Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnicPashtuns, it is one of the two officiallanguages of Afghanistan alongsideDari,[9][10][11] and it is the second-largest provinciallanguage of Pakistan, spoken mainly inKhyber Pakhtunkhwa and the northern districts ofBalochistan.[12] Likewise, it is the primary language of thePashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto-speakers is at least 40 million,[13] although some estimates place it as high as 60 million.[14] Pashto is "one of the primary markers of ethnic identity" amongst Pashtuns.[15]
A national language ofAfghanistan,[16] Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south, and southwest, but also in some northern and western parts of the country. The exact number of speakers is unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is themother tongue of 45–60%[17][18][19][20] of the totalpopulation of Afghanistan.
Other communities of Pashto speakers are found inIndia,Tajikistan,[28] and northeasternIran (primarily inSouth Khorasan Province to the east ofQaen, near the Afghan border).[29] In India most ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) peoples speak the geographically nativeHindi-Urdu language rather than Pashto, but there are small numbers of Pashto speakers, such as theSheen Khalai inRajasthan,[30] and the Pathan community in the city ofKolkata, often nicknamed theKabuliwala ("people ofKabul").[31][32] Pashtun diaspora communities in other countries around the world speak Pashto, especially the sizable communities in theUnited Arab Emirates[33] andSaudi Arabia.
Afghanistan
Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, along withDari Persian.[34] Since the early 18th century,the monarchs of Afghanistan have been ethnic Pashtuns (except forHabibullāh Kalakāni in 1929).[35] Persian, the literary language of the royal court,[36] was more widely used in government institutions, while thePashtun tribes spoke Pashto as theirnative tongue. KingAmanullah Khan began promoting Pashto during his reign (1926–1929) as a marker of ethnic identity and as a symbol of "official nationalism"[35] leading Afghanistan to independence after the defeat of theBritish Empire in theThird Anglo-Afghan War in 1919. In the 1930s, a movement began to take hold to promote Pashto as a language of government, administration, and art with the establishment of a Pashto SocietyPashto Anjuman in 1931[37] and the inauguration of theKabul University in 1932 as well as the formation of thePashto Academy (PashtoTolana) in 1937.[38] Muhammad Na'im Khan, the minister of education between 1938 and 1946, inaugurated the formal policy of promoting Pashto as Afghanistan's national language, leading to the commission and publication of Pashto textbooks.[39] The Pashto Tolana was later incorporated into the Academy of Sciences Afghanistan in line with Soviet model following theSaur Revolution in 1978.[40]
Although officially supporting the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a "sophisticated language and a symbol of cultured upbringing".[35] KingZahir Shah (reigning 1933–1973) thus followed suit after his fatherNadir Khan had decreed in 1933 that officials were to study and utilize both Persian and Pashto.[41] In 1936 aroyal decree of Zahir Shahformally granted Pashto the status of an official language,[42] with full rights to use in all aspects of government and education – despite the fact that the ethnically Pashtun royal family and bureaucrats mostly spoke Persian.[38] Thus Pashto became anational language, a symbol forPashtun nationalism.
InBritish India, prior to the creation of Pakistan by the British government, the 1920s saw the blossoming of Pashto language in the thenNWFP:Abdul Ghafar Khan in 1921 established theAnjuman-e- Islah al-Afaghina (Society for the Reformation of Afghans) to promote Pashto as an extension of Pashtun culture; around 80,000 people attended the Society's annual meeting in 1927.[45] In 1955, Pashtun intellectuals includingAbdul Qadir formed thePashto Academy Peshawar on the model of Pashto Tolana formed in Afghanistan.[46] In 1974, the Department of Pashto was established in the University of Balochistan for the promotion of Pashto.[47]
In Pakistan, Pashto is the first language around of 15% of its population (per the 1998 census).[48] However,Urdu andEnglish are the two official languages of Pakistan. Pashto has no official status at the federal level. On a provincial level, Pashto is the regional language ofKhyber Pakhtunkhwa and northBalochistan.[49] Yet, the primary medium of education in government schools in Pakistan is Urdu.[50][51]
The lack of importance given to Pashto and its neglect has caused growing resentment amongst Pashtuns.[52][53][54][55] It is noted that Pashto is taught poorly in schools in Pakistan.[56] Moreover, in government schools material is not provided for in the Pashto dialect of that locality, Pashto being a dialectically rich language.[57] Further, researchers have observed that Pashtun students are unable to fully comprehend educational material in Urdu.[58]
"The government of Pakistan, faced with irredentist claims from Afghanistan on its territory, also discouraged the Pashto Movement and eventually allowed its use in peripheral domains only after the Pakhtun elite had been co-opted by the ruling elite...Thus, even though there is still an active desireamong some Pakhtun activists to use Pashto in the domains of power, it is more of a symbol of Pakhtun identity than one of nationalism."
