Pashto

Pashto is the native language of the Pashtun people of the

south-central Asia. It is the oldest preserved Iranian
language. Basically Pashto is spoken in Afghanistan,
Pakistan and in the areas where pakhtuns live in the
world. Pashto belongs to the north eastern. Iranic branch
of the Indo Iranian language family. The number of
Pashtuns or Pashto speakers is 40-60 million people
worldwide.
Pashto is one of the two official language of Afghanistan.
It is also a regional language of western and northwestern
Pakistan. As we don’t have any source to know, how
many people speak Pashto in Afghanistan as their mother
tongue but according to a rough estimate 35-60 % of the
population of Afghanistan use Pashto as their mother
tongue. Where as in Pakistan, Pashto is a provincial
language which is not only spoken in Khyber Pakhtun
Khwa but also in Baluchistan province. It is also spoken
in Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), Miawali,
districts of Punjab province, Attock and those areas of the
country where pakhtuns are living. Modern Pashto
speaking communities are found in the cities of Karachi
and Hyderabad in Sindh Karachi is the city where
pakhtuns are found more than any other city of the world.
Pashtun’s are about 25% of Karachi’s population and if
we take a look internationally we see that Pashto speaking
people reside. Almost everywhere in the world mostly in
middle east, UAE, Saudi Arabia, United states, united
kingdom, Thailand, Canada ,Germany, Netherlands etc.
According to linguists Pashto has descended from
Avestan. Avestan is an East Iranian language which is
generally used by the Zoroastrian’s. The word Pashto has
been derived from “Parsawa”-Persian. Some scholars
believe that earliest modern Pashto work dates back to
Amir Koror Suri in the eighth century and they use the
writings found in Pata Khazana. During the 17th century
Pashto poetry was becoming very popular among the
Pashtuns some of those who wrote poetry in Pashto are
Khushal khan khattak, Rahman baba, Nazo Tokhi, and
Ahmad shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of
Afghanistan. Pashto ia a subject – object –verb (sov)
language. Noun and adjectives are in two genders
(masculine/feminine) Singular and plural are also
involved. The verb system has the following tenses.
Present, simple past, past progressive, present perfect and
past perfect. The sentences construction is similar like
prakrit and Hindustani, unlike Persian. The Pashto
language has its Pashto alphabets, which in part is derived
from Arabic alphabet. Moreover it has extra letters for
Pashto specific sounds. Pashto being a well-developed
language has a rich legacy of literature. It has almost all
forms of literature. Its poetry and prose are equally rich in
almost all forms of literature.