Pashto dialects: soft and hard speech

One language, many voices

Pashto is spoken by many tribes across a wide stretch of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and its local forms differ noticeably in sound and vocabulary. Even so, Georg Morgenstierne concluded in the Encyclopaedia Iranica that Pashto is essentially one language, with only one possible exception, the Wanetsi dialect of Balochistan. He also warned that dialect boundaries are hard to draw because features overlap: a variety may share some traits with its neighbours to the north and others with those to the south. [1]

A language-documentation report prepared for the Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania makes a similar point. It describes Pashto dialect differences as largely phonological and lexical, says the dialects cannot be divided neatly by tribe or by geography alone, and reports a lexical similarity of about 80 per cent between the northern and southern varieties. [3]

Soft and hard: the treatment of ښ and ږ

The traditional division is between 'soft' and 'hard' Pashto. It rests on two letters, ښ and ږ. In the soft south-western dialects, centred on Kandahar, they are retroflex sibilants, ṣ̌ and ẓ̌. In the hard north-eastern dialects they become x (as in Scottish loch) and g. The name of the language follows the same split: Paṣ̌tō in the south-west, Paxtō or Pakhto in the north-east. [1] [3]

Charles Kieffer adds a third, intermediate group, which he calls the Manjanay dialects. Here ښ is pronounced as a palatal sound close to the German ich, and ږ as a strongly palatalised fricative. Kieffer stresses that this middle zone, home to a large and tribally mixed population, is not simply a blend of the other two: it has its own phonetic and grammatical features, probably shaped by long historical contact. [2]

Four regional groups

For speech-data collection, the Linguistic Data Consortium report groups Pashto into four regions, building on Josef Elfenbein's description of Pashto phonology. The groups are distinguished mainly by how five consonants are pronounced: ښ, ږ, څ, ځ and ژ. [3]

• South-west (Kandahar, Farah, Herat, southern Ghilzai): ښ and ږ are retroflex ṣ̌ and ẓ̌; څ and ځ are ts and dz.

• North-east (Peshawar, Jalalabad, Yusufzai, Mohmand, Shinwari and others): ښ and ږ become x and g; څ and ځ become s and z; ژ becomes j.

• South-east (Quetta and Balochistan, Kakar, Waziri, Bannu, Sherani): ښ and ږ are sh and zh (š and ž).

• Central and north-west (Wardak, Ghazni, central Ghilzai, outskirts of Kabul): ښ and ږ are palatal sounds, ç and ʝ; څ and ځ become s and z. [3]

The report notes that these boundaries are approximate and often overlap, which matches Morgenstierne's caution about competing isoglosses. [3] [1]

Peshawar and the north-east

The north-eastern dialects, especially around Peshawar, have changed most under the influence of neighbouring Indo-Aryan languages. Morgenstierne lists five sounds they have lost: ṣ̌ has become x, ẓ̌ has become g, the affricates c (ts) and j (dz) have become s and z, and ž has become ǰ (the j of English 'jam'). He regards the hard pronunciation as relatively recent, pointing out that Pashto spelling still reflects the older sibilant. [1]

Kieffer's comparison of three dialect groups shows the effect on everyday words. The word for 'mill', ژرنده, is žrandə in the south-west, zranda in the intermediate zone and ǰranda in the north-east. [2]

Mountain dialects: Waziri and its neighbours

Vowels also vary. In many dialects of the mountain areas from Afridi country to Waziristan, Morgenstierne records that the vowel o shifts towards ö or ɛ, and ā is rounded towards å. Waziri says mɛ̄r for mor, 'mother'. In Afridi speech, the word for 'ten' has shifted to lās, filling the gap left when the word for 'hand' became lâs. [1]

Waziri and some neighbouring dialects also change ū to ī, so that lūr, 'daughter', becomes līr. Morgenstierne notes the same Waziri-type vowels in the Kakari dialect of Shahrig in Balochistan. [1]

Wanetsi: the outlier

Wanetsi, also called Tarino, is spoken in north-eastern Balochistan between Harnai and Loralai. Morgenstierne describes it as the one dialect that stands decidedly apart from the rest, and notes that it was being steadily influenced and pushed back by ordinary Pashto. Its features include mōš for 'we', šwī for 'twenty', a separate third-person plural verb ending, and the loss of older t between vowels, so that 'father' is piyār. [1]

Because these features would have taken a long time to develop, Morgenstierne concluded that Wanetsi split from the main body of Pashto at an early stage, well before a standard Pashto took shape. [1]

The written standard

Written Pashto is closest to the south-western dialect. The Linguistic Data Consortium report describes Kandahari speech as the most prestigious form and the basis of the standard written language, and adds that in Pakistan Urdu letter forms are sometimes used in place of Pashto ones, which can hide distinctions such as the different forms of ye. Morgenstierne observes that nearly all Pashto dialects can be traced to a form of the language not very different from the classical literary Pashto of the sixteenth century. [3] [1]

The report's own transcription follows this standard spelling and records regional pronunciations separately, so a single written word can be read aloud in different ways. The name of the people is an example: the report notes that Pashtuns are called Pakhtoon in the north and Pashtoon in the south. [3]