— Tariq Rahman, The Pashto language and identity-formation in Pakistan
"In the end, national language policy, especially in the field of education in the NWFP, had constructed a type of three tiered language hierarchy. Pashto lagged far behind Urdu and English in prestige or development in almost every domain of political or economic power..."
— Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and Its Neighbors, Pashto Language Policy and Practice in the North West Frontier Province
Although Pashto used as a medium of instruction in schools for Pashtun students results in better understanding and comprehension for students when compared to using Urdu, still the government of Pakistan has only introduced Pashto at the primary levels in state-run schools.[61] Taimur Khan remarks: "the dominant Urdu language squeezes and denies any space for Pashto language in the official and formal capacity. In this contact zone, Pashto language exists but in a subordinate and unofficial capacity".[62]
History
Some linguists have argued that Pashto is descended fromAvestan or a variety very similar to it, while others have attempted to place it closer toBactrian.[63][64][65] However, neither position is universally agreed upon. What scholars do agree on is the fact that Pashto is anEastern Iranian language sharing characteristics with Eastern Middle Iranian languages such as Bactrian,Khwarezmian andSogdian.[66][67]
Strabo, who lived between 64 BC and 24 CE, explains that the tribes inhabiting the lands west of theIndus River were part ofAriana. This was around the time when the area inhabited by the Pashtuns was governed by theGreco-Bactrian Kingdom. From the 3rd century CE onward, they are mostly referred to by the nameAfghan (Abgan).[74][75][76][8]
"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 andantiquity of Afghanistan's Pashto culture."
Pashto is asubject–object–verb (SOV) language withsplit 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.[16]Verbs are inflected for present, simple past, past progressive, present perfect, and past perfect tenses. There is also an inflection for thesubjunctive mood.
Nouns and adjectives areinflected for twogenders (masculine and feminine),[83] twonumbers (singular and plural), and fourcases (direct, oblique, ablative, and vocative). The possessor precedes the possessed in the genitive construction, andadjectives come before thenouns they modify.
Unlike most other Indo-Iranian languages, Pashto uses all three types ofadpositions—prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions.
*The retroflex rhotic or lateral, tends to be alateral flap [𝼈]at the beginning of a syllable or other prosodic unit, and a regularflap [ɽ]orapproximant [ɻ] elsewhere.[85][86]
In Pashto, most of the native elements of the lexicon are related to otherEastern Iranian languages.[67] 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".[87] For instance,Georg Morgenstierne notes the Pashto wordمېچنmečə́n i.e.a hand-mill as being derived from the Ancient Greek wordμηχανή (mēkhanḗ, i.e. a device).[88] Post-7th century borrowings came primarily fromPersian andHindi-Urdu, with Arabic words being borrowed through Persian,[89] but sometimes directly.[90][91] Modern speech borrows words from English,French, andGerman.[92]
However, a remarkably large number of words are unique to Pashto.[93][94]
Here is an exemplary list of Pure Pashto and borrowings:[95][96]
There is a lot of old vocabulary that has been replaced by borrowings e.g.پلازplâz[99] 'throne' withتختtakht, from Persian.[100][101] Or the wordيګانګيyagānagí[102] meaning 'uniqueness' used byPir Roshan Bayazid.[103] Such classical vocabulary is being reintroduced to modern Pashto.[104] Some words also survive in dialects likeناوې پلاز 'the bride-room'.[105]
The Pashto alphabet consists of 45 to 46 letters[107] and 4 diacritic marks. Latin Pashto is also used.[108][109][110] In Latin transliteration, stress is represented by the following markers over vowels:ә́,á,ā́,ú,ó,í andé. The following table (read from left to right) gives the letters' isolated forms, along with possible Latin equivalents and typical IPA values:
Pashto dialects are divided into two categories, the "soft" southern grouping ofPaṣ̌tō, and the "hard" northern grouping ofPax̌tō (Pakhtu).[111] Each group is further divided into a number of dialects. The Southern dialect ofTareeno is the most distinctive Pashto dialect.
