Pashto

About Pashto

Pashto is the first language of about 39 million people, mainly in Afghanistan, where it is an official language together with Dari, and in northwestern Pakistan, above all Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family.

Pashto is written right to left in an Arabic-based alphabet with extra letters for its own sounds. Pronunciation varies by region: southern speakers around Kandahar say "Pashto", while northern speakers around Peshawar say "Pakhto", and the same letters shift in many other words. Use taso as the polite or plural "you" and ta with close friends. A common friendly greeting is staray ma shey, literally "may you not be tired".

FamilyIndo-European, Eastern Iranian
Native speakersabout 39 million (2007)
Where spokenAfghanistan (official language), Pakistan
ScriptPashto alphabet (Arabic-based), right to left
Codesps (ISO 639-1), pus (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Nationalencyklopedin (2007), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

Scroll to Top