Linguistics
Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language spoken by tens of millions of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This page sets out its family, dialects, sounds and grammar, how it is written and which words it shares with related languages, with recordings where we have them.
Pashto is the largest of the Eastern Iranian languages. Persian, its neighbour, belongs to the western branch; Urdu and Hindko belong to Indo-Aryan, a separate branch of the same family.
Morgenstierne saw a special link with Bactrian, the language of the Kushan inscriptions, and also suggested that Pashto began as a Saka dialect. Cheung (2015) argues for a mixed history: some features are shared with Bactrian, Munji and Yidgha, others with the Saka languages.
Pashto, Munji and Yidgha all turned an old d into l, as in Pashto las, ten, where Persian has dah. Wanetsi split off early and is sometimes counted as a language of its own.
Pashto dialects differ mostly in sound. The clearest test is ښ in the name of the language: Pashto in the south, Pakhto in the north-east. MacKenzie grouped the dialects into four quadrants by how they say ښ and ږ.
Ghazni, Paktika and the Ghilji centre of Afghanistan
[pəçˈto]
ښ and ږ are said with the tongue against the hard palate, as ç and ʝ, between the southern and the north-eastern sounds.
Peshawar, Mardan and Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
[pəxˈto]
The hard speech: ښ becomes x and ږ becomes g, so the language is called Pakhto. MacKenzie dates this change to the medieval period.
Kandahar and the Durrani south-west of Afghanistan
[pəʂˈto]
The most conservative dialect, keeping the retroflex ṣ̌ and ẓ̌. Written Pashto in Afghanistan follows its spelling.
Zhob, Loralai and Quetta, Balochistan
[pəʃˈto]
Southern speech, with ښ and ږ said as š and ž.
| Dialect | Says “Pashto” as | ښ | ږ | څ | ځ | ژ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Ghilji | [pəçˈto] | ç | ʝ | t͡s | d͡z | ʒ |
| Yusufzai | [pəxˈto] | x | g | s | z | d͡ʒ |
| Kandahari | [pəʂˈto] | ʂ | ʐ | t͡s | d͡z | ʒ |
| Kakar | [pəʃˈto] | ʃ | ʒ | t͡s | d͡z | ʒ |
Sounds are written in the International Phonetic Alphabet. ʂ and ʐ are said with the tongue curled back; ç is the sound in German ich; x is the ch in Scottish loch; t͡s is the ts in cats.
The consonants and vowels of standard Pashto, by where and how each is made, with the letter that writes it. Sounds that vary between dialects are explained in the dialect chart.
| Lips | Teeth | Ridge | Behind the ridge | Retroflex | Palate | Soft palate | Uvula | Throat | |
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| Nasal |
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| Flap or trill |
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| Front | Central | Back | |
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| Close |
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Pashto has six retroflex consonants, written ټ ډ ړ ڼ ښ ږ. Persian has none, and Arabic script had no letters for them, so Pashto writers added rings and dots to existing letters.
The two retroflex fricatives, ښ and ږ, are the sounds that change most between dialects.
Source: Pashto phonology (Wikipedia)
Stress in Pashto is not fixed to one syllable. Elfenbein calls it phonemic and variable, which is unusual among Iranian languages. Moving the stress can change a word's meaning or the aspect of a verb.
Pashto is written right to left in a 45-letter form of the Arabic script. 12 letters are Pashto's own, made by adding a ring, dots or a tail to Arabic letters. Bayazid Pir Roshan is credited with devising several of them in the 16th century. Choose a letter for its sound and an example.
ښ
The letter in the name of the language: Pashto in the south, Pakhto in the north-east.
Source: Pashto alphabet (Wikipedia)
Marks a letter Pashto added to the Arabic script.
The features that set Pashto grammar apart, each with examples glossed word by word. Tags in capitals name the grammar: OBL is the oblique case, F feminine, PFV the perfective.
The usual order is subject, object, verb. Pashto has prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions that wrap a noun from both sides.
Source: Pashto grammar (Wikipedia)
Nouns have two genders and two numbers. Adjectives and verbs agree with them, so the same adjective changes its ending between a man and a woman. Many feminine nouns end in -a or -əy.
Source: Pashto grammar (Wikipedia)
In present tenses the verb agrees with the subject, as in English. In past tenses with a transitive verb, the subject takes the oblique case and the verb agrees with the object instead. Linguists call this split ergativity.
Source: Pashto grammar (Wikipedia)
From the first Pashto prose to the academies in Kabul and Peshawar.
16th century
Pir Roshan's Khayr al-Bayān is one of the earliest known books containing Pashto prose.
Source: Pir Roshan (Wikipedia)
17th century
The warrior-poet Khushal Khan Khattak (1613–1689) wrote poetry and prose that made Pashto a literary language of the first rank.
Late 17th century
Rahman Baba's Sufi poetry is among the most widely recited in Pashto.
1936
A royal decree made Pashto a national language of Afghanistan. The 1964 constitution confirmed it.
Source: Pashto (Wikipedia)
1937
The Pashto Tolana, an academy for the language, was founded in Kabul to standardise and promote written Pashto. After 1978 it became part of the Academy of Sciences.
Source: Pashto (Wikipedia)
1944
Abdul Hai Habibi announced the Pata Khazana, a manuscript said to collect Pashto poets from the 8th century onwards. Most scholars now consider it a modern forgery: MacKenzie dated it to shortly before 1944 because it uses letters never found together before 1935.
1955
The Pashto Academy was founded at the University of Peshawar, with Maulana Abdul Qadir as its first director.
Source: Pashto Academy (Wikipedia)
2004
Article 16 of Afghanistan's 2004 constitution made Pashto and Dari the official languages of the country.
Source: Pashto (Wikipedia)
Pashto words beside their relatives in other Iranian languages and in English, pairs told apart only by stress, and native words with the borrowed words used beside them.
Pashto keeps many words inherited from Old Iranian, changed in regular ways. An old d became l, so Pashto has las for ten where Persian has dah.
| Pashto | Avestan | Persian | Sanskrit | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| لسlas“ten” | dasa | dah | daśa | ten |
| لورlur“daughter” | dugədar | doxtar | — | daughter |
| ورورwror“brother” | brātar | barādar | — | brother |
| سپیspay“dog” | spā | sag | — | hound |
Source: Wiktionary (citing Kreidl 2021)
Source: Wiktionary
Source: Wiktionary
Names and terms whose form changes from dialect to dialect, collected from the articles.
Habibullah Tegey and Barbara Robson, A Reference Grammar of Pashto (1996)
A full reference grammar of the language, written for English readers.
Anne Boyle David, Descriptive Grammar of Pashto and its Dialects (2014)
A grammar that sets out the differences between the dialects.
Herbert Penzl, A Grammar of Pashto (1955)
An early descriptive grammar based on the Kandahar dialect.
Georg Morgenstierne, A New Etymological Vocabulary of Pashto (2003)
Where Pashto words come from, edited by Elfenbein, MacKenzie and Sims-Williams.
Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Afghanistan vi. Paṧto"
Morgenstierne's survey of the language, its history and its dialects.
The classification of Pashto and its varieties, with references.