Pashto language, alphabet and pronunciation Search Pashto (پښتو) Pashto is a member of the southeastern Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian languages spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. There are three main varieties of Pashto: Northern Pashto, spoken mainly in Pakistan; Southern Pashto, spoken mainly in Afghanistan; and Central Pashto, spoken mainly in Pakistan. The exact number of Pashto speakers is not known for sure, but most estimates range from 45 million to 55 million. Pashto is the first language of between 40% and 55% (11 to 15.4 million) of the people of Afghanistan, and 10% to 28% (2.8 to 7.8 million) speak it as a second language, and the total is around 18 or 19 million. Pashto has about 25 million speakers in Pakistan (15% of the population) in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the provinces of Balochistan, Mianwali, Attock, Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Pashto at a glance Writing system: Arabic script Status: one of the official languages of Afghanistan There are also communities of Pashto speakers in the northeast of Iran, Tajikistan and India, as well as in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and a number of other countries. Pashto was made the national language of Afghanistan by royal decree in 1936. Since then, the Pashto spelling system has been revised to some extent. Today both Dari and Pashto are official languages there. Pashto first appeared in writing during the 16th century in the form of an account of Shekh Mali's conquest of Swat. It is written with a version of the Arabic script. There are two standard written forms: one based on the dialect of Kandahar, the other on the dialect of Peshawar. The name Pashto is thought to derive from the reconstructed proto-Iranian form, parsawā 'Persian language. In northen Afghanistan speakers of Pashto are called Pakhtūn; in sourthen Afghanistan they are known as Pashtūn, and as Pathān or Afghan in Pakistan.

Pashto alphabet (د پښتو الفباء) Notes ح tends to be silent when at the end of a word. څ is pronounced ​[s] in Ghazni and Peshawar dialects.​ ځ is pronounced ​[z] in Ghazni and Peshawar dialects.​ ږ is pronounced [ʐ], Kandahar, [ʒ] in Quetta, [ʝ] in Ghazni, and [ɡ] in Peshawar dialects. ښ is pronounced [ʂ]​ in Kandahar, [ʃ] in Quetta, ​[ç] in Ghazni, and ​[x]​ in Peshawar dialects. ق ف ع ظ ط ض ص ح ﺫ ث appear only in loanwords which are mostly of Arabic origin.

Notes and some details of Pashto pronunciation provided by Michael Peter Füstumum Pashto numbers Pashto sample text Transliteration Də bašar ṫol afrād āzād naṙəy tâ rāźī au də ḥays̱iyat au ḥuqūqo lâ palwâ sarâ barābar dī. ṫol də ʿaqəl au wijdān ḫāwandān dī au yo lâ bal sarâ də warorəy pâ rūḥiye sarâ bāyad čaland kəṙī. Translation All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) What Is Pashto | Pashto Poems | History Of Pashto | Academic Room Tweet Pashto (Naskh: پښتو IPA: [paʂˈto, pux'to]; also transliterated Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, Paxto or Pushtu), also known as Afghani (Persian: افغانی‎) and Pathani (Urdu: پٹھانی, Hindi: पठानी Paṭhānī), is the native language of the Pashtun people of South Central Asia. Pashto is a member of the Eastern Iranian languages group, spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as by the Pashtun diaspora around the world. Pashto belongs to the Northeastern Iranic branch of the Indo-Iranian language family, although Ethnologue lists it as Southeastern Iranic. The number of Pashtuns or Pashto-speakers is estimated 50-60 million people world wide.

Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan (the other being Dari Persian), and a regional language in West and Northwest Pakistan. Geographic distribution Pashto is a language spoken in South-Central Asia, primarily in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan as well as by the Pashtuns throughout the world. As the national language of Afghanistan, Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south and southwest, but also in some northern and western parts of the country. The exact numbers of speakers are unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 35-60% of the total population of Afghanistan. In Pakistan, Pashto is the first language of about 15.42% of Pakistan's 170 million people. It is the main language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and northwestern Balochistan, but also spoken in parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of the Punjab province as well as by Pashtuns who are found living in different cities throughout the country. Modern Pashto-speaking communities are also found in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh.

By some estimates, there are close to 7 million of Pashtuns in Karachi. Other communities of Pashto speakers are found in northeastern Iran, primarily in South Khorasan Province to the east of Qaen, near the Afghan border, and in Tajikistan. There are also communities of Pashtun communities descent in the southwestern part of Jammu and Kashmir. Sizable Pashto-speaking communities also exist in the Middle East, especially in the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States, United Kingdom, Thailand, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Qatar, Australia, Japan and Russia etc. History The origin of Pashto language and the Pashtun tribes is unknown. The word "Pashto" derives by regular phonological processes from Parsawā- "Persian". Nonetheless, the Pashtuns are sometimes compared with the Pakhta tribes mentioned in the Rigveda (1700–1100 BC), apparently the same as a people called Pactyans, described by the Greek historian Herodotus as living in the Achaemenid's Arachosia Satrapy as early as the 1st millennium BC.

However, this comparison appears to be due mainly to the apparent, etymologically unjustified, similarity between their names. Herodotus also mentions the Pactyan "Apridai" tribe but it is unknown what language they spoke. Strabo, who lived between 64 BC and 24 CE, explains that the tribes inhabiting the lands west of the Indus River were part of Ariana and to their east was India. Since the 3rd century CE and onward, they are mostly referred to by the name "Afghan" ("Abgan") and their language as "Afghani". Scholars such as Abdul Hai Habibi and others believe that the earliest Pashto work dates back to Amir Kror Suri in the eighth century, and they use the writings found in Pata Khazana. However, this is disputed by several European experts due to lack of strong evidence. Pata Khazana is a Pashto manuscript claimed to be first compiled during the Hotaki dynasty (1709–1738) in Kandahar, Afghanistan. During the 17th century Pashto poetry was becoming very popular among the Pashtuns.

