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| Pashto پښتو paʂto |
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|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Afghanistan: south, east, and some parts of north and west; Pakistan: western provinces Sowkai Mardan;[1] ; in India by Afghan Hindus and Sikhs as well as others who have claimed asylum. | |
| Region: | South-Central Asia | |
| Total speakers: | approx. 36 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: |  Afghanistan 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]), also rendered as Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, Pushtu, also known as Pathani, Afghani[3][4]) is an Eastern Iranian language spoken by Pashtuns living in Afghanistan and Pakistan.[5] Pashto belongs to the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages.[1]
Native speakers of Pashto account for between 35% of the population of Afghanistan[6] and 15.42% of Pakistan.[7] 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, weak socio-economic inter-relations, along with other historic and linguistic reasons, there are many dialects in Pashto language. However, as a whole, Pashto has two main dialects: soft or western dialect and hard or eastern dialect. The difference between these two dialects is in the use of some vowels and sounds. One of the primary features of the dialects is the differences in the pronunciation of these five phonemes (all sounds in IPA):
| Southwest: | [ts] | [dz] | [ʂ] | [ʐ] | [ʒ] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southeast: | [ts] | [dz] | [ʃ] | [ʒ] | [ʒ] |
| Northwest: | [s] | [z] | [ç] | [j] | [ʒ] |
| Northeast: | [s] | [z] | [x] | [g] | [d͡ʒ] |
The dialect of Kandahar is the most conservative with regards to phonology, retaining both the dental affricates and the retroflex fricatives, which have not merged with other phonemes.
Geographic distribution
Pashto is spoken by about 30 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)[8] and by over 15 million people in the south, east, west and a few northern provinces of Afghanistan (ca. 40% of the total population).[9] 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 in India.[10],[11]
Official status
Pashto is the national and official language 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
Pashto is a S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for gender (Masculine/Feminine), number (Singular/Plural), and case (Direct/Oblique). Direct case is used for subjects and direct objects in the present tense. Oblique case is used after most pre- and post-positions, as well as in the past tense as the subject of transitive verbs. Pashto does not have a definite article. There is extensive use of the word "of" (د) to show possessional relationships which is quite similar in pronunciation to (the) in English. The demonstratives (translated as "this" and "that") are used extensively. 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
Part of a series on Kingdoms (Hotaki · Durrani) |
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | ə | o |
| Open | ɑ |
Pashto also has the diphthongs /aj/ /əj/ /aw/
Consonants
| Labial | 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 | ʂ ʐ | ʃ ʒ | x ɣ | h | ||
| Affricate | ts dz | tʃ dʒ | ||||||
| Approximant | l | ɻ | j | w | ||||
| Rhotic | r | ɺ̡ |
The sounds /f/, /q/, /h/ are present only in loanwords. Less educated speakers tend to replace them with [p], [k] and ʔ or nothing, respectively.
The retroflex lateral flap /ɺ̡/ is pronounced as retroflex approximant [ɻ] when final.
Vocabulary
Pashto has an ancient legacy of borrowing vocabulary from neighboring languages mainly from Vedic Sanskrit and Persian. Invaders have left vestiges as well as Pashto has borrowed words from Ancient Greek, Arabic and Turkic languages, sometimes due to invasions. Modern borrowings come primarily from English.
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 which represent the retroflex versions of the consonants /t/, /d/, /r/, /n/. The letters are written like the standard Arabic ta', dal, ra', 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 ge and xin (the initial sound of which is IPA: [ç])like the German ch found in the word "ich") which look like a ra' and sin respectively with a dot above and beneath. Pashto also uses the letters added to the Arabic alphabet from Persian, such as pe (پ). It has a number of additional vowel diacritics as well, though these often vary in their usage.
The Pashto letters ge and xin are romanised as Jj (pronounced IPA: [ʒ] or IPA: [ɡ]) and Xx (pronounced IPA: [x] or IPA: [ʃ]), which are separate from the letters KHkh and Gg. The Pashto Latin alphabet is: Aa Əə Bb Cc Čč Dd DZdz Ee Ff Gg Ğğ Hh İi Iı Jj Kk KHkh Ll Mm Nn Ññ Oo Öö Pp Qq Rr Řř Ss Šš Tt TSts Uu Úú Üü Vv Ww Yy Ýý Xx Žž Zz ´
Pashto alphabet
The letters of the Pashto alphabet are:[12][13]
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
 |
This article or section contains only non-IPA pronunciation information which should be expanded with the International Phonetic Alphabet. For assistance, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation). |
- Note - The following transliterations represent the Kabuli dialect.