Literary Pashto is the artificial variety of Pashto that is used at times asliterary register of Pashto. It is said to be based on the North Western dialect, spoken in the centralGhilji region. Literary Pashto's vocabulary, also derives from other dialects.[112]
Criticism
There is no actual Pashto that can be identified as "Standard" Pashto, as Colye remarks:[112]
"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:[113][failed verification]
"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."
Pashto-speakers have long had a tradition oforal literature, includingproverbs, stories, and poems. Written Pashto literature saw a rise in development in the 17th century mostly due to poets likeKhushal Khan Khattak (1613–1689), who, along withRahman Baba (1650–1715), is widely regarded as among the greatest Pashto poets. From the time ofAhmad 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 ofMaʿrifat al-Afghānī ("The Knowledge of Afghani [Pashto]"). After that, the first grammar book of Pashtoverbs was written in 1805 under the title ofRiyāż al-Maḥabbah ("Training in Affection") through the patronage of Nawab Mahabat Khan, son ofHafiz Rahmat Khan, chief of theBarech. Nawabullah Yar Khan, another son of Hafiz Rahmat Khan, in 1808 wrote a book of Pashto words entitledʿAjāyib al-Lughāt ("Wonders of Languages").
^abJohn Leyden, Esq. M.D.; William Erskine, Esq., eds. (1921)."Events Of The Year 910 (1525)".Memoirs of Babur.Packard Humanities Institute. p. 5. Archived fromthe original on 14 November 2012. Retrieved10 January 2012.To the south is Afghanistān. There are ten or eleven different languages spoken in Kābul: Arabic, Persian, Tūrki, Moghuli,Afghani, Pashāi, Parāchi, Geberi, Bereki, Dari and Lamghāni.
^"Article Sixteen of the 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan". 2004. Archived fromthe original on 28 October 2013. Retrieved13 June 2012.From among the languages of Pashto, Dari, Uzbeki, Turkmani, Baluchi, Pashai, Nuristani, Pamiri (alsana), Arab and other languages spoken in the country,Pashto and Dari are the official languages of the state.
^Hakala, Walter (9 December 2011).Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and Its Neighbors: The Changing Politics of Language Choice. Brill. p. 55.ISBN978-90-04-21765-2.As is well known, the Pashtun people place a great deal of pride upon their language as an identifier of their distinct ethnic and historical identity. While it is clear that not all those who self-identify as ethnically Pashtun themselves use Pashto as their primary language, language does seem to be one of the primary markers of ethnic identity in contemporary Afghanistan.
^"Languages: Afghanistan".Central Intelligence Agency. The World Factbook. Retrieved27 October 2020. (48% L1 + L2)
^Brown, Keith; Sarah Ogilvie (2009).Concise encyclopedia of languages of the world. Elsevie. p. 845.ISBN978-0-08-087774-7. Retrieved7 April 2012.Pashto, which is mainly spoken south of the mountain range of the Hindu Kush, is reportedly the mother tongue of 60% of the Afghan population.
^Kieffer, Ch. M. (1982)."AFGHANISTAN v. Languages".Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved11 October 2020."Paṧtō (1) is the native tongue of 50 to 55 percent of Afghans".
^"Pashto, Southern".SIL International. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 14th edition. 2000. Archived fromthe original on 26 June 2008. Retrieved18 September 2010.
^"Languages of Iran".SIL International. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Archived fromthe original on 4 February 2012. Retrieved27 September 2010.