Some of those who wrote Poetry in Pashto are Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba, Nazo Tokhi and Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of Afghanistan or the Afghan Empire. Semi-official language of Afghanistan Before the present day ethno-linguistic situation in South Asia, the Afghan Empire comprised regions on both sides of the Durand Line by which the British colonial power annexed about one third of Afghanistan. The border created a buffer zone and was drawn through the Pashtun areas of settlement leaving the larger part of them in what was to become Pakistan. Pashto (since 1936) and Dari (Persian) are the two official languages of Afghanistan. Persian, however, was the only official language until the 1930s, and it still serves as the lingua franca of the country. Since the early 18th century, all the kings of Afghanistan were ethnic Pashtuns except for Habibullah Kalakani, and most of them bilingual although Amānullāh Khān spoke Pashto as his second language.

Persian as the literary language of the royal court was more widely used in government institutions while Pashto was spoken by the Pashtun tribes as their native tongue. Amanullah Khan began promoting Pashto during his reign as a marker of ethnic identity and a symbol of "official nationalism" leading Afghanistan to independence after the defeat of the British colonial power in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. In the 1930s, a movement began to take hold to promote Pashto as a language of government, administration and art with the establishment of a Pashto Society Pashto Anjuman in 1931 and the inauguration of the Kabul University in 1932 as well as the formation of the Pashto Academy Pashto Tolana in 1937. Although officially strengthening the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a "sophisticated language and a symbol of cultured upbringing". King Zahir Shah thus followed suit after his father Nadir Khan had decreed in 1933, that both Persian and Pashto were to be studied and utilized by officials.

In 1936, Pashto was formally granted the status of an official language with full rights to usage in all aspects of government and education by a royal decree under Zahir Shah despite the fact that the ethnically Pashtun royal family and bureaucrates mostly spoke Persian. Thus Pashto became a national language, a symbol for Afghan nationalism. The status of official language was reaffirmed in 1964 by the constitutional assembly when Afghan Persian was officially renamed to Dari. The lyrics of the national anthem of Afghanistan are in Pashto. Regional language in Pakistan In Pakistan, Pashto is the regional language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. There is also sizeable populace of Balochistan that speak Pashto, mainly in the provincial capital of Quetta and in the north of the province. In 1984, Pashto was permitted to be used as the medium of instruction in primary schools. Grammar Pashto is an SOV (subject–object–verb) language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns.

Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masc./fem.), two numbers (sing./plur.), and four cases (direct, oblique I, oblique II and vocative). The verb system is very intricate with the following tenses: present, simple past, past progressive, present perfect and past perfect. There is also an inflection for the subjunctive mood. 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 Pashto also has the diphthongs /ai/, /əi/, /ɑw/, /aw/.

Consonants Pashto - InfopediaPk - All facts in one site Pakistan (Provincial language in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa & FATA) Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan Pashto (Naskh: پښتو also transliterated Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, Paxto or Pushtu), known as Afghan in Farsi and Pathan in Punjabi (The two languages being located on either side of Pashto),is the native language of the indigenous Pashtun people who are found primarily between an area south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan and west of the Indus River in Pakistan. It is a member of the Eastern Iranian languages group spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as by the Pashtun diaspora around the world. Pashto belongs to the Northeastern branch of the Indo-Iranian language family, although Ethnologue lists it as Southeastern.The number of Pashtuns or Pashto-speakers is estimated 50-60 million people world wide.The Constitution of Afghanistan declares Pashto as one of the two official languages of the country, the other being Dari (Persian).

History Of Pashto Abdul Rahman Baba (1650–1715) The origin of Pashto language and the Pashtun tribes is unknown. The word "Pashto" derives by regular phonological processes from Parsawa- "Persian".Nonetheless, the Pashtuns are sometimes compared with the Pakhta tribes mentioned in the Rigveda (1700–1100 BC), apparently the same as a people called Pactyans, described by the Greek historian Herodotus as living in the Achaemenid's Arachosia Satrapy as early as the 1st millennium BC.However, this comparison appears to be due mainly to the apparent, etymologically unjustified, similarity between their names. Herodotus also mentions the Pactyan "Apridai" Pashtun or Pathan tribe but it is unknown what language they spoke.

Strabo, who lived between 64 BC and 24 CE, explains that the tribes inhabiting the lands west of the Indus River were part of Ariana and to their east was India.Since the 3rd century CE and onward, they are mostly referred to by the name "Afghan" ("Abgan") and their language as "Afghani". Scholars such as Abdul Hai Habibi and others believe that the earliest Pashto work dates back to Amir Kror Suri in the eighth century, and they use the writings found in Pata Khazana. However, this is disputed by several European experts due to lack of strong evidence. Pata Khazana is a Pashto manuscript claimed to be first compiled during the Hotaki dynasty (1709–1738) in Kandahar, Afghanistan. During the 17th century Pashto poetry was becoming very popular among the Pashtuns. Some of those who wrote Poetry in Pashto are Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba, Nazo Tokhi and Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of Afghanistan or the Afghan Empire.

