Enquiry Form | Rates & Payment Terms | Pashto Express | Privacy Statement | Contact us

«About Pashto Language»

Pashto is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Pashto belongs to the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian language family. The number of Pashto-speakers is estimated to be 30-40 million. It is one of the official national languages in Afghanistan.

In 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. In Pakistan, Pashto is spoken by about 27 million people 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, and in Tajikistan.

Pashto is an S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masc./fem.), 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.
 
 
Sources:
1. wikipedia (Click here)