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Northern Illinois Dentists - Northern Illinois Dentist - Northern libertyvilledentist.com | Northern Virginia Forehead Lift Northern Virginia Brow Lift drbitar.com |
 Pashto (Naskh: پښتو - [paʂˈto]; also transliterated Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, or Pushtu), also known as Afghani,[6][7] is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and western Pakistan.[8] Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian[9] branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. The number of Pashto-speakers is estimated to be 30-40 million, and as defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, Pashto is an official and national language of the country.
[edit] Geographic distributionIn Afghanistan, Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south and southwest, but also in some northern and northwestern parts as a result of recent relocation. No exact numbers are available, but the CIA World Factbook 2009 estimates that 35% of the population speak Pashto as their first language.[10] According to an older, but scholarly, estimate by the Encyclopaedia Iranica, Pashto is the native language of 50 to 55 percent of the population, and spoken by less than 10 percent as a second language.[11] According to "A survey of the Afghan people - Afghanistan in 2006",[12] Pashto is the first language of 40% of the population, while additional 28% also speak the language (combined 68%). In Pakistan, Pashto is spoken by about 27 million people (15% of the total population)[13] in the North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Balochistan. Modern Pushtun speaking communities are also found in Sindh (Karachi and Hyderabad). With an estimated 4 million ethnic Pashtuns, Karachi hosts one of the largest Pashtun populations in the world. Other communities of Pashto-speakers are found in northeastern Iran, primarily in South Khorasan Province to the east of Qaen, near the Afghan border,[14] and in Tajikistan.[15] There are also Pashtun communities in Uttar Pradesh as well as the southwestern part of Jammu & Kashmir in India.[16][17][18] Sizable Pashto-speaking communities also exist in the Middle East, especially in the United Arab Emirates[19] and Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States, particularly California, and in the United Kingdom,[20] Thailand, Canada and Australia. [edit] Official statusIn Afghanistan, Pashto is promoted as the first state language, and article 20 of the Constitution of Afghanistan states that the Afghan National Anthem "shall be in Pashto..."[21] Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan that are used for the administration of the government throughout the country. Pashto is also used in education, literature, office and court business, media, and in religious institutions, etc. It is a repository of the cultural and social heritage of the country. In Pakistan, Pashto is not an official language, but it is one of the provincial languages spoken by the Pashtuns living in Pakistan, in the NWFP, FATA and Balochistan. [edit] GrammarMain article: Pashto grammar Pashto is an S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masc./fem.),[22] two numbers (sing./plur.), and four cases (direct, oblique I, oblique II and vocative). 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 and past perfect), Pashto is an ergative language; i.e., transitive verbs in any of the past tenses agree with the object of the sentence [edit] Phonology [edit] Vowels
Pashto also has the diphthongs /ai/, /əi/, /ɑw/, /aw/. [edit] Consonants
The phonemes /q/, /f/ tend to be replaced by [k], [p]. The retroflex lateral flap /ɺ̢/ (//) is pronounced as retroflex approximant [ɻ] when final. The retroflex fricatives /ʂ/, /ʐ/ that are preserved in southern dialects are replaced by palatal fricatives [ç], [ʝ] in west-central dialects, velars [x], [ɣ] in northern dialects, and postalveolars [ʃ], [ʒ] in southeastern dialects.[24] The velars /k/, /ɡ/, /x/, /ɣ/ followed by the close back rounded vowel /u/ assimilate into the labialized velars [kʷ], [ɡʷ], [xʷ], [ɣʷ]. [edit] VocabularyIn Pashto, most of the native elements of the lexicon are related to other Eastern Iranian languages; those words can be easily compared to those known from Farsi, Avestan, Ossetic and Pamir languages. However, a remarkably large number of words is special to Pashto.[25] Post 7th century borrowings came primarily from Arabic. Modern borrowings come from Persian[26] and Urdu (in Pakistan) with the modern educated speech borrowing words from English,[27] French,[27] and German.[27] [edit] Writing systemMain article: Pashto alphabet Pashto employs the Pashto alphabet, a modified form of the Arabic alphabet with extra letters added for Pashto-specific sounds. As of the 17th century Pashto has been primarily written in the Naskh Arabic script, rather than the Nasta'liq script used for neighboring Persian and Urdu languages. The Pashto alphabet consists of 44 letters, and 4 diacritic marks. The following table gives the letters' isolated forms, along with IPA values for the letters' typical sounds:
[edit] DialectsAs a consequence of life in areas of rugged terrain, there are many dialects of Pashto language. The two main dialects are soft or southern dialect and hard or northern dialect. Paktika is roughly the dividing line. One of the primary features of the dialects is the differences in the pronunciation of these seven phonemes (all sounds in IPA):
The differences between the southern dialects and the northern dialects are primarily phonological and there are simple conversion rules. The morphological differences between them are very few and unimportant. However, the east-central dialects are lexicologically different and very varied. The southern dialect of Kandahar is the most conservative with regards to phonology, retaining the retroflex fricatives and the alveolar affricates, which have not merged with other phonemes. The Pashto alphabet reflects the southern dialect. Certain dialects show many archaic features, some of which are discarded by the literary language. [edit] Notable phonological and lexicological differences
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes and references
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] External links Pashto language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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