Examples of intransitive sentence forms using the verb "to go" "tləl":
Command (you masculine-singular):
- khawanze/shawanze (ښوونځى) ta dza! or khawanze/shawanze ta lāṛ ša!
- School to go - Go to school!
Command (you masculine-plural):
- khawanze/shawanze ta lāṛ šəy!
- Go to school!
Simple Present:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta dzəm.
- I school to go - I go to school.
- zə ğwāṛəm če khawanze/shawanze ta lāṛ šəm.
- I want that to school go (Masculine-I-verb form) - I want to go to school.
Present Perfect:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta tləlay yəm.
- I school to gone (Masculine verb form) am - I have gone to school.
Simple Past:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta wəlāṛəm.
- I school to went - I went to school.
Past Perfect:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta tləlay wəm.
- I school to gone (Masculine verb form) was - I had gone to school.
Past Progressive:
- zə khawanze/shawanze ta makh kay talələm"
- I school to was going - I was going to school or I used to go to school
Examples of transative sentence forms using the verb "to eat" "xwaṛəl":
Command (You singular):
- Panir wəxora!
- cheese eat - Eat the cheese!
- Panir məxora!
- cheese no-eat - Don't eat the cheese!
Command (You plural):
- Panir wəxorəy!
- cheese eat - Eat the cheese!
- Panir məxorəy!
- cheese no-eat - Don't eat the cheese!
Simple Present:
- zə panir xorəm.
- I cheese eat - I eat cheese.
Subjunctive:
- zə ğwāṛəm če panir wəxorəm.
- I want that cheese eat (I-verb form) - I want to eat cheese.
Present Perfect: ما پنېر خوړلی دی
- mā panir xoṛəlay day.
- me (I-oblique) cheese eaten (masculine-singular verb form) is - I have eaten cheese.
Simple Past:
- mā panir wəxoṛə.
- me (I-oblique) cheese ate - I ate cheese
Past Perfect:
- mā panir xoṛəlay wo.
- me (I-oblique) cheese eaten (masculine-singular verb form) was - I had eaten cheese.
Past Progressive:
- mā panir xoṛə.
- me (I oblique) cheese was eating (masculine-singular verb form) - I was eating cheese or I used to eat cheese.
Questions Stā num tsə day your name what is - what is your name
See also
- Pashtunization
- List of Pashto language poets
- List of Pashto language singers
- Iranian Languages vocabulary comparison table
References
- ^ University of Texas in Austin - Ethnolinguistic Groups in Afghanistan... , Link
- ^ David P. Brown: Top 100 Languages by Population
- ^ 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>.
- ^ "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>
- ^ UCLA Language Materials Project: Language Profile
- ^ CIA World Fackbook: Afghanistan
- ^ Pakistan Census: Population By Mother Tongue
- ^ Government of Pakistan: Population by Mother Tongue
- ^ CIA -The World Factbook – Afghanistan
- ^ "Phonemic Inventory of Pashto". CRULP. Retrieved on 2007-06-07.
- ^ Abstract of speakers’ strength of languages and mother tongues – 2001, Census of India (retrieved 17 March 2008)
- ^ Pashto Alphabet Table
- ^ Pashto Alphabet Table
Bibliography
- Schmidt, Rüdiger (ed.) (1989). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ISBN 3-88226-413-6.
- Morgenstierne, Georg (1926) Report on a Linguistic Mission to Afghanistan. Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning, Serie C I-2. Oslo. ISBN 0-923891-09-9
External links
- H. G. Raverty. A Dictionary of the Puk'hto, Pus'hto, or Language of the Afghans. Second edition, with considerable additions. London: Williams and Norgate, 1867.
- Freeware Online Pashto Dictionaries
- Ethnologue report for Pashto
- The Pashto software localization and development
Pashto Computer Fonts
- Free fonts:
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Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 6 October 2008, at 15:00.
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