^Modarresi, Yahya: "Iran, Afghanistan and Tadjikistan, 1911–1916." In:Sociolinguistics, Vol. 3, Part. 3. Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier, Peter Trudgill (eds.). Berlin, De Gryuter: 2006. p. 1915.ISBN3-11-018418-4[2]
^abcTariq Rahman. "Pashto Language & Identity Formation in Pakistan."Contemporary South Asia, July 1995, Vol 4, Issue 2, p151-20.
^Lorenz, Manfred. "Die Herausbildung moderner iranischer Literatursprachen." In:Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung, Vol. 36. Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR. Akademie Verlag, Berlin: 1983. P. 184ff.
^Other sources note 1933, i.e. Johannes Christian Meyer-Ingwersen. Untersuchungen zum Satzbau des Paschto. 1966. Ph.D. Thesis, Hamburg 1966.
^abHussain, Rizwan.Pakistan and the emergence of Islamic militancy in Afghanistan. Burlington, Ashgate: 2005.p. 63.
^István Fodor, Claude Hagège.Reform of Languages. Buske, 1983. P. 105ff.
^Campbell, George L.:Concise Compendium of the world's languages. London: Routledge 1999.
^Dupree, Louis: "Language and Politics in Afghanistan." In:Contributions to Asian Studies. Vol. 11/1978. p. 131–141. E. J. Brill, Leiden 1978. p. 131.
^Spooner, Bryan: "Are we teaching Persian?" In:Persian Studies in North America: Studies in Honor of Mohammad Ali Jazayery. Mehdi Marashi (ed.). Bethesda, Iranbooks: 1994. p. 1983.
^Septfonds, D. 2006. Pashto. In: Concise encyclopedia of languages of the world. 845 – 848. Keith Brown / Sarah Ogilvie (eds.). Elsevier, Oxford: 2009.
^Mohmand, Mureeb (27 April 2014)."The decline of Pashto".The Express Tribune....because of the state's patronage, Urdu is now the most widely-spoken language in Pakistan. But the preponderance of one language over all others eats upon the sphere of influence of other, smaller languages, which alienates the respective nationalities and fuels aversion towards the central leadership...If we look to our state policies regarding the promotion of Pashto and the interests of the Pakhtun political elite, it is clear that the future of the Pashto language is dark. And when the future of a language is dark, the future of the people is dark.
^Carter, Lynn. "Socio-Economic Profile of Kurram Agency".Planning and Development Department, Peshawar, NWFP.1991: 82.
^Carter and Raza. "Socio-Economic Profile of South Waziristan Agency".Planning and Development Department, Peshawar, NWFP.1990: 69.Sources say that this is mainly because the Pushto text books in use in the settled areas of N.W.F.P. are written in the Yusufzai dialect, which is not the dialect in use in the Agency
^Hallberg, Daniel."Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan"(PDF).National Institute of Pakistan Studies Quaid-i-Azam University and Summer Institute of Linguisitics.4: 36.A brief interview with the principal of the high school in Madyan, along with a number of his teachers, helps to underscore the importance of Pashto in the school domain within Pashtoon territory. He reported that Pashto is used by teachers to explain things to students all the way up through tenth class. The idea he was conveying was that students do not really have enough ability in Urdu to operate totally in that language. He also expressed the thought that Pashto-speaking students in the area really do not learn Urdu very well in public school and that they are thus somewhat ill prepared to meet the expectation that they will know how to use Urdu and English when they reach the college level. He likened the education system to a wall that has weak bricks at the bottom.
^Khan, M. Taimur S. (2016).Pakistanizing Pashtun: The linguistic and cultural disruption and re-invention of Pashtun. American University. p. 72.Urdu which is the native language of only 7.57 per cent of Pakistanis (though widely spoken as the national language and lingua franca in Pakistan) dominates all other local languages; and Pashto which is the native language of 15.42 per cent of the total population has no official recognition beyond primary school...Despite its limited scope, the Pashto-medium schools were a success as the "achievement tests showed an improvement in Pashto medium schools as compared to Urdu medium schools". Nonetheless, the better results have so far not motivated the government to introduce Pashto-medium schools at a larger scale in Pashtun populated areas.
