Pashto
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Pashto (Naskh: پښتو, IPA: [pəʂ'to]), also rendered as Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtoe, Pashtu, Pushtu, also known as Pathani, Afghani[1][2]) is an Eastern Iranian language spoken by Pashtuns living in Afghanistan and Pakistan.[3]
Native speakers of Pashto account for 42% of the Afghan population[4] and 15.42% of Pakistan.[5] As defined in the Constitution, Pashto is a national and official language of Afghanistan and is used for the administration of the Afghan government throughout the country.
Dialects
As a consequence of life in mountainous areas, weak socio-economic inter-relations, along with other historic and linguistic reasons, there are many dialects in Pashto language. However, as a whole, Pashto has two main dialects: soft or western dialect and hard or eastern dialect. The difference between these two dialects is in the use of some vowels and sounds. One of the main features of the dialects is the differences in the pronunciation of these five phonemes (all sounds in IPA):
Southwest: | [ts] | [dz] | [ʂ] | [ʐ] | [ʒ] |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Southeast: | [ts] | [dz] | [ʃ] | [ʒ] | [ʒ] |
Northwest: | [s] | [z] | [ç] | [j] | [ʒ] |
Northeast: | [s] | [z] | [x] | [g] | [d͡ʒ] |
The dialect of Kandahar is the most conservative with regards to phonology, retaining both the dental affricates and the retroflex fricatives, which have not merged with other phonemes.
Geographic distribution
Pashto is spoken by about 30 million people in the western provinces of North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Balochistan of Pakistan (15.4% of the total population)[6] and by over 15 million people in the south, east, west and a few northern provinces of Afghanistan (ca. 40% of the total population).[7] In Pakistan, smaller, modern "transplant" communities are also found in Sindh (Karachi, Hyderabad). Other smaller communities of Pashto-speakers are found in northeastern Iran and in India.[8],[9]
Official status
Pashto, along with Persian, is the national and official language of Afghanistan and is used for the administration of the government throughout the country. It is also used in education, literature, office and court business, media, and in religious institutions, etc. It holds in itself a repository of the cultural and social heritage of the country.
Grammar
Pashto is a S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for gender (Masculine/Feminine), number (Singular/Plural), and case (Direct/Oblique). Direct case is used for subjects and direct objects in the present tense. Oblique case is used after most pre- and post-positions, as well as in the past tense as the subject of transitive verbs. Pashto includes a definite article, which is quite similar in pronunciation to (The) in English. The demonstratives (translated as "this" and "that") are used extensively. 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, 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 | i | u | |
Mid | e | ə | o |
Open | ɑ |
Pashto also has the diphthongs /aj/ /əj/ /aw/
Consonants
Labial | Dental | Retroflex | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ɳ | |||||
Plosive | p b | t d | ʈ ɖ | k g | q | ʔ | ||
Fricative | f v | s z | ʂ ʐ | ʃ ʒ | x ɣ | h | ||
Affricate | ts dz | tʃ dʒ | ||||||
Approximant | l | ɻ | j | w | ||||
Rhotic | r | ɺ̡ |
The sounds /f/, /q/, /h/ are present only in loanwords. Less educated speakers tend to replace them with [p], [k] and nothing, respectively.
The retroflex lateral flap /ɺ̡/ is pronounced as retroflex approximant [ɻ] when final.
Vocabulary
Pashto has an ancient legacy of borrowing vocabulary from neighboring languages mainly from Vedic Sanskrit and Persian. Invaders have left vestiges as well as Pashto has borrowed words from Ancient Greek, Arabic and Turkic languages, sometimes due to invasions. Modern borrowings come primarily from English.
Writing system
From the time of Islam's rise in South-Central Asia, Pashto has used a modified version of the Arabic script. The seventeenth century saw the rise of a polemic debate which also was polarized along lines of script. The heterodox Roshani movement wrote their literature mostly in the Persianate style called the Nasta'liq script. The followers of the Akhund Darweza, and the Akhund himself, who viewed themselves as defending the religion against the influence of syncretism, wrote Pashto in the Arabicized Naskh. With some individualized exceptions Naskh has been the generally used script in the modern era of Pashto, roughly corresponding with the late 19th and 20th centuries, due to its greater adaptability for typesetting. Even lithographically reproduced Pashto has been calligraphied in Naskh as a general rule, since it was adopted as standard.
Pashto has several letters which do not appear in any other Arabic script which represent the retroflex versions of the consonants /t/, /d/, /r/, /n/. The letters are written like the standard Arabic ta', dal, ra', and nun with a "pandak", "gharwandah" or also called "skarraen" attached underneath which looks like a small circle; ړ ,ډ ,ټ, and ڼ, respectively. It also has the letters ge and xin (the initial sound of which is like the German ch found in the word "ich") which look like a ra' and sin respectively with a dot above and beneath. Pashto also uses the letters added to the Arabic alphabet from Persian, such as pe (پ). It has a number of additional vowel diacritics as well, though these often vary in their usage.
The Pashto letters ge and xin are romanised as Jj (pronounced zh or g) and Xx (pronounced kh or sh), which are separate from the letters KHkh and Gg. The Pashto Latin alphabet is: Aa Əə Bb Cc Čč Dd DZdz Ee Ff Gg Ğğ Hh İi Iı Jj Kk KHkh Ll Mm Nn Ññ Oo Öö Pp Qq Rr Řř Ss Šš Tt TSts Uu Úú Üü Vv Ww Yy Ýý Xx Žž Zz ´
Pashto alphabet
The letters of the Pashto alphabet are:[10][11]
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 ه و ى ئ ي ې ۍ
Letters specific to Pashto
The letters below are specific to Pashto only:
ټ، ځ، څ، ډ، ړ، ږ، ښ، ګ، ڼ، ې ،ۍ
The five Yaas of Pashto
The following are the five Yaas used in Pashto writing:
ی، ي، ې، ۍ، ﺉ
Examples
- Note - The following transliterations represent the Kabuli dialect.
