Pashto Transcription Services

The Pashtun language, Pashto, also known in older literature as Afghānī or Paṭhānī, is an Eastern Iranian language, belonging to the Indo-European family. Pashto is the native language of the Pashtun people of South-Central Asia. It is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan and is also the second-largest regional language of Pakistan which is mainly spoken in the west and northwest of the country. Pashto is the main language among the Pashtun diaspora around the world. The total number of Pashto-speakers is estimated to be 45–60 million people worldwide.

Pashto belongs to the North-eastern Iranian group of the Indo-Iranian branch; however, Ethnologue lists it as South-eastern Iranian. Pashto’s closest relatives are Khotanese, Bactrian, and Pamir languages.

Pashto is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, along with Dari. Since the early 18th century, all the kings of Afghanistan were ethnic Pashtuns except for Habibullah Kalakani. Persian as the literary language of the royal court was 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 1931 and 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 bureaucrats 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 languages. Pashto has no official status at the federal level. On a provincial level, Pashto is the regional language of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and northern Balochistan. The primary medium of education in government schools in Pakistan is Urdu but the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have placed more emphasis on English as the medium of instruction as of April 2014. English medium private schools in Pashto-speaking areas, however, generally do not use Pashto. The imposition of Urdu as the primary medium of education in public schools has caused a systematic degradation and decline of many of Pakistan’s native languages including Pashto. This has caused growing resentment amongst Pashtuns and they also complain that Pashto is often neglected officially.