^Darmesteter, James (1890).Chants populaires des Afghans. Paris.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Henning (1960), p. 47. "Bactrian thus 'occupies an intermediary position between Pashto and Yidgha-Munji on the one hand, Sogdian, Choresmian, and Parthian on the other: it is thus in its natural and rightful place in Bactria'."
^Hotak, Muhammad; Habibi, Abd al-Hayy (1997).The Hidden Treasure: A Biography of Pas̲htoon Poets. p. 21.With regard to Morgenstierne's statement that the language is affiliated with eastern Iranian languages there is ample evidence to consider it a Bactrian language.
^Comrie, Bernard (2009).The world's major languages. Routledge.
^ab"AFGHANISTAN vi. Paṧto".G. Morgenstierne. Encyclopaedia Iranica. Archived from the original on 22 January 2012. Retrieved10 October 2010.Paṧtō undoubtedly belongs to the Northeastern Iranic branch.
^Noelle-Karimi, Christine; Conrad J. Schetter; Reinhard Schlagintweit (2002).Afghanistan – a country without a state?.University of Michigan, United States: IKO. p. 18.ISBN3-88939-628-3.The earliest mention of the name 'Afghan' (Abgan) is to be found in a Sasanid inscription from the third century AD and their language as"Afghani".
^David Neil MacKenzie: David N. Mackenzie:The Development of the Pashto Script. In: Shirin Akiner (Editor):Languages and Scripts of Central Asia. School of Oriental and African Studies, Univ. of London, London 1997,ISBN978-0-7286-0272-4.p. 142
^Lucia Serena Loi:Il tesoro nascosto degli Afghani. Il Cavaliere azzurro, Bologna 1987, p. 33
^John R. Perry, "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic" in Éva Ágnes Csató, Eva Agnes Csato, Bo Isaksson, Carina Jahani,Linguistic convergence and areal diffusion: case studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic, Routledge, 2005. p. 97: "It is generally understood that the bulk of the Arabic vocabulary in the central, contiguous Iranian, Turkic and Indic languages was originally borrowed into literary Persian between the ninth and thirteenth centuries"
^Vladimir Kushev (1997). "Areal Lexical Contacts of the Afghan (Pashto) Language (Based on the Texts of the XVI-XVIII Centuries)".Iran and the Caucasus.1:159–166.doi:10.1163/157338497x00085.JSTOR4030748.
^Census Commissioner, India (1937)."Census of India, 1931, Volume 17, Part 2".Times of India: 292. Retrieved7 June 2009.At the same time Pashto has borrowed largely from Persian and Hindustani, and through those languages from Arabic.
^Claus, Peter J.; Diamond, Sarah; Ann Mills, Margaret (2003).South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia : Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Taylor & Francis. p. 447.ISBN9780415939195.
^Bartlotti, Leonard and Raj Wali Shah Khattak, eds. (2006).Rohi Mataluna: Pashto Proverbs, (revised and expanded edition). First edition by Mohammad Nawaz Tair and Thomas C. Edwards, eds. Peshawar, Pakistan: Interlit and Pashto Academy, Peshawar University.
^Jazab, Yousaf Khan.An Ethno-Linguistic Study of the Karlanri Varieties of Pashto. Pashto Academy, University of Peshawar. pp. 342–343.
Hallberg, Daniel G. (1992).Pashto, Waneci, Ormuri. Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan. Vol. 4. National Institute of Pakistani Studies.ISBN969-8023-14-3.OCLC1034637486.
Penzl, Herbert (2009) [1955, pub. by American Council of Learned Societies, Washington, DC].A Grammar of Pashto: A Descriptive Study of the Dialect of Kandahar, Afghanistan. New York: Ishi Press.ISBN978-0-923891-72-5.
Penzl, Herbert (2009) [1962, pub. by University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI].A Reader of Pashto. New York: Ishi Press.ISBN978-0-923891-71-8.
Schmidt, Rüdiger, ed. (1989).Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert.ISBN3-88226-413-6.
Further reading
Morgenstierne, Georg (1978). "The Place of Pashto among the Iranic Languages and the Problem of the Constitution of Pashtun Linguistic and Ethnic Unity".Paṣto Quarterly.1 (4):43–55.
