Pashto (پښتو, IPA: [paʂˈto, paçˈto, puxˈto]; also transliterated Pax̌to, Paxto, Pukhto, Pushto or Pashtu), also known as Afghani (Persian: افغانی‎) and Pathani (Urdu: پٹھانی, Hindi:Paṭhānī), is the native language of the Pashtun people of South Central Asia. Pashto is a member of the Eastern Iranian languages group, spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as by the Pashtun diaspora around the world.

Pashto belongs to the Northeastern Iranic branch of the Indo-Iranian language family, although Ethnologue lists it as Southeastern Iranic.The number of Pashtuns or Pashto-speakers is estimated 50-60 million people world wide. Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan (the other being Dari Persian),and a regional language in western and northwestern Pakistan.

Geographic distribution

Further information: Languages of Afghanistan and Languages of Pakistan

As the national language of Afghanistan, Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south and southwest, but also in some northern and western parts of the country. The exact numbers of speakers are unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 35-60% of the total population of Afghanistan.

In Pakistan, Pashto is a provincial language, spoken as a first language by about 15.42% of Pakistan's 170 million people. It is the main language of the Pashtun-majority regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and northern Balochistan, but is also spoken in parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of the Punjab province as well as by Pashtuns who are found living in different cities throughout the country. Modern Pashto-speaking communities are also found in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh.  By some estimates, there are close to 7 million of Pashtuns in Karachi.

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. There are also communities of Pashtun communities descent in the southwestern part of Jammu and Kashmir.

Sizable Pashto-speaking communities also exist in the Middle East, especially in the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, as well as in the United States, United Kingdom, Thailand, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Qatar, Australia, Japan and Russia etc.

Official status

The Afghan Empire comprised regions on both sides of the Durand Line before the present day ethno-linguistic situation in South-Central Asia, by which the British colonial power annexed about one third of Afghanistan. The border created a buffer zone and was drawn through the Pashtun areas of settlement leaving the larger part of them in what was to become Pakistan.

Pashto (since 1936) is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, along with Dari (Persian). Since the early 18th century, all the kings of Afghanistan were ethnic Pashtuns except for Habibullah Kalakani, and most of them bilingual although Amānullāh Khān spoke Pashto as his second language. Persian as the literary language of the royal courtwas more widely used in government institutions while Pashto was spoken by the Pashtun tribes as their native tongue. Amanullah Khan began promoting Pashto during his reign as a marker of ethnic identity and a symbol of "official nationalism" leading Afghanistan to independence after the defeat of the British colonial power in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. 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 Society Pashto Anjuman in 1931and the inauguration of the Kabul University in 1932 as well as the formation of the Pashto Academy Pashto Tolana in 1937. Although officially strengthening the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a "sophisticated language and a symbol of cultured upbringing". King Zahir Shah thus followed suit after his father Nadir Khan had decreed in 1933, that both Persian and Pashto were to be studied and utilized by officials. In 1936, Pashto was formally granted the status of an official language with full rights to usage in all aspects of government and education by a royal decree under Zahir Shah despite the fact that the ethnically Pashtun royal family and bureaucrates mostly spoke Persian.Thus Pashto became a national language, a symbol for Afghan nationalism.

The status of official language was reaffirmed in 1964 by the constitutional assembly when Afghan Persian was officially renamed to Dari. The lyrics of the national anthem of Afghanistan are in Pashto.

In Pakistan, Urdu and English are the two official language, but Pashto has no official status. Pashto is the regional language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and northern Balochistan. In 1984, Pashto was permitted to be used as the medium of instruction in primary schools.



The origin of Pashto language and the Pashtun tribes is unknown. The word "Pashto" derives by regular phonological processes from Parsawā- "Persian".Nonetheless, the Pashtuns are sometimes compared with the Pakhta tribes mentioned in the Rigveda (1700–1100 BC), apparently the same as a people called Pactyans, described by the Greek historian Herodotus as living in the Achaemenid's Arachosia Satrapy as early as the 1st millennium BC. However, this comparison appears to be due mainly to the apparent, etymologically unjustified, similarity between their names.

Herodotus also mentions the Pactyan "Apridai" tribe but it is unknown what language they spoke.Strabo, who lived between 64 BC and 24 CE, explains that the tribes inhabiting the lands west of the Indus River were part of Ariana and to their east was India. Since the 3rd century CE and onward, they are mostly referred to by the name "Afghan" ("Abgan") and their language as "Afghani".


Development of Pashto

Khushal Khan Khattak (1613–1689) wrote in Pashto. His poetry consists of more than 45,000 poems. According to some historians, the number of books written by Khattak are more than 200. His more famous books are Bāz Nāma, Fazal Nāma, Distār Nāma and Farrah Nāma. From the time of Ahmad Shah Baba (1723-1773) Pashto has been the language of the court. Its first teaching text was written during the period of Ahmad Shah by Pir Mohammad Kakerr with the title of Ma'refa al-Afghāni ("Introduction of Afghani"). After that, the first grammar book of Pashto verbs was written in 1805 A.D. in India under the title of Riāz al-Muhabat ("Training in Affection") through the patronage of Nawab Mohabat Khan son of Hafez Rahmatullah Khan, the famous chief of the Barreitsh. Nawabullah Yar Khan, another son of Hafez Rahmat Khan in 1808 A.D. wrote a book of Pashto words entitled Ajāyeb-al-Lughat ("Strangeness of Words").

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