Pashto

Long recognised as the most important language of the North-West Frontier Province of British India, now Pakistan, where it is spoken by 90 per cent of the population, Pashto was by royal decree of 1936 also declared to be the national language of Afghanistan in place of ‘Dari’ Persian. This official pre-eminence was artificial, however, and it now shares the honour with Persian. The areas of Afghanistan to which Pashto is native are those in the east, south and south-west, bordering on Pakistan, but in recent years Pashto speakers have also settled in parts of the northern and eastern provinces of the country. Pashto is estimated to have about 10 million native speakers in Pakistan (mainly in the North-West Frontier Province, also some in Baluchistan) and to be spoken natively by perhaps half of Afghanistan’s population of over 30 million, though the figure for Afghanistan may include second-language speakers. Pashto is in any event the second most widely spoken Iranian language after Persian. The name of the language, properly Paxˇto, also denotes the strong code of customs,

morals and manners of the Pashtun (Paxˇtun, Indianised as Patˆha-n) nation, also called Paxˇtunwa-lay – whence the saying Paxˇtun haca n eday cˇe Paxˇto wa-yi lekin haca cˇe Paxˇto lari ‘A Pashtun is not he who speaks Pashto, but he who has Pashto.’