Official language Before the present day ethno-linguistic situation in South Asia, the Afghan Empire comprised regions on both sides of the Durand Line by which the British colonial power annexed about one third of Afghanistan. The border created a buffer zone and was drawn through the Pashtun areas of settlement leaving the larger part of them in what was to become Pakistan. Pashto (since 1936) and Dari (since 1964) are the two official languages of Afghanistan - a status held until the 1930s by Persian,which served as the lingua franca of the Durrani Empire. Since the early 18th century, all the kings of Afghanistan were ethnic Pashtuns except for Habibullah Kalakani, and most of them bilingual although Amanullah Khan spoke Pashto as his second language.Persian as the literary language of the royal court was more widely used in government institutions while Pashto was spoken by the Pashtun tribes as their native tongue.

Amanullah Khan began promoting Pashto during his reign as a marker of ethnic identity and a symbol of "Official nationalism" leading Afghanistan to independence after the defeat of the British colonial power in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. In the 1930s, a movement began to take hold to promote Pashto as a language of government, administration and art with the establishment of a Pashto Society Pashto Anjuman in 1931 and the inauguration of the Kabul University in 1932 as well as the formation of the Pashto Academy Pashto Tolana in 1937.Although officially strengthening the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a "Sophisticated language and a symbol of cultured upbringing".

King Zahir Shah thus followed suit after his father Nadir Khan had decreed in 1933, that both Persian and Pashto were to be studied and utilized by officials.In 1936, Pashto was formally granted the status of an official language with full rights to usage in all aspects of government and education by a royal decree under Zahir Shah despite the fact that the ethnically Pashtun royal family and bureaucrates mostly spoke Persian.Thus Pashto became a national language, a symbol for Afghan nationalism. The status of official language was reaffirmed in 1964 by the constitutional assembly when Afghan Persian was officially renamed to Dari.The lyrics of the national anthem of Afghanistan are in Pashto. In Pakistan, Pashto is the regional language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.In 1984, Pashto was permitted to be used as the medium of instruction in primary schools. Pashto dialects Pashto has two main dialects: a softer dialect spoken in the south, and a harsher dialect in the north.

The former is further divided into southwestern and southeastern dialects, and the latter into northwestern (Also called central or Ghiljai dialect) and northeastern. The morphological differences between the most extreme north-eastern and south-western dialects are comparatively few and unimportant, and the criteria of dialect differentiation in Pashto are primarily phonological. Writing System Pashto employs the Pashto alphabet, a modified form of the Persian alphabet which on its part is derived from the Arabic alphabet. The reason for this is because, it is not a Semitic language, and thus it is modified. It has extra letters for Pashto-specific sounds. Since the 17th century Pashto has been primarily written in the Naskh script, rather than the Nasta'liq script used for neighboring Persian and Urdu languages. The Pashto alphabet consists of 45 letters, and 4 diacritic marks.Pashto is written from right to left. Speakers and geographic distribution Pashto is a language spoken in South-Central Asia, primarily in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan as well as by the Pashtuns throughout the world.

As the national language of Afghanistan,Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south and southwest, but also in some northern and western parts of the country. The exact numbers of speakers are unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 35-60% of the total population of Afghanistan. In Pakistan, Pashto is the first language of about 15.42% of Pakistan's 170 million people. It is the main language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and northwestern Balochistan, but also spoken in parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of the Punjab province as well as by Pashtuns who are found living in different cities throughout the country. Modern Pashto speaking communities are also found in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh. Other communities of Pashto speakers are found in northeastern Iran, primarily in South Khorasan Province to the east of Qaen, near the Afghan border, and in Tajikistan.There are also communities of Pashtun communities descent in the southwestern part of Jammu and Kashmir.

Sizable Pashto-speaking communities also exist in the Middle East, especially in the United Arab Emirates,and Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States, United Kingdom,Thailand, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Qatar, Australia, Japan and Russia etc. Create a free website History of Pushto language The History of Pashto language Pushto is one of the national languages of Afghanistan (Dari Persian is the other). Major Pushto speaking cities in Afghanistan are Kandahar (Qandahar), Kabul. There are over 9 million speakers of Pushto in Afghanistan. LINGUISTIC AFFILIATION (its relations to other languages) Pushto is one of the East Iranian group of languages, which includes, for example, Ossete (North Ossetian, south Ossetian, Caucasus Soviet Socialist Republic) and Yaghnobi (Tajikistan). East Iranian and West Iranian (which includes Persian) are major sub-groups of the Iranian group of the Indo Iranian branch of the Indo European family of languages. Indo-Iranian languages are spoken in a wide area stretching from portions of eastern Turkey and eastern Iraq to western India.

The other main division of Indo- Iranian, in addition to Iranian, is the Indo-Aryan languages, a group comprised of many languages of the Indian subcontinent.. LANGUAGE VARIATION There are two major dialects of Pashto: Western Pashto spoken in Afghanistan and in the capital, Kabul , and Eastern Pashto spoken in northeastern Pakistan. Most speakers of Pashto speak these two dialects. Two other dialects are also distinguished: Southern Pashto, spoken in Baluchistan (western Pakistan and eastern Iran) and in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The variation in spelling of the language's name (Pashto, Pukhto, etc.) stems from the different pronunciations in the various dialects of the second consonant in the word; for example, it is a retroflex [sh] in the Kandahari dialect, and a palatal fricative in the Kabuli dialect. The major dialect divisions themselves have numerous variants. In general, however, one speaker of Pashto readily understands another. The Central and Southern dialects are more divergent. The Kandahari dialect is reflected in the spelling system, and is considered by some to be the "standard" for that reason.

