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'Pashto' (, also known as ''Pakhto'', ''Pushto'', ''Pukhto'' , ''Pashtoe'', ''Pashtu'', ''Pushtu'' or ''Pushtoo'') is an afghani language spoken by Pashtuns living in Afghanistan and western Pakistan.^[1]

Contents

Classification

Geographic distribution

Official status

Dialects

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Historical sound changes

Grammar

Vocabulary

Writing system

Alphabet

Pashto Keyboard

Examples

See also

Bibliography

Footnotes

External links

Pashto Computer Fonts

Classification

'Pashto' belongs to the Southeastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Other languages in the Southeastern branch of Iranian languages include Sarikoli, Wakhi, Munji, and Shughni. Other notable related Iranian languages include Persian, Kurdish, Gileki, and Ossetic, which is spoken in the Caucasus and South Asia.

Geographic distribution

Pashto is spoken by about 28 million people in the western provinces of North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Balochistan of Pakistan and by over 13 million people in the south, east, west and a few northern provinces of Afghanistan.^[2][3] Smaller, modern "transplant" communities are also found in Sindh (Karachi, Hyderabad). Other smaller communities peopled by Pashtun invaders in the past centuries, exist in Northern India (Pathankot, Rampur) and northeastern Iran. It is spoken by a large part of Afghanistan's population who are of Pashtun origin, as well as by ethnic Pashtuns who live in Pakistan.

Official status

Pashto is the first official language of Afghanistan.^[4] It is also one of the official languages in the western provinces of Pakistan, and is spoken by Pashtun communities in Northwestern India.

Dialects

The northern dialect is spoken by about 18,000,000 people, and the southern dialect by about 35,000,000. One of the main features of the dialects is the differences in the pronunciation of these five phonemes (all sounds in IPA):

Southwest (Kandahar,Helmand,Zabul,Ghazni Afghanistan):
Southeast (Quetta,peshawer,Pakistan):
Northwest (Central Ghilzai, Afghanistan):
Northeast (Jallalabad,Khost,paktiya,paktika,kunar, Afghanistan):

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.

Phonology

Vowels

Diphthongs:

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Retroflex	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Plosives	p b	t d				k g	q
Fricatives	f v	s z				x	h
Affricates
Nasals	m	n
Approximants	w	l			j
Trills		r

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 () is pronounced as retroflex approximant () when final.

Historical sound changes

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. There is no definite article, but instead there is extensive use of the demonstratives this/that. The verb system is very intricate with the following: Simple 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.

Vocabulary

Pashto, being an Indo-European language, shares many cognates with other related languages.
Following the advent of Islam in Afghanistan, the Pashto language has received a significant influx of loan-words from Arabic, Persian and various Turkic languages.

Writing system

From the time of Islam's rise in South-Central Asia, Pashto has used a modified version of the Perso-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 (generally in Pakistan) 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 Perso-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 has the extra letters that Persian has added to the Arabic alphabet. It has a number of additional vowel diacritics as well, though these often vary in their usage.

Alphabet

The letters of the Pashto alphabet are:^[5][6]
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 ۀ و ؤ ى ئ ي ې ۍ

Pashto Keyboard

★ Afghan Information Ministry Approved Pashto Keyboard Layout

★ Download Pashto Keyboard software for Linux/ Unix (Howto with further links)

★ Download Pashto Keyboard software for Windows (Install instructions here)

★ Microsoft's Update for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (897338) to add support for Pashto.

Examples

★ Note - The following transliterations represent the Kabuli dialect.
Examples of intransitive sentence forms using the verb "to go" "'tləl'":
''Command (you masculine-singular):''

★ maktab ta 'dza'! or maktab ta 'lāṛ ša'!

★ School to go - Go to school!

See also

★ List of Pashto language poets

★ List of Pashto Language Singers

★

Bibliography

★ Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, , Rüdiger (ed.), Schmidt, Reichert, 1989, ISBN 3-88226-413-6

★ 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

1. University of Texas in Austin - Ethnolinguistic Groups in Afghanistan...Link
2. Government of Pakistan: Population by Mother Tongue
3. CIA -The World Factbook -- Afghanistan
4. Chapter One, Article Sixteen of the Constitution of Afghanistan
5. Pashto Alphabet Table
6. Pashto Alphabet Table

External links

★ Pashto dictionaries in German, French, English and Spanish[1]

★ Pashto to English Dictionary [2]

★ Raverty, H. G. (Henry George). 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)

★ 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

Pashto Computer Fonts

★ Free fonts:

★
★ Download Free Pashto Font for ASCI condes and other softwares

★
★ Download Free Pashto Font (zip format)

★
★ [http://www.talafghan.com/programs/Pashtofonts.exe Download Free popular Pashto fonts

★
★ Download Free Pashto Font (win32 executable) site1

★
★ Download Free Pashto Font (win32 executable) site2

★ Other Non-free Pashto fonts

★
★ Wazu Japan - Non-free Pashto Fonts