Pashto

History

Some linguists have argued that Pashto is descended from Avestan or a variety very similar to it, while others have attempted to place it closer to Bactrian. However, neither position is universally agreed upon. What scholars do agree on is the fact that Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language sharing characteristics with Eastern Middle Iranian languages such as Bactrian, Khwarezmian and Sogdian.

Comparison with other Eastern Iranian Languages and Old Avestan:

Strabo, who lived between 64 BCE and 24 CE, explains that the tribes inhabiting the lands west of the Indus River were part of Ariana. This was around the time when the area inhabited by the Pashtuns was governed by the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. From the 3rd century CE onward, they are mostly referred to by the name Afghan (Abgan).

Abdul Hai Habibi believed that the earliest modern Pashto work dates back to Amir Kror Suri of the early Ghurid period in the 8th century, and they used the writings found in Pə́ṭa Xazāná. Pə́ṭa Xazāná (پټه خزانه) is a Pashto manuscript claimed to be written by Mohammad Hotak under the patronage of the Pashtun emperor Hussain Hotak in Kandahar; containing an anthology of Pashto poets. However, its authenticity is disputed by scholars such as David Neil MacKenzie and Lucia Serena Loi. Nile Green comments in this regard:

"In 1944, Habibi claimed to have discovered an eighteenth-century manuscript anthology containing much older biographies and verses of Pashto poets that stretched back as far as the eighth century. It was an extraordinary claim, implying as it did that the history of Pashto literature reached back further in time than Persian, thus supplanting the hold of Persian over the medieval Afghan past. Although it was later convincingly discredited through formal linguistic analysis, Habibi's publication of the text under the title Pata Khazana ('Hidden Treasure') would (in Afghanistan at least) establish his reputation as a promoter of the wealth and antiquity of Afghanistan's Pashto culture."

— Afghan History Through Afghan Eyes

From the 16th century, Pashto poetry became popular among the Pashtuns. Some notable poets and authors who wrote in Pashto include Pir Roshan (inventor of the Pashto alphabet), Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba, Nazo Tokhi, and Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the Durrani Empire, precursor of the modern state of Afghanistan. The Pashtun literary tradition grew in the backdrop to weakening Pashtun power following Mughal rule: Khushal Khan Khattak used Pashto poetry to rally for Pashtun unity and Pir Bayazid as an expedient means to spread his message to the Pashtun masses.

For instance Khushal Khattak laments in :

"The Afghans (Pashtuns) are far superior to the Mughals at the sword,

Were but the Afghans, in intellect, a little discreet. If the different tribes would but support each other,

Kings would have to bow down in prostration before them"

— Khushal Khan Khattak, Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans

Grammar

Pashto is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language with split ergativity. In Pashto, this means that the verb agrees with the subject in transitive and intransitive sentences in non-past, non-completed clauses, but when a completed action is reported in any of the past tenses, the verb agrees with the subject if it is intransitive, but with the object if it is transitive. Verbs are inflected for present, simple past, past progressive, present perfect, and past perfect tenses. There is also an inflection for the subjunctive mood.

Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masculine and feminine), two numbers (singular and plural), and four cases (direct, oblique, ablative, and vocative). The possessor precedes the possessed in the genitive construction, and adjectives come before the nouns they modify.

Unlike most other Indo-Iranian languages, Pashto uses all three types of adpositions—prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

*The retroflex rhotic or lateral, tends to be a lateral flap [] at the beginning of a syllable or other prosodic unit, and a regular flap [] or approximant [] elsewhere.

Vocabulary

In Pashto, most of the native elements of the lexicon are related to other Eastern Iranian languages. As noted by Josef Elfenbein, "Loanwords have been traced in Pashto as far back as the third century B.C., and include words from Greek and probably Old Persian". For instance, Georg Morgenstierne notes the Pashto word مېچن mečə́n i.e. a hand-mill as being derived from the Ancient Greek word μηχανή (mēkhanḗ, i.e. a device). Post-7th century borrowings came primarily from Persian and Hindi-Urdu, with Arabic words being borrowed through Persian, but sometimes directly. Modern speech borrows words from English, French, and German.

However, a remarkably large number of words are unique to Pashto.

Here is an exemplary list of Pure Pashto and borrowings:

Due to the incursion of Persian and Persianized-Arabic in modern speech, linguistic purism of Pashto is advocated to prevent its own vocabulary from dying out.

Classical vocabulary

There is a lot of old vocabulary that has been replaced by borrowings e.g. پلاز plâz 'throne' with تخت takht, from Persian. Or the word يګانګي yagānagí meaning 'uniqueness' used by Pir Roshan Bayazid. Such classical vocabulary is being reintroduced to modern Pashto. Some words also survive in dialects like ناوې پلاز 'the bride-room'.