ORTHOGRAPHY Pushto has been written in a variant of the Persian script (which in turn is a variant of Arabic script) since the late sixteenth century. Certain letters were modified to account for sounds specific to Pushto. Until the spelling system was standardized in the late eighteenth century, the representation of these consonants varied greatly. The Pushto alphabet, which has more vowel sounds than either Persian or Arabic, represents the vowels more extensively than either the Persian or the Arabic alphabets. With the adoption of Pushto as a national language of Afghanistan, some revisions of the spelling system have been made in the interest of clarity. LINGUISTIC SKETCH Pushto has a seven vowel system. There are retroflex consonants sounds pronounced with the tongue tip curled back--which were presumably borrowed from nearby Indo-Aryan languages. 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. Verbs agree with their subjects in person, number, and grammatical gender as well as being marked for tense/aspect. Past tense transitive sentences are formed as ergative: in these, the object rather than the subject agrees with the verb, and weak pronoun objects rather than subjects are omitted if they are not emphatic. Word order, which is very rigid, is subject-object-verb. As the language of an Islamic people, Pushto also contains a high number of borrowings from Arabic; among educated speakers, the Arabic plurals of borrowed nouns are frequently maintained. ROLE IN SOCIETY 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. Pushto has an extensive written tradition.

There are a number of classic Pushtun poets, most notably Khosal Khan Khattak. Modern Pushtun written literature has adapted those modern western literary forms, like the short story, that match forms from traditional Pushto oral literature. Pushtun folk literature is the most extensively developed in the region. Besides stories set to music, Pushtun has thousands of two and four line folk poems, traditionally composed by women. These reflect the day to day life and views of Pushtun women. HISTORY The first written records of Pushto are believed to date from the sixteenth century and consist of an account of Shekh Mali's conquest of Swat. In the seventeenth century, Khushhal Khan Khattak , considered the national poet of Afghanistan, was writing in Pushto. In this century, there has been a rapid expansion of writing in journalism and other modern genres which has forced innovation of the language and the creation of many new words. Traces of the history of Pushto are present in its vocabulary.

While the majority of words can be traced to Pushto's roots as member of the Eastern Iranian language branch, it has also borrowed words from adjacent languages for over two thousand years. The oldest borrowed words are from Greek, and date from the Greek occupation of Bactria in third century BC. There are also a few traces of contact with Zoroastrians and Buddhists. Starting in the Islamic period, Pushto borrowed many words from Arabic and Persian. Due to its close geographic proximity to languages of the Indian sub-continent, Pushto has borrowed words from Indian languages for centuries. Pushto has long been recognized as an important language in Afghanistan. Classical Pushto was the object of study by British soldiers and administrators in the nineteenth century and the classical grammar in use today dates from that period. In 1936, Pushto was made the national language of Afghanistan by royal decree. Today, Dari Persian and Pushto both are official national languages. ACADEMIC RESOURCES Pushto is taught at very few universities in the United States and Canada. The most consistent program offered is at the Diplomatic Language Services in Arlington, Virginia.

Pashto - Wikipedia, Photos and Videos Pashto NEXT GO TO RESULTS [51 .. 100] WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE For other uses, see Pashto (disambiguation) . Pashto The word Pax̌tō written in the Pashto alphabet Pronunciation Linguasphere 58-ABD-a This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support , you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. This article contains Pashto text . Without proper rendering support , you may see unjoined letters or other symbols instead of Pashto script . Pashto ( /ˈpʌʃtoʊ/ , [8] [9] [10] rarely /ˈpæʃtoʊ/ ; [Note 1] [Note 2] Pashto: پښتو‎ Pax̌tō [ˈpəʂt̪oː] ), also known in older literature as Afghānī (افغانى) [13] or Paṭhānī, [14] is the South - Central Asian language of the Pashtuns .

Its speakers are called Pashtuns or Pukhtuns and sometimes Afghans or Pathans. [1] It is an Eastern Iranian language , belonging to the Indo-European family . [15] [16] [17] Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan , [5] [18] [19] and it is the second-largest regional language of Pakistan , mainly spoken in the west and northwest of the country. [20] Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are almost 100% Pashto-speaking, while it is the majority language of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the northern districts of Balochistan . Pashto is the main language among the Pashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto-speakers is estimated to be 45–60 million people worldwide. [2] [21] [22] [23] Pashto belongs to the Northeastern Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian branch, [24] [25] but Ethnologue lists it as Southeastern Iranian.

[26] Pashto has two main dialect groups, “soft” and “hard”, the latter known as Pakhto. [1] [1] Contents Further information: Languages of Afghanistan and Languages of Pakistan Areas with Pashtun-speakers as mother tongue As a national language of Afghanistan, [27] Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south, and southwest, but also in some northern and western parts of the country. The exact numbers of speakers are unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 45–60% [28] [29] [30] [31] of the total population of Afghanistan . In Pakistan, Pashto is the second-largest language and one of the provincial languages ; however, provincial languages have no official status in Pakistan, given the fact that Urdu and English are the official languages of the country. Pashto is spoken as a first language by about 15.42% [32] [33] of Pakistan's 170 million people .

It is the main language of the Pashtun-majority regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , Federally Administered Tribal Areas [1] and northern Balochistan . It is also spoken in parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of the Punjab province and in Islamabad , as well as by Pashtuns who are found living in different cities throughout the country. Modern Pashto-speaking communities are found in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh . [34] [35] [36] [37] [37] Official status[ edit ] Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, along with Dari . [45] Since the early 18th century, all the kings of Afghanistan were ethnic Pashtuns except for Habibullah Kalakani . [46] Persian as the literary language of the royal court [47] was more widely used in government institutions while Pashto was spoken by the Pashtun tribes as their native tongue .

