Pashto language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pashto (Naskh: پښتو‎ - IPA: [paʂ'to]; alternative spelling: Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto, Pashtu, or Pushtu), also known as Afghani,^[3][4] is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.^[5] Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family.^[6] There are nearly 38 million Pashtuns. As defined in the Constitution of Afghanistan, Pashto is a national and official language of Afghanistan.

Grammar

Pashto is a S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for gender (masc./fem.), number (sing./plur.), and case (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.

Pashto alphabet

The letters of the Pashto alphabet are:

Letters specific to Pashto

The letters below are specific to Pashto only:

The five Yaas of Pashto

The following are the five Yaas used in Pashto writing:

Pashto Latin Alphabet

The Pashto Latin alphabet is based on the following 41 graphemes:

Aa ( َ ), Ââ (ا), Bb (ب), Cc (څ), Çç (چ), Dd (د), Ďď (ډ), DHdh (ذ), Ee (ې), Ëë (ہ), Ff (ف), Gg (ګ), Ģģ (غ), Hh (ه), Ii (ي), Jj (ژ), Kk (ک), Ķķ (خ), Ll (ل), Mm (م), Nn (ن), Ňň (ڼ), Oo (و), Pp (پ), Qq (ق), Rr (ر), Řř (ړ), Ss (س), Šš (ښ), Şş (ش), Tt (ت), Ťť (ټ), THth (ث), Uu ( ُ or و), Vv (ب or و), Ww (و), Xx (ځ), XHxh (ج), Yy (ى), Zz (ز), Žž (ږ)

The letters a, â, e, ë, i, o and u are vowels, and the remainder are consonants. The letter c represents /ts/, x represents /dz/, j represents /ʒ/ and y represents /j/. The háček (in ď, ň, ř, š, ť and ž) is used for retroflex consonants, and the cedilla (in ç, ģ, ķ and ş) indicates either change of dental/alveolars into post-alveolars or change of velar plosives into fricatives. The dighraphs dh, th and xh represent /ð/, /θ/ and /dʒ/. Other letters represent the same consonants as their values in the IPA.