923891-72-2
• Herbert Penzl A Reader of Pashto, ISBN 0-923891-71-4

• Morgenstierne, Georg. "The Place of Pashto among the Iranic Languages and the Problem of the Constitution of Pashtun Linguistic and Ethnic Unity." Paṣto Quarterly 1.4 (1978): 43-55.

Pashto edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pashto language.

For a list of words relating to Pashto, see the Pashto category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Pashto phrasebook.

• Pashto Dictionary with Phonetic Keyboard & Auto-Suggestion
• Pashto Phonetic Keyboard
• Pashto Language & Identity Formation in Pakistan
• Indo-Aryan identity of Pashto
• Henry George Raverty. A Dictionary of the Puk'hto, Pus'hto, or Language of the Afghans. Second edition, with considerable additions. London: Williams and Norgate, 1867.
• D. N. MacKenzie, "A Standard Pashto", Khyber.org
• Freeware Online Pashto Dictionaries
• A Pashto Word List
• Origins of Pashto
• Resources for the Study of the Pashto Language