Amanullah Khan began promoting Pashto during his reign as a marker of ethnic identity and a symbol of "official nationalism" [46] leading Afghanistan to independence after the defeat of the British colonial power in the Third Anglo-Afghan War . In the 1930s, a movement began to take hold to promote Pashto as a language of government, administration and art with the establishment of a Pashto Society Pashto Anjuman in 1931 [48] and the inauguration of the Kabul University in 1932 as well as the formation of the Pashto Academy Pashto Tolana in 1937. [49] Although officially strengthening the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a “sophisticated language and a symbol of cultured upbringing”. [46] King Zahir Shah thus followed suit after his father Nadir Khan had decreed in 1933, that both Persian and Pashto were to be studied and utilized by officials.

[50] In 1936, Pashto was formally granted the status of an official language [51] with full rights to usage in all aspects of government and education by a royal decree under Zahir Shah despite the fact that the ethnically Pashtun royal family and bureaucrats mostly spoke Persian. [49] Thus Pashto became a national language , a symbol for Afghan nationalism. The status of official language was reaffirmed in 1964 by the constitutional assembly when Afghan Persian was officially renamed to Dari. [52] [53] The lyrics of the national anthem of Afghanistan are in Pashto. In Pakistan, Urdu and English are the two official languages. Pashto has no official status at the federal level. On a provincial level, Pashto is the regional language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa , Federally Administered Tribal Areas and northern Balochistan . [54] The primary medium of education in government schools in Pakistan is Urdu [55] but the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have placed more emphasis on English as the medium of instruction as of April 2014.

[56] English medium private schools in Pashto-speaking areas, however, generally do not use Pashto. The imposition of Urdu as the primary medium of education in public schools has caused a systematic degradation and decline of many of Pakistan's native languages including Pashto. [57] This has caused growing resentment amongst Pashtuns and they also complain that Pashto is often neglected officially. [58] [59] History[ edit ] According to 19th-century linguist James Darmesteter and modern linguist Michael M. T. Henderson, Pashto is “descended from Avestan ”, [15] [16] [17] but Georg Morgenstierne says they are merely closely related. [60] The Rabatak inscription of Emperor Kanishka written in Bactrian and Greek contains Pashto words, Abdul Hai Habibi says that the people borrowed these Pashto words due to proximity with Pashto speakers. [61] Strabo , who lived between 64 BC and 24 CE , explains that the tribes inhabiting the lands west of the Indus River were part of Ariana and to their east was India .

Since the 3rd century CE and onward, they are mostly referred to by the name Afghan (Abgan) [62] [63] [64] and their language as "Afghani". [13] Scholars such as Abdul Hai Habibi and others believe that the earliest modern Pashto work dates back to Amir Kror Suri of Ghor in the eighth century, and they use the writings found in Pata Khazana . However, this is disputed by several modern experts[ by whom? ] due to lack of strong evidence. Pata Khazana is a Pashto manuscript [65] claimed to be first compiled during the Hotaki dynasty (1709–1738) in Kandahar , Afghanistan. From the 16th century, Pashto poetry become very popular among the Pashtuns. Some of those who wrote poetry in Pashto are Pir Roshan , Khushal Khan Khattak , Rahman Baba , Nazo Tokhi , and Ahmad Shah Durrani , founder of the modern state of Afghanistan or the Durrani Empire .

In modern times, noticing the incursion of Persian and Persianised-Arabic vocabulary, there is a strong desire to purify Pashto by restoring its old vocabulary. [66] [67] [68] Main article: Pashto grammar Pashto is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language with split ergativity . Adjectives come before nouns . Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masc./fem.), [69] two numbers (sing./plur.), and four cases (direct, oblique I, oblique II and vocative). There is also an inflection for the subjunctive mood . The verb system is very intricate with the following tenses: present, simple past, past progressive, present perfect and past perfect. The sentence construction of Pashto has similarities with some other Indo-Iranian languages such as Prakrit and Bactrian . The possessor precedes the possessed in the genitive construction. The verb generally agrees with the subject in both transitive and intransitive sentences. An exception occurs when a completed action is reported in any of the past tenses (simple past, past progressive, present perfect or past perfect).

In such cases, the verb agrees with the subject if it is intransitive, but if it is transitive, it agrees with the object, [27] therefore Pashto shows a partly ergative behavior. Like Kurdish , but unlike most other Indo-Iranian languages, Pashto uses all three types of adpositions – prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions. Verb and subject[ edit ] Present indefinite and continues[ edit ] This article is incomplete. Please help to improve it, or discuss the issue on the talk page . (June 2014) In Pashto, the subject of the verb is expressed within the verb by adding suffixes , in a similar way to Persian and many other Indo-European languages. Some of the common Pashto suffixes are shown in the following table that represent the application of subject suffixes to a verb: Pashto suffix (Alpha) r ɺ̢ Phonemes that have been borrowed, thus non-native to Pashto, are colour-coded. The phonemes /q, f/ tend to be replaced by [k], [p].

[70] The retroflex lateral flap /ɭ̆/ (ɺ̢ or ) is pronounced as retroflex approximant [ɻ] when final. [71] [72] The retroflex fricatives /ʂ, ʐ/ and palatal fricatives /ç, ʝ/ represent dialectally different pronunciations of the same sound, not separate phonemes. In particular, the retroflex fricatives, which represent the original pronunciation of these sounds, are preserved in the southern/southwestern dialects (especially the prestige dialect of Kandahar ), while they are pronounced as palatal fricatives in the west-central dialects. Other dialects merge the original retroflexes with other existing sounds: The southeastern dialects merge them with the postalveolar fricatives /ʃ, ʒ/, while the northern/northeastern dialects merge them with the velar phonemes in an asymmetric pattern, pronouncing them as /x, ɡ/ (not /ɣ/).

