Accent on Afghanistan - Pashto - Language and Culture of Afghanistan - Audio and Book
Brand New : 1 CD
This package includes a 3-ring binder with 32 flash cards, audio CD, 20-page booklet and fold-over quick reference card in wrap-around case. It covers basic Pashto and the rich traditions of the Afghan nation. Learn useful phrases and vocabulary, culture - history, geography, people, food, religion, customs - plus do's and dont's for interaction with native-born residents.
About the Afghan Language Pashto
Pashto (پښتو, IPA: [pəʂ'to] also known as Pakhto, Pushto, Pukhto پختو, Pashtoe, Pashtu, Pushtu or Pushtoo) is a language spoken by Pashtuns living in Afghanistan and western Pakistan.
Classification
Pashto belongs to the Southeastern Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. Other languages in the Eastern Iranian branch of languages include Sarikoli, Wakhi, Munji, and Shughni. Other notable related Iranian languages include Persian, Kurdish, Balochi, Gilaki, spoken in the Middle East, and Ossetic, which is spoken in the Caucasus.
Geographic distribution
Pashto is spoken by about 15 million people in the western provinces of North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and Balochistan of Pakistan and by over 6 million people in the south, east, west and a few northern provinces of Afghanistan. Smaller, modern "transplant" communities are also found in Sindh (Karachi, Hyderabad). Other smaller communities of Pashto speakers also thrive in northeastern Iran. Pashto is spoken by a large part of Afghanistan's population who are of Pashtun origin, as well as by ethnic Pashtuns who live in Pakistan.
Official status
Pashto is the second official language of Afghanistan and spoken only by pashtuns. It is not the official language in Pakistan, and is spoken by Pashtun communities in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.
Dialects
The northern dialect is spoken by about 6,000,000 people, and the southern dialect by about 1,500,000. One of the main features of the dialects is the differences in the pronunciation of these five phonemes (all sounds in IPA):
Grammar
Pashto is a S-O-V language with split ergativity. Adjectives come before nouns. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for gender (Masculine/Feminine), number (Singular/Plural) and case (Direct/Oblique). Direct case is used for subjects and direct objects in the present tense. Oblique case is used after most pre- and post-positions as well as in the past tense as the subject of transitive verbs. There is no definite article, but instead there is extensive use of the demonstratives this/that. The verb system is very intricate with the following: Simple 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.
Vocabulary
Pashto, being an Indo-European language, shares many cognates with other related languages. Following the advent of Islam in Afghanistan, the Pashto language has received a significant influx of loan-words from Arabic, Persian and various Turkic languages.
Writing system
From the time of Islam's rise in South-Central Asia, Pashto has used a modified version of the Arabic script. The seventeenth century saw the rise of a polemic debate which also was polarized along lines of script. The heterodox Roshani movement wrote their literature mostly in the Persianate style called the Nasta'liq script. The followers of the Akhund Darweza, and the Akhund himself, who viewed themselves as defending the religion against the influence of syncretism, wrote Pashto in the Arabicized Naskh. With some individualized exceptions Naskh has been the generally used script in the modern era of Pashto, roughly corresponding with the late 19th and 20th centuries, due to its greater adaptability for typesetting. Even lithographically reproduced Pashto (generally in Pakistan) has been calligraphied in Naskh as a general rule, since it was adopted as standard.
Pashto has several letters which do not appear in any other Arabic script which represent the retroflex versions of the consonants /t/, /d/, /r/, /n/. The letters are written like the standard Arabic ta', dal, ra', and nun with a "pandak", "gharwandah" or also called "skarraen" attached underneath which looks like a small circle; ړ ,ډ ,ټ, and ڼ, respectively. It also has the letters ge and xin (the initial sound of which is like the German ch found in the word "ich") which look like a ra' and sin respectively with a dot above and beneath. Pashto also has the extra letters that has been added to the Arabic alphabet. It has a number of additional vowel diacritics as well, though these often vary in their usage.
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