Pashto

Pashto
پښتو paʂto
Native to	Afghanistan: south, east, and some parts of north and west; Pakistan: northwestern provinces (NWFP, northwestern Balochistan, and some parts of Northern Areas); some parts of northeastern Iran
Region	southern Central Asia
Native speakers	approx. 40 million
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Eastern Iranian South Eastern Pashto
Writing system	Naskh, Latin
Official status
Official language in	Afghanistan (official) Pakistan (provincial)
Regulated by	Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ps
ISO 639-2	pus
ISO 639-3	Variously: pus – Pashto (generic) pst – Central Pashto pbu – Northern Pashto pbt – Southern Pashto

Pashto (Naskh: پښتو‎ - IPA: [paʂ'to]; alternative spelling: Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, or Pushtu), also known as Afghani, is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. There are nearly 40 million Pashtuns. As defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, Pashto is a national and official language of Afghanistan.

Geographic distribution

Dark green: Countries where Iranian languages are official. Teal: Regional co-official/de facto status.

Afghanistan

No exact numbers are available for Afghanistan, but according to Encyclopaedia Iranica, Pashto is the native language of 50 to 55 percent of the population of Afghanistan (or 8 Million, at the time of approach), primarily spoken in the south, east, southwest and some northern parts of Afghanistan. CIA World Factbook 2009 estimates that only 35% of the population speak Pashto as their first language. According to "A survey of the Afghan people - Afghanistan in 2006", Pashto is the first language of 40% of the population, while additional 27% know the language (combined 67%).

Pakistan

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 "transplant" communities are also found in Sindh (Karachi and Hyderabad).

Elsewhere

Other communities of Pashto-speakers are found in northeastern Iran, and some western parts of Jammu and Kashmir in India.

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 official language, but is one of the provincial languages in NWFP, FATA and Balochistan.

Grammar

Main article: Pashto grammar

Pashto is a S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for gender (masc./fem.), number (sing./plur.), and case (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	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open		a	ɑ

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

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ɳ
Plosive	p b	t d		ʈ ɖ			k g	q	ʔ
Fricative	f		s z	ʂ ʐ	ʃ ʒ		x ɣ		h
Affricate		ts dz			tʃ dʒ
Approximant		l				j	w
Rhotic		r		ɺ̡

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

The retroflex lateral flap /ɺ̡/ 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], [g] in northern dialects, and postalveolars [ʃ], [ʒ] in southeastern dialects.

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

Vocabulary

In Pashto, most of the lexicon is of native East Iranian origin; those words can be easily compared to those known from Avestan, Ossetic and Pamir languages. Post 7th century borrowings came primarily from Arabic. Modern borrowings come from Persian, Urdu/Hindi and English.

Writing system

Like neighboring Persian and Urdu, Pashto uses 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 nineteenth and twentieth 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 more vowels and consonants than either Arabic or Persian. As a result, the Pashto alphabet has several letters which do not appear in any other Arabic script. For example, the letters representing the retroflex consonants /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ɺ̡/ and /ɳ/ are written like the standard Arabic teh, dâl, reh and nun with a "panddak", "gharrwandai" or also called "skerrai" attached underneath, which looks like a small circle: ړ ,ډ ,ټ, and ڼ, respectively. It also has the letters šin and žeh (representing voiceless and voiced retroflex fricatives), which look like a sin and reh respectively with a dot above and beneath: ښ and ږ. The letters representing /ts/ and /dz/ are also specific to Pashto; they look like a ح with three dots above and an hamza (ء) above; څ and ځ. It has a number of additional vowel diacritics as well.

Pashto Alphabet

Below are the 44 letters of the Pashto alphabet. The dialects of Kandahar (K) and Peshawar (P) are included.