Furthermore, according to Henderson (1983), [16] the west-central voiced palatal fricative /ʝ/ actually occurs only in the Wardak Province , and is merged into /ɡ/ elsewhere in the region. The velars /k, ɡ, x, ɣ/ followed by the close back rounded vowel /u/ assimilate into the labialized velars [kʷ, ɡʷ, xʷ, ɣʷ]. Voiceless stops [p, t, t͡ʃ, k] are all unaspirated , like Spanish , other Romance languages , and Austronesian languages ; they have slightly aspirated allophones prevocalically in a stressed syllable. Vocabulary[ edit ] In Pashto, most of the native elements of the lexicon are related to other Eastern Iranian languages . However, a remarkably large number of words are unique to Pashto. [24] Post-7th century borrowings came primarily from the Persian and Hindustani languages , with some Arabic words being borrowed through those two languages, but sometimes directly. [73] [74] Modern speech borrows words from English, French and German .

[75] Here is an exemplary list of Pure Pashto and borrowings: [76] Pashto Main article: Pashto literature and poetry Pashto-speakers have long had a tradition of oral literature , including proverbs , stories, and poems. Written Pashto literature saw a rise in development in the 17th century mostly due to poets like Khushal Khan Khattak (1613–1689), who, along with Rahman Baba (1650–1715), is widely regarded as among the greatest Pashto poets. From the time of Ahmad Shah Durrani (1722–1772), Pashto has been the language of the court. The first Pashto teaching text was written during the period of Ahmad Shah Durrani by Pir Mohammad Kakerr with the title of Maʿrifat al-Afghānī ("The Knowledge of Afghani [Pashto]").

After that, the first grammar book of Pashto verbs was written in 1805 in India under the title of Riyāż al-Maḥabbah ("Training in Affection") through the patronage of Nawab Mohabat Khan, son of Hafiz Rahmat Khan , chief of the Barech . Nawabullah Yar Khan, another son of Hafiz Rahmat Khan, in 1808 wrote a book of Pashto words entitled ʿAjāyib al-Lughāt ("Wonders of Languages").

An excerpt from the Kalām of Rahman Baba : زه رحمان په خپله ګرم يم چې مين يمه چې دا نور ټوپن مې بولي ګرم په څه Zə Rahmɑn pə xpəla gram jam t͡ʃe majan jama t͡ʃe d̪ɑ nor ʈopan me boli gram pə t͡sə 'I Rahman, myself am guilty that I am a lover, On what does this other universe call me guilty.' Afghanistan: Status Of Dari, Pashto Languages A Sensitive Topic Afghanistan: Status Of Dari, Pashto Languages A Sensitive Topic November 03, 2003 Email to a Friend Print The status of the Dari and Pashto languages has always been a sensitive issue in Afghanistan. Both Dari -- also called Farsi -- and Pashto belong to the Indo-European family of languages. Pashto is the mother tongue of Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, Pashtuns, while Tajiks, the second-largest ethnic group, speak Dari.

All modern Afghan constitutions, including the new draft presented to Hamid Karzai today, have provided equal status to Dari and Pashtu. In reality, however, many Pashtuns say their language is discriminated against. Prague, 3 November 2003 (RFE/RL) � Article 16 of Chapter 1 of Afghanistan's draft constitution, presented to Afghan Transitional Administration Chairman President Hamid Karzai at a ceremony today in Kabul, formally recognizes the official status of both the Dari and Pashto languages. "Among Pashtu, Dari, Uzbek, Turkmen, Baluchi, Pashayi, Nuristani, and other languages spoken in Afghanistan, Pashto and Dari are the official languages of the government. The government will provide and implement effective programs to promote and strengthen all languages in Afghanistan. Publications and radio and television broadcasting in all languages is without restriction," the draft says. Despite such constitutional guarantees, however, many Pashtuns say their language has always been discriminated against in Afghan society.

Although Pashto is spoken by the largest ethnic group in the country, they complain that Dari is the dominant language in Afghan government offices, at official meetings, in the courts, in publications and on radio and television programs. The origins of the language dispute go back many centuries. Farsi has long been one of the dominant languages in the region surrounding Afghanistan. Today, Farsi is the national and official language in both Tajikistan and Iran. Tajiks are also the largest ethnic minority in Uzbekistan, while several hundred thousand Farsi speakers live in China. By contrast, Pashto is spoken primarily only in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. Anwar-ul-haq Ahadi is the leader of the Afghan Mellat political party and the chief of the Afghan Central Bank. He told RFE/RL that even in predominantly Pashtun regions, such as Nangarhar Province, nearly all official communication takes place in Dari. "Although I don't have exact statistics, we can say that 95 percent of official paperwork takes place in Dari both in predominantly Pashtun or predominantly Tajik regions," he said.

"Pashto speakers complain that while Pashto is our country's national and official language according to the law, in reality it is stripped of both statuses. Its status as an official language is extremely weak in reality." More than 200 newspapers and magazines have been started in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. Almost half of them are published in Dari, while some 30 percent are printed in Pashtu. The rest of the publications are officially bilingual. According to Afghan journalist Ziya Bumiya, however, around 80 percent of all articles in bilingual newspapers and magazines are published only in Dari. Bumiya said the situation is the same on Afghan National Television and Radio broadcasting. "Some 80 percent of Afghan national broadcasting is in Dari, and around 20 percent in Pashtu," Bumiya said. "National television translates some foreign movies into Pashto and sometimes broadcasts insignificant announcements or statements in Pashtu. All important interviews and statements, as well as important programs that would attract many viewers, are broadcast in Dari." According to the law, Afghans are free to choose their language of education.

Primary and secondary educations are available in both Dari and Pashtu, as well as in Afghanistan's other languages, such as Uzbek. However, in most Afghan universities, lessons are taught in Dari. Professor Abdulshukur Rashad, a prominent Afghan scholar, told RFE/RL that apart from the Faculty of Pashto Language and Literature, all other departments at Kabul University function only in Dari. "Some people says that Pashto is also one of the official languages, but it is only on paper. It is not the case in reality. The language of education is Farsi. The language of offices is Farsi," Rashad said. Rashad said that while most ordinary Pashtuns are capable of basic communication in Dari, a fluent knowledge of spoken and written Dari is the norm for educated Pashtuns. "Many Tajiks, however, do not try to learn Pashto," Rashad said.

Sahebnazar Muradi, the chief editor of the "Aina" (Mirror) newspaper in Kabul, acknowledges that Pashtuns are indeed the biggest minority in Afghanistan, but that Dari is still the language of the majority because Dari is used by all the country's ethnic groups to communicate with one another. Muradi said Pashtuns learn Dari voluntarily because some 70 percent of the country's scientific and historic literature has been written in Dari over the past centuries. "No one forces people to learn Dari. There is no need for that. People of all ethnic groups learn Dari with their own initiative to be able to communicate with each other. That's why Dari is an effective language of offices, universities. It is a language of culture. It has taken this role in a very natural way," Muradi said. All Afghan constitutions -- starting from the first constitution, which was introduced in 1923, to the latest draft constitution, which was presented to Afghan leader Hamid Karzai today -- have provided equal status to both languages. Abdulhamid Mubarez, a deputy at the Ministry of Information and Culture, told RFE/RL that the law is obeyed.

"We have two official languages in Afghanistan -- Dari and Pashtu. Everyone is free to communicate, write their letters or requisitions in one of these two languages. There is no discrimination. I have never come across any discrimination," Mubarez said. However, Anwar-ul-haq Ahadi, the chief of the Central Bank, said many Pashtuns, especially university students, are dissatisfied with the current situation. "We have to address the issue," Ahadi said, "since our country is officially bilingual, all official workers at least have to be able to communicate in both Dari and Pashto languages." People like Ahadi express their concern that if the issue is not acknowledged and addressed properly, groups such as the ousted Taliban will capitalize on the popular dissatisfaction, especially the discontent of young Pashtuns, to ignite hostilities between ethnic groups. Pashto - An introduction - Qamosona.com قاموسونه ټکی کام Pashto language, alphabet and pronunciation Pashto (پښتو) Pashto is a member of the southeastern Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian languages spoken in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

There are three main varieties of Pashto: Northern Pashto, spoken mainly in Pakistan; Southern Pashto, spoken mainly in Afghanistan; and Central Pashto, spoken mainly in Pakistan. The exact number of Pashto speakers is not known for sure, but most estimates range from 45 million to 55 million. Pashto is the first language of between 40% and 55% (11 to 15.4 million) of the people of Afghanistan, and 10% to 28% (2.8 to 7.8 million) speak it as a second language, and the total is around 18 or 19 million. Pashto has about 25 million speakers in Pakistan (15% of the population) in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the provinces of Balochistan, Mianwali, Attock, Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Pashto at a glance Writing system: Arabic script Status: one of the official languages of Afghanistan There are also communities of Pashto speakers in the northeast of Iran, Tajikistan and India, as well as in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and a number of other countries. Pashto was made the national language of Afghanistan by royal decree in 1936. Since then, the Pashto spelling system has been revised to some extent. Today both Dari and Pashto are official languages there. Pashto first appeared in writing during the 16th century in the form of an account of Shekh Mali's conquest of Swat. It is written with a version of the Arabic script. There are two standard written forms: one based on the dialect of Kandahar, the other on the dialect of Peshawar. The name Pashto is thought to derive from the reconstructed proto-Iranian form, parsawā 'Persian language. In northen Afghanistan speakers of Pashto are called Pakhtūn; in sourthen Afghanistan they are known as Pashtūn, and as Pathān or Afghan in Pakistan.

Pashto alphabet (د پښتو الفباء) Pashto numbers Pashto sample text Transliteration Də bašar ṫol afrād āzād naṙəy tâ rāźī au də ḥays̱iyat au ḥuqūqo lâ palwâ sarâ barābar dī. ṫol də ʿaqəl au wijdān ḫāwandān dī au yo lâ bal sarâ də warorəy pâ rūḥiye sarâ bāyad čaland kəṙī. Translation All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) خپله تبصره لاندي ثبتولای سئ ستاسو نوم (حتمي): UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile Please note: Due to project funding termination in summer 2014, this database is no longer actively being maintained. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of the listings.

Pashto Number of Speakers: Approximately 17 million Key Dialects: Eastern, Western, Central, Southern Geographical Center: Northeastern Afghanistan Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan GENERAL INTRODUCTION Pashto is one of the national languages of Afghanistan (Dari is the other), and the home language of Pushtuns living in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, and many Pushtuns living in Baluchistan (Iran and Pakistan). Major Pashto speaking cities in Afghanistan are Kandahar (Qandahar), Kabul; and Peshawar in Pakistan. There are 8 million speakers of Pashto in Afghanistan (50% of the population) and almost 9 million in Pakistan (13% of the population). LINGUISTIC AFFILIATION Pashto is one of the East Iranian group of languages, which includes, for example, Ossete (North Ossetia, South Ossetia) and Yaghnobi (Tajikistan). East Iranian and West Iranian (which includes Persian) are major sub-groups of the Iranian group of the Indo Iranian branch of the Indo European family of languages.

Indo-Iranian languages are spoken in a wide area stretching from portions of eastern Turkey and eastern Iraq to western India (see Crystal 1987 and Payne 1987). The other main division of Indo- Iranian, in addition to Iranian, is the Indo-Aryan languages, a group comprised of many languages of the Indian subcontinent including Sanskrit, Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Sindhi. LANGUAGE VARIATION There are two major dialects of Pashto: Western Pashto spoken in Afghanistan and in the capital, Kabul, and Eastern Pashto spoken in northeastern Pakistan. Most speakers of Pashto speak these two dialects. Two other dialects are also distinguished: Southern Pashto, spoken in Baluchistan (western Pakistan and eastern Iran) and in Kandahar, Afghanistan; Central Pashto spoken in northern Pakistan (Wazirstan).

The variation in spelling of the language's name (Pashto, Pukhto, etc.) stems from the different pronunciations in the various dialects of the second consonant in the word; for example, it is a retroflex [sh] in the Kandahari dialect, and a palatal fricative in the Kabuli dialect. The major dialect divisions themselves have numerous variants. In general, however, one speaker of Pashto readily understands another. The Central and Southern dialects are more divergent. The Kandahari dialect is reflected in the spelling system, and is considered by some to be the "standard" for that reason. ORTHOGRAPHY Pashto has been written in a variant of the Persian script (which in turn is a variant of Arabic script) since the late sixteenth century. Certain letters were modified to account for sounds specific to Pashto. Until the spelling system was standardized in the late eighteenth century, the representation of these consonants varied greatly. The Pashto alphabet, which has more vowel sounds than either Persian or Arabic, represents the vowels more extensively than either the Persian or the Arabic alphabets.

With the adoption of Pashto as a national language of Afghanistan, some revisions of the spelling system have been made in the interest of clarity. In Pakistan, the classical spelling standard is not always followed. There is a tendency to substitute the Urdu forms of letters. LINGUISTIC SKETCH Pashto has a seven vowel system. There are retroflex consonants sounds pronounced with the tongue tip curled back--which were presumably borrowed from nearby Indo-Aryan languages. Unlike other Iranian languages, such as Persian, Pashto allows consonant clusters of two or three sounds at the beginning of a syllable. Pashto distinguishes two grammatical genders as well as singular and plural. There are generally two nominal cases in Pashto, 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. Verbs agree with their subjects in person, number, and grammatical gender as well as being marked for tense/aspect. Past tense transitive sentences are formed as ergatives: in these, the object rather than the subject agrees with the verb, and weak pronoun objects rather than subjects are omitted if they are not emphatic.

Word order, which is very rigid, is subject-object-verb. A high number of words in Pakistani Pashto are borrowed from Urdu, which is to be expected given that the majority of Pushtuns in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan speak at least some Urdu. As the language of an Islamic people, Pashto also contains a high number of borrowings from Arabic; among educated speakers, the Arabic plurals of borrowed nouns are frequently maintained. ROLE IN SOCIETY In Afghanistan, Pashto is second in prestige to Dari, the Iranian language spoken natively in the north and west. Because of the political power of the Pushtuns, however, Pashto has been a required subject in Dari middle 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 Pashto. In Pakistan, Pashto has no official status; it is not taught in schools and Pushtun children learn Urdu as their language of education and activities outside the home. Pashto has an extensive written tradition.

There are a number of classic Pushtun poets, most notably Khosal Khan Khattak. Modern Pushtun written literature has adapted those modern western literary forms, like the short story, that match forms from traditional Pashto oral literature. Pushtun folk literature is the most extensively developed in the region. Besides stories set to music, Pushtun has thousands of two and four line folk poems, traditionally composed by women. These reflect the day to day life and views of Pushtun women. HISTORY The first written records of Pashto are believed to date from the sixteenth century and consist of an account of Shekh Mali's conquest of Swat. In the seventeenth century, Khushhal Khan Khatak, considered the national poet of Afghanistan, was writing in Pashto. In this century, there has been a rapid expansion of writing in journalism and other modern genres which has forced innovation of the language and the creation of many new words. Traces of the history of Pashto are present in its vocabulary. While the majority of words can be traced to Pashto's roots as member of the Eastern Iranian language branch, it has also borrowed words from adjacent languages for over two thousand years.

The oldest borrowed words are from Greek, and date from the Greek occupation of Bactria in third century BC. There are also a few traces of contact with Zoroastrians and Buddhists. Starting in the Islamic period, Pashto borrowed many words from Arabic and Persian. Due to its close geographic proximity to languages of the Indian sub-continent, Pashto has borrowed words from Indian languages for centuries. Pashto has long been recognized as an important language in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Classical Pashto was the object of study by British soldiers and administrators in the nineteenth century and the classical grammar in use today dates from that period. In 1936, Pashto was made the national language of Afghanistan by royal decree. Today, Dari and Pashto both are official national languages. REFERENCES Campbell, G. L. 1991. Compendium of the World's Languages, Vol. 1 -2. London and New York: Routledge. Central Intelligence Agency. 1990. "Ethnolinguistic Groups in Afghanistan." (Map number 724842 (R00434) 4-90). McClean, VA: CIA. Crystal, D.

1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Grimes, B. F., ed. 1992. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Dallas, Texas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. MacKenzie, D. N. 1987. "Pashto". In B. Comrie, ed. The World's Major Languages, pp. 547-565. New York: Oxford University Press. _____. 1992. "Pashto." In W. Bright, ed. International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Vols. 3:165-170. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Payne, J. R. 1987. "Iranian Languages." In B. Comrie, ed. The World's Major Languages, pp. 514-522. New York: Oxford University Press.

Question: Pashto has been the official language of which country since 1936?
Answer: Afghanistan