Example from Khayr al-Bayān:

... بې يګانګئ بې قرارئ وي او په بدخوئ کښې وي په ګناهان

Transliteration: ... be-yagānagə́i, be-kararə́i wi aw pə badxwə́i kx̌e wi pə gunāhā́n

Translation: "... without singularity/uniqueness, without calmness and by bad-attitude are on sin ."

Writing system

Pashto employs the Pashto alphabet, a modified form of the Perso-Arabic alphabet or Arabic script. In the 16th century, Bayazid Pir Roshan introduced 13 new letters to the Pashto alphabet. The alphabet was further modified over the years.

The Pashto alphabet consists of 45 to 46 letters and 4 diacritic marks. Latin Pashto is also used. In Latin transliteration, stress is represented by the following markers over vowels: ә́, á, ā́, ú, ó, í and é. The following table (read from left to right) gives the letters' isolated forms, along with possible Latin equivalents and typical IPA values:

Dialects

Pashto dialects are divided into two categories, the "soft" southern grouping of Paṣ̌tō, and the "hard" northern grouping of Pax̌tō (Pakhtu). Each group is further divided into a number of dialects. The Southern dialect of Tareeno is the most distinctive Pashto dialect.

1. Southern variety

• Abdaili or Kandahar dialect (or South Western dialect)
• Kakar dialect (or South Eastern dialect)
• Shirani dialect
• Mandokhel dialect
• Marwat-Bettani dialect
• Southern Karlani group

• Khattak dialect
• Wazirwola dialect

• Dawarwola dialect
• Masidwola dialect

• Banisi (Banu) dialect

2. Northern variety

• Central Ghilji dialect (or North Western dialect)
• Yusapzai and Momand dialect (or North Eastern dialect)
• Northern Karlani group

• Wardak dialect
• Taniwola dialect
• Mangal tribe dialect
• Khosti dialect
• Zadran dialect
• Bangash-Orakzai-Turi-Zazi dialect
• Afridi dialect
• Khogyani dialect

Literary Pashto

Literary Pashto is the artificial variety of Pashto that is used at times as literary register of Pashto. It is said to be based on the North Western dialect, spoken in the central Ghilji region. Literary Pashto's vocabulary, also derives from other dialects.

Criticism

There is no actual Pashto that can be identified as "Standard" Pashto, as Colye remarks:

"Standard Pashto is actually fairly complex with multiple varieties or forms. Native speakers or researchers often refer to Standard Pashto without specifying which variety of Standard Pashto they mean...people sometimes refer to Standard Pashto when they mean the most respected or favorite Pashto variety among a majority of Pashtun speakers."

— Placing Wardak among Pashto Varieties, page 4

According to David MacKenzie, there is no real need to develop a "Standard" Pashto:

"The morphological differences between the most extreme north-eastern and south-western dialects are comparatively few and unimportant. The criteria of dialect differentiation in Pashto are primarily phonological. With the use of an alphabet which disguises these phonological differences the language has, therefore, been a literary vehicle, widely understood, for at least four centuries. This literary language has long been referred to in the West as 'common' or 'standard' Pashto without, seemingly, any real attempt to define it."

— A Standard Pashto, page 231

Literature

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 Kakar 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 under the title of Riyāż al-Maḥabbah ("Training in Affection") through the patronage of Nawab Mahabat 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").

Poetry example

An excerpt from the Kalām of Rahman Baba:

زۀ رحمٰن پۀ خپله ګرم يم چې مين يم
چې دا نور ټوپن مې بولي ګرم په څۀ

Pronunciation:

Transliteration: Zə Rahmā́n pə xpə́la gram yəm če mayán yəm
Če dā nor ṭopə́n me bolí gram pə tsə

Translation: "I Rahman, myself am guilty that I am a lover,
On what does this other universe call me guilty."

Proverbs

Pashto also has a rich heritage of proverbs (Pashto matalúna, sg. matál). An example of a proverb:

اوبه په ډانګ نه بېلېږي

Transliteration: Obә́ pə ḍāng nə beléẓ̌i

Translation: "One cannot divide water by [hitting it with] a pole."

Phrases

Greeting phrases

Colors

List of colors

List of colors borrowed from neighbouring languages

• نارنجي nārәnjí – orange [from Persian]
• ګلابي gulābí – pink [from Hindustani, originally Persian]
• نيلي nilí – indigo [from Persian, ultimately Sanskrit]]

Times of the day

Months

Pashtuns use the Vikrami calendar in Pakistan, and the Solar Hijri calendar in Afghanistan. Below are the terms designated for the Vikrami months: