The name Afghānistān (, Afġānestān , Afġānistān The phoneme [] ف occurs only in loanwords in Pashto, it tends to be replaced with [] پ. [] is also an allophone of [p] before voiced consonants; [] is an allophone of [f] before voiced consonants in loanwords.)Cowan, William and Jaromira Rakušan. Source Book for Linguistics. 3rd ed. John Benjamins, 1998. means "land of the Afghans", which originates from the ethnonym Afghan. Historically, the name Afghan mainly designated the Pashtun people , the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan. The earliest reference to the name is found in the 10th-century geography book known as Hudud ul- 'alam. The last part of the name, -stān is a Persian suffix for "place".
The name Afghānistān (, Afġānestān , Afġānistān The phoneme [] ف occurs only in loanwords in Pashto, it tends to be replaced with [] پ. [] is also an allophone of [p] before voiced consonants; [] is an allophone of [f] before voiced consonants in loanwords.)Cowan, William and Jaromira Rakušan. Source Book for Linguistics. 3rd ed. John Benjamins, 1998. means "land of the Afghans", which originates from the ethnonym Afghan. Historically, the name Afghan mainly designated Pashtuns , the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan. The earliest reference to the name is found in the 10th-century geography book known as Hudud al- 'alam. The last part of the name, -stān is a Persian suffix for "place".
R
the Pashtun people
Pashtuns
R
ul-
al-