In Pakistan, the classical spelling standard is not always followed. There is a tendency to substitute the Urdu forms of letters. Unlike other Iranian languages, such as Persian, Pushto allows consonant clusters of two or three sounds at the beginning of a syllable. Pushto distinguishes two grammatical genders as well as singular and plural. There are generally two nominal cases in Pushto, although the vocative case is still used with singular nouns.
Case is marked both with suffixes and with changes in the vowel of the noun stem and stress.
A high number of words in Pakistani Pushto are borrowed from Urdu, which is to be expected given that the majority of Pashtuns in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan speak at least some Urdu. In Afghanistan, Pushto is second in prestige to Dari, the Persian dialect spoken natively in the north and west. Because of the political power of the Pushtuns, however, Pushto has been a required subject in Dari medium schools, and as an official language has been one of the languages of the government. For practical purposes, however, Dari is the language of business and higher education, and so Pushtuns learn Dari. Very few Dari speakers have a good command of Pushto.