Pashto
پښتو
Pronunciation	[paʂˈto], [paçˈto], [paxˈto]
Native to	Afghanistan: east, south, southwest and in north and northwest; Pakistan: (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA, northern Balochistan,[1] and some parts of Northern Areas); some parts of northeastern Iran; and the rest of Pashtun diaspora
Region	Central Asia-South Asia
Native speakers	approx. 35.5[2] to 41[3] million
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Pashto
Writing system	Pashto alphabet
Official status
Official language in	Afghanistan  Pakistan (K.P. & FATA)
Regulated by	Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ps
ISO 639-2	pus
ISO 639-3	pus – Pashto (generic)

Pashto (Naskh: پښتو - [paʂˈto]; also transliterated Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, or Pushtu), also known as Afghani^[5][6], is an Indo-European language spoken primarily by the Pashtun people in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.^[7] Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian^[8] branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. The number of Pashto speakers is estimated to be about 42 million people. The Constitution of Afghanistan declares that Pashto is one of the two official languages of the country;^[9] the other being Dari.

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 according to "A survey of the Afghan people - Afghanistan in 2006",^[10] Pashto is the first language of approximately 40% of the population, while additional 27% know and understand the language (combined 67%). The CIA World Factbook 2009 estimates that 35% of the population speak Pashto as their first language.^[11]

In neighboring Pakistan, Pashto is spoken by about 17% of the total population (approx. 28.9 million people)^[12] in the provinces of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA, and Balochistan, as well as parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of Punjab province. Modern Pashto-speaking communities are also found in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh. With close to 7 million ethnic Pashtuns by some estimates, 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,^[13] and in Tajikistan.^[14] There are also Pashtun communities in the southwestern part of Jammu & Kashmir as well as Uttar Pradesh in India.^[15][16][17]

Sizable Pashto-speaking communities also exist in the Middle East, especially in the United Arab Emirates^[18] and Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States, particularly California, and in the United Kingdom,^[19] Thailand, Canada and Australia.

Official status

In Afghanistan, Pashto is one of the two official languages of country (the other being Dari). The Constitution states that the Afghan National Anthem "shall be in Pashto".^[20] However, despite Pashto's precedency in the constitution, Dari (Persian) remains the lingua franca and dominant language of the country.

In Pakistan, Pashto is not an official language but one of the provincial languages spoken by the ethnic Pashtuns in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Balochistan, and in cities of other provinces where large number of Pashtun communities exist.

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.),^[21] 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

Pashto also has the diphthongs /ai/, /əi/, /ɑw/, /aw/.

Consonants

The phonemes /q/, /f/ tend to be replaced by [k], [p].

The retroflex lateral flap /ɺ̢/ (//) is pronounced as retroflex approximant [ɻ] when final.

The retroflex fricatives /ʂ/, /ʐ/ that are preserved in southern dialects are replaced by palatal fricatives [ç], [ʝ] in west-central dialects, velars [x], [ɣ] in northern dialects, and postalveolars [ʃ], [ʒ] in southeastern dialects.^[22]

The velars /k/, /ɡ/, /x/, /ɣ/ followed by the close back rounded vowel /u/ assimilate into the labialized velars [kʷ], [ɡʷ], [xʷ], [ɣʷ].

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 Avestan, Ossetic and Pamir languages. However, a remarkably large number of words is special to Pashto.^[23] Post 7th century borrowings came primarily from Arabic. Modern borrowings come from Arabic^[24] with the modern educated speech borrowing words from English,^[25] French,^[25] and German.^[25]

Writing system

Pashto employs the Pashto alphabet, a modified form of the Persian alphabet which on its part is derived from the Arabic alphabet. It has extra letters for Pashto-specific sounds. Since the 17th century Pashto has been primarily written in the Naskh script, rather than the Nasta'liq script used for neighboring Persian and Urdu languages. The Pashto alphabet consists of 45 letters, and 4 diacritic marks. The following table gives the letters' isolated forms, along with IPA values for the letters' typical sounds:

Pashto is written from right to left.

Dialects

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

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

See also

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

Notes and references

Bibliography

• Schmidt, Rüdiger (ed.) (1989). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ISBN 3-88226-413-6. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• 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