Examples of intransitive sentence forms using the verb "to go" "tləl":
Command (you masculine-singular):
- khawanze/shawanze (ښوونځى) ta dza! or khawanze/shawanze ta lāṛ ša!
- School to go - Go to school!
Command (you masculine-plural):
- khawanze/shawanze ta lāṛ šəy!
- Go to school!
Simple Present:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta dzəm.
- I school to go - I go to school.
- zə ğwāṛəm če khawanze/shawanze ta lāṛ šəm.
- I want that to school go (Masculine-I-verb form) - I want to go to school.
Present Perfect:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta tləlay yəm.
- I school to gone (Masculine verb form) am - I have gone to school.
Simple Past:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta wəlāṛəm.
- I school to went - I went to school.
Past Perfect:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta tləlay wəm.
- I school to gone (Masculine verb form) was - I had gone to school.
Past Progressive:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta makh kay talay um"
- I school to was going - I was going to school or I used to go to school
Examples of transative sentence forms using the verb "to eat" "xwaṛəl":
Command (You singular):
- Panir wəxora!
- cheese eat - Eat the cheese!
- Panir məxora!
- cheese no-eat - Don't eat the cheese!
Command (You plural):
- Panir wəxorəy!
- cheese eat - Eat the cheese!
- Panir məxorəy!
- cheese no-eat - Don't eat the cheese!
Simple Present:
- zə panir xorəm.
- I cheese eat - I eat cheese.
Subjunctive:
- zə ğwāṛəm če panir wəxorəm.
- I want that cheese eat (I-verb form) - I want to eat cheese.
Present Perfect: ما پنېر خوړلی دی
- mā panir xoṛəlay day.
- me (I-oblique) cheese eaten (masculine-singular verb form) is - I have eaten cheese.
Simple Past:
- mā panir wəxoṛə.
- me (I-oblique) cheese ate - I ate cheese
Past Perfect:
- mā panir xoṛəlay wo.
- me (I-oblique) cheese eaten (masculine-singular verb form) was - I had eaten cheese.
Past Progressive:
- mā panir xoṛə.
- me (I oblique) cheese was eating (masculine-singular verb form) - I was eating cheese or I used to eat cheese.
Questions Stā num tsə day your name what is - what is your name
See also
- Pashtunization
- List of Pashto language poets
- List of Pashto language singers
- Iranian Languages vocabulary comparison table
Bibliography
- Schmidt, Rüdiger (ed.) (1989). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ISBN 3-88226-413-6.
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- Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9
Footnotes
- ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 03 Jan. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/afghani>.
- ^ "afghan." WordNet 3.0. Princeton University. 03 Jan. 2008. <Word Net http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=Afghani&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&h=00>
- ^ UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile
- ^ CIA World Fackbook: Afghanistan
- ^ Pakistan Census: Population By Mother Tongue
- ^ Government of Pakistan: Population by Mother Tongue
- ^ CIA -The World Factbook -- Afghanistan
- ^ "Phonemic Inventory of Pashto" (PDF). CRULP. Retrieved 2007-06-07.
- ^ Abstract of speakers’ strength of languages and mother tongues – 2001, Census of India (retrieved 17 March 2008)
- ^ Pashto Alphabet Table
- ^ Pashto Alphabet Table
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/40px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png)
- Islamic Republic Of Afghanistan Official name of Afghanistan / Afghan issues, articles and news on the Pashtu language
- Pashto dictionaries in German, French, English and Spanish [1]
- Pashto to English Dictionary [2]
- 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.
- Freeware Online Pashto Dictionaries
- Dr. Kabir Stori (ډاکتر کبیر ستوری)
- Pashto (پښتو ېده کړه)
- afghanan(افغانان)
- Khyber.Org - Khyber Gateway
- AEAS
- ( Talafghan.com تل افغان خپلواکه ناپېيلې فرهنګي ټولنيزه وېب پاڼه )
- Pashtoonkhwa(د پښتنو ټولنيز ولسوليز ګوند پښتونخوا/ افغانستان)
- TolAfghan (ټول افغان)
- Benawa.com: Kandahar Afghanistan (بېنوا ويب پاڼه - افغانستان)
- Hewad Afghanistan - هېواد افغانستان
- Pashto.org - Da Pashto Network
- Yaw Afghan (Free Pashto software, fonts etc.)
- Afghan Adabi Baheer (د افغان ادبي بهير)
- Gorbat.org (ګوربت كلتوري ټولنه)
- LawangOnline Pashto magazine (لونګ مجله)
- First Unicode Pashto Discussion Board from Pukhtoonkhwa دستار پښتو حجره
- Google in Pashto
- VOA News - Pashto (د امریکا غږ - پښتو)
- Azadi Radio (د آزادۍ راديو)
- BBC News - Pashto
- CRI Radio پښتو (Pashto)
- Deutsche Welle Pashto - د المان غږ
- Deutsche Welle Pashto Radio - د المان غږ راديو
- AVT Khyber - Pashto TV
- UCLA article
- Ethnologue report for Pashto
- GRN report for Pashto
- Hindi/Urdu-English-Kalasha-Khowar-Nuristani-Pashtu Comparative Word List
- Download free english-pashto dictionary
- د پښتو ژبی ډیر ارزښتناکه کورتپانه
- An cultural pashto web site
- Shamshad Tv is the only and the best Pashto television in Afghanistan
- The Pashto software localization and development
- Pashto Language and Culture Center - Free online pashto lessons
Pashto Computer Fonts
- Free fonts: