Pashto language

Pashto
پښتو paʂto
Spoken in: Afghanistan: south, east, and some parts of north and west; Pakistan: western provinces (NWFP, Baluchistan), [1] in some parts of northeastern Iran and small pockets in India. 
Region: South-Central Asia
Total speakers: approx. 38 million 
Ranking: 82 (Northern),
92 (Southern)[2]
Language family: Indo-European
 Indo-Iranian
  Iranian
   Eastern Iranian
    Pashto 
Writing system: Naskh, Latin 
Official status
Official language in: Flag of Afghanistan.svg Afghanistan
Flag of Pakistan.svg Pakistan (provincial)
Regulated by: No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: ps
ISO 639-2: pus
ISO 639-3: variously:
pus – Pashto (generic)
pst – Central Pashto
pbu – Northern Pashto
pbt – Southern Pashto
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Pashto (Naskh: پښتو‎ - IPA: [pəʂ'to]; alternative spelling: Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, or Pushtu), also known as Afghani,[3][4] is an Indo-European language spoken by Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan.[5] Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family.[6]

Native speakers of Pashto account for roughly 40% of the population of Afghanistan and 15% of Pakistan who speak it as their first language. As defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, Pashto is a national and official language of Afghanistan.

Contents

Dialects

As a consequence of life in mountainous areas, along with other historic and linguistic reasons, Afghanistan has a very high linguistic diversity (there are about 50 languages; most are East Iranian, Nuristani and Dardic, and few are Turkic and West Iranian). There are also many dialects in Pashto language. The two main dialects are soft or southern dialect and hard or northern dialect. Paktika is roughly the dividing line. One of the primary features of the dialects is the differences in the pronunciation of these two phonemes (all sounds in IPA):

Southern (Kandahar): [ʂ] [ʐ]
Southeastern (Quetta): [ʃ] [ʒ]
Central Waneci (Tarin): [ʂ] [ʐ]
Central Waziri (Wana): [ɕ] [ʑ]
Central Khosti (Khost): [x] [g]
Northwestern (Ghilzi): [ç] [ʝ]
Northern (Nangarhar): [x] [g]
Northeastern (Yusufzi): [x] [g]

The differences between the southern dialects and the northern dialects are primarily phonological and there are simple conversion rules. The morphological differences between them are very few and unimportant. However, the central dialects are lexicologically different and very varied. The southern dialect of Kandahar is the most conservative with regards to phonology, retaining the retroflex fricatives and the alveolar affricates, which have not merged with other phonemes. The Pashto alphabet reflects the southern dialect. Certain dialects show many archaic features, some of which are discarded by the literary language.

Geographic distribution

Geographic distribution of Pashto (purple) and other Iranian languages

Pashto is spoken by about 27 million people in the western provinces of North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Balochistan of Pakistan (15.4% of the total population)[7] and by over 11 million people in the south, east, west and a few northern provinces of Afghanistan (ca. 40% of the total population).[8] In Pakistan, smaller, modern "transplant" communities are also found in Sindh (Karachi, Hyderabad). Other smaller communities of Pashto-speakers are found in northeastern Iran and among recent migrants in India.[9][10]

Official status

Pashto is one of the two national and official languages (along with Dari Persian) of Afghanistan and is used for the administration of the government throughout the country. It is also used in education, literature, office and court business, media, and in religious institutions, etc. It holds in itself a repository of the cultural and social heritage of the country.

Grammar

Main article: Pashto grammar

Pashto is a S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for gender (masc./fem.), number (sing./plur.), and case (direct, oblique I, oblique II and vocative). The verb system is very intricate with the following tenses: present; subjunctive; simple past; past progressive; present perfect; and past perfect. In any of the past tenses (simple past, past progressive, present perfect, 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

Kandahar lady of rank

Part of a series on
Pashtuns پښتون

Etymology · Pashtunwali
Language · Culture · Art
Tribes · Diaspora

Kingdoms (Hotaki · Durrani)
Pakistan · Afghanistan
Pashtunistan · Pakhtunkhwa
Pashtunization

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid e ə o
Open a ɑ

Pashto also has the diphthongs /ai/, /əi/, /ae/, /ɑw/, /aw/.

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Dental Retroflex Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal
Nasal m n ɳ
Plosive p b t d ʈ ɖ k g (q) ʔ
Fricative (f) v s z (θ) (ð) ʂ ʐ ʃ ʒ x ɣ h
Affricate ts dz tʃ dʒ
Approximant l j w
Rhotic r ɺ̡

/f/, /θ/, /ð/, /q/ are present only in loanwords and tend to merge with [p], [s] (or t), [z] (or d) and [k], respectively.

The retroflex lateral flap /ɺ̡/ is pronounced as retroflex approximant [ɻ] when final.

The velars /k/, /g/, /x/, /ɣ/ followed by the close back rounded vowel /u/ assimilate into the labialized velars [kʷ], [gʷ], [xʷ], [ɣʷ].

Vocabulary

In Pashto most of the lexicon is of Eastern Iranian origin, those words can be easily compared to those known from Avestan, Ossetic, and Pamir languages. Modern borrowings come primarily from Arabic, Persian and Hindi.

Writing system

From the time of Islam's rise in South-Central Asia, Pashto has used a modified version of the 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 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 Arabic script for example the letters representing the retroflex consonants /tt/, /dd/, /rr/ and /nn/. These letters are written like the standard Arabic te, dāl, re 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 ssin and zze (representing voiceless and voiced retroflex fricatives) which look like a sin and re respectively with a dot above and beneath; ښ and ږ. The letters representing /ts/ and /dz/ are also specific to Pashto which look like a ح with three dots above and an hamza (ء) above; څ and ځ. It has a number of additional vowel diacritics as well, though these often vary in their usage.

The Pashto letters ی(ye), ښ(ssin), ږ(zze), ث(θe), ذ(ðāl), څ(tse), چ(che), ځ(dzim) and ج(jim) are romanized as Jj, SSss, ZZzz, THth, DHdh, Cc, CHch, Xx and XHxh respectively.

The Pashto Latin alphabet is: Aa Bb Cc CHch Dd DDdd DHdh Ee Əə Ff Gg GHgh Hh Ii Jj Kk KHkh Ll Mm Nn NNnn Oo Pp Qq Rr RRrr Ss SSss SHsh Tt TTtt THth Uu Vv Ww Xx XHxh Yy Zz ZZzz ZHzh

Pashto alphabet

The letters of the Pashto alphabet are:[11][12]

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 و ى ئ ي ې ۍ

Letters specific to Pashto

The letters below are specific to Pashto only:

ټ، ځ، څ، ډ، ړ، ږ، ښ، ګ، ڼ، ې ،ۍ

The five Yaas of Pashto

The following are the five Yaas used in Pashto writing:

ی، ي، ې، ۍ، ﺉ

Examples

Examples of intransitive sentence forms using the verb "tləl" (to go):

Command:

Present:

Present Perfect:

Past:

Past Perfect:

Past Progressive:

Subjunctive:

Examples of transitive sentence forms using the verb "khwarrəl" (to eat):

Command:

Present:

Present Perfect:

Past:

Past Perfect:

Past Progressive:

Subjunctive:

Questions:

See also

References

  1. ↑ University of Texas in Austin - Ethnolinguistic Groups in Afghanistan... , Link
  2. ↑ David P. Brown: Top 100 Languages by Population
  3. ↑ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 03 Jan. 2008. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/afghani>.
  4. ↑ "afghan." WordNet 3.0. Princeton University. 03 Jan. 2008. <Word Net http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=Afghani&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&h=00>
  5. ↑ UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile
  6. ↑ Pashto language, in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 2008
  7. ↑ Government of Pakistan: Population by Mother Tongue
  8. ↑ CIA World Fackbook: Afghanistan
  9. ↑ "Phonemic Inventory of Pashto". CRULP. Retrieved on 2007-06-07.
  10. ↑ Abstract of speakers’ strength of languages and mother tongues – 2001, Census of India (retrieved 17 March 2008)
  11. ↑ Pashto Alphabet Table
  12. ↑ Pashto Alphabet Table

Bibliography

External links

Pashto Computer Fonts

Iranian languages
Old
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Median · Old Persian
E
Avestan · Old Scythian
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W
Parthian · Middle Persian
E
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