Name	ALA-LC Romanization	IPA	Letter
alif	a, ʾ	[ɑ], [ʔ]	ﺍ
be	b	[b]	ﺏ
pe	p	[p]	پ
te	t	[t]	ﺕ
ṭe	ṭ	[ʈ]	ټ
s̱e	s̱	[s]	ﺙ
jīm	j	[ʤ]	ﺝ
che	ch	[ʧ]	ﭺ
ḥe	ḥ	[h]	ﺡ
ṡe	ṡ	[ts] (K) / [s] (P)	څ
że	ż	[dz] (K) / [z] (P)	ځ
khe	kh	[x]	ﺥ
dāl	d	[d]	ﺩ
ḍāl	ḍ	[ɖ]	ډ
ẕāl	ẕ	[z]	ﺫ
re	r	[r]	ﺭ
ṛe	ṛ	[ɺ̡]	ڔ
ze	z	[z]	ﺯ
zhe	zh	[ʒ] (K) / [dʒ] (P)	ژ
ẓhe (K)	ẓh (K)	[ʐ] (K)	ږ
sīn	s	[s]	ﺱ
shīn	sh	[ʃ]	ﺵ
ṣhīn (K) / k'hīn (P)	ṣh (K) / k'h (P)	[ʂ] (K) / [x] (P)	ښ
ṣād	ṣ	[s]	ﺹ
z̤ād	z̤	[z]	ﺽ
ṭwe	ṭ	[t]	ﻁ
ẓwe	ẓ	[z]	ﻅ
ʻayn	ʻ	[ʔ]	ﻉ
ghayn	gh	[ɣ]	ﻍ
fe	f	[f]	ﻑ
qāf	q	[q]	ﻕ
kāf	k	[k]	ک
gāf	g	[g]	ګ
lām	l	[l]	ﻝ
mīm	m	[m]	ﻡ
nūn	n	[n]	ﻥ
ṇūn	ṇ	[ɳ]	ڼ
wāw	w	[w]	و
he	h	[h]	ﻩ
ye	y	[j]	ﻯ
sakhtah ye	ī	[i]	ي
pastah ye	e	[e]	ې
ṣhażīnah ye (K)	ạy	[əj]	ۍ
faʻlīyah ye (P)	ạy	[əj]	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 (in Kandahar, Zabul):	[ʂ]	[ʐ]	[ts]	[dz]	[ʒ]	[ɑ]	[u]
Southeastern (in Quetta):	[ʃ]	[ʒ]	[ts]	[dz]	[ʒ]	[ɑ]	[u]
Central Wannetsi (Harnai, Sinjawi):	[ʂ]/[ʃ]	[ʐ]/[ʒ]	[tʃ]/[ts]	[dʒ]/[dz]	[z]/[ʒ]	[ɑ]	[u]
Central Marwati (in Laki):	[ʃ]	[ʒ]	[tʃ]	[dʒ]	[ʒ]	[ɑ]	[u]
Central Banuci (in Banu):	[ʃ]	[ʒ]	[s]	[z]/[s]	[ʒ]	[o]	[i]
Central Waziri (in Wanna):	[ɕ]/[ʃ]	[ʑ]/[ʒ]	[ts]	[dz]/[ts]	[ʑ]/[ʒ]	[o]	[i]
Central Khosti (in Khost):	[ç]	[g]	[ts]	[dz]/[ts]	[ʒ]	[o]	[i]
Central Dzadrani (in Dzadran):	[ç]	[ʝ]	[ts]	[dz]/[ts]	[ʒ]	[o]	[i]
Central Afridi (in Tirah, Jamrud):	[x]	[g]	[ts]	[z]/[ts]	[dʒ]	[o]	[u]
Northwestern (Ghazni, Wardak):	[ç]	[ʝ]	[ts]	[dz]	[ʒ]	[ɑ]	[u]
Northwestern (Central Ghilzai):	[ç]	[ʝ]	[s]	[z]	[ʒ]	[ɑ]	[u]
Northern (in Nangarhar, Kabul):	[x]	[g]	[ts]	[z]	[ʒ]	[ɑ]	[u]
Northeastern (Yusufzai, Peshawar):	[x]	[g]	[s]	[z]	[dʒ]	[ɑ]	[u]

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 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 between Pashto dialects

Kandahar	Quetta	Harnai	Bannu	Wana	Khost	Tirah	Ghazni	Kabul	Peshawar	Translation
Paṣhto	Pashto	Paṣhto	Pāshte	Pāshte	Pāk'hte	Pākhto	Pak'hto	Pakhto	Pukhto	Pashto
war	war	war	tāmbə	tāmbə, wār	dāṛa, wār	wār, tāmbə	war	war	war	door
pṣha	psha	ṣhpa, ghədəi	pshā	pshā	pk'hā	pkhā	pk'ha	pkha	khpa	foot
lmar	lmar	mer	myerə stərga	ghormə, myerə stərga	myerə stərga	myer, myerə stərga	nmar	nmar	nwar	sun
halək	halək	chora	weṛka	weṛkai	weṛkai	woṛkai	halək	halək	halək	boy
njiləi	njiləi	chuwara	weṛkye	jəlkiye	jəlkiye	woṛkye, jəlkiye	jiləi	jilkəi	jine	girl
yaw	yaw	yo	ye	yo	ye	yo	yaw	yaw	yaw	one
tsalor	tsalor	chalor	saler	tsalwer	tsaler	tsalwor	tsalor	tsalor	salor	four
pindzə	pindzə	pinjə/pindzə	pinzə	pinzə	pindzə	pinzə	pindzə	pinzə	pinzə	five
shpaẓh	shpazh	shpoẓh	shpezh	shpezh	shpeg	shpeg	shpag'h	shpag	shpag	six
tsok	tsok	chok	sek	tsek	tsek	tsok	tsok	tsok	sok	who
muẓh	muzh	muṣh	mizh	mizh	mig	mu	mug'h	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
ḍer, zyāt	ḍer, zyāt	tsaṭ	pira, zyot	pira, zyot	ḍer, zyot	ḍer, zyot	ḍer, zyāt	ḍer, zyāt	ḍer, zyāt	very, many
ləẓh	ləzh	ləẓh	ləshki	ləshki	ləg	ləg	ləg'h	ləg	ləg	little, less
chṣhəl	chshəl	ghwətəl	chshəl, ghṛapawəl	chshəl	tsək'həl	tsəkhəl	tsək'həl	tskəl/chikhəl	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
dzəm	dzəm	jəm, druməm	drimə, sə	drimə, tsə	drimə, tsə	tsəm, druməm	dzəm	zəm	zəm	I go
zhəba	zhəba	zbə	zhəba	zhəba	zhəba	jəba	zhəba	zhəba	jəba	tongue, language
kor	kor	kor	ker	ker	ker	kolə	kor	kor	kor	home
plār	plār	pyār	plor	plor	plor	plor	plār	plār	plār	father

Many words in isolated central dialects are borrowed from the surrounding languages - Dardic and Ormuri.

See also

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

Bibliography

• Schmidt, Rüdiger (ed.) (1989). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ISBN 3-88226-413-6. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9
• Gusain, Lakhan (2008??) " A Grammar of Pashto". Ann Arbor, MI: Northside Publishers. ISBN ??

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.
• Freeware Online Pashto Dictionaries
• The Pashto software localization and development
• Orthography and Phonemes in Pashto (Afghan)

Pashto Computer Fonts

• Free fonts:
  • Download Free Pashto Font for ASCI condes and other softwares
  • Download Free Pashto Font (zip format)
  • Download Free Pashto Font (win32 executable) site1
  • Wazu Japan - Free and Non-free Pashto Fonts