Pashto

Pashto (also known as Pushto or Pukhto) is an Eastern Iranic language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken by ethnic Pashtuns in northwestern Pakistan and  southern and eastern Afghanistan. It is the official language of Afghanistan, and an official language of Pakistan's  Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. It is spoken by the Pashtuns living in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pashtuns, its speakers, make up majority of the population in Afghanistan. They are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan and second largest ethnic group in Pakistan, where it is the official provincial language in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().

Pashto belongs to the Indo-European languages family. It has two main dialects, northern dialect and southern dialect. The small difference between these two dialects is in the use of sounds. Pashto is mainly descended from both the Bactrian and Sogdian languages.

Related pages
Languages of Afghanistan
Languages of Pakistan

References

Further reading

Morgenstierne, Georg. "The Place of Pashto among the Iranic Languages and the Problem of the Constitution of Pashtun Linguistic and Ethnic Unity." Paṣto Quarterly 1.4 (1978): 43-55.
Cheung, Johnny. "Pashto Problems III Ancient Loanwords from Early New Persian and Indo-Aryan and the Historical Contacts of Pashto & its Speakers."

Category:Iranian languages
Pashto
Category:Languages of Afghanistan
Category:Languages of Balochistan (Pakistan)