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| Pushtu (پښتو) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Afghanistan, Pakistan |
| Region: | Afghanistan: south, east and a few provinces in the north; Pakstan: western provinces |
| Total speakers: | c. 17 million |
| Ranking: | 82 (Northern), 92 (Southern). See [1]. |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Iranian |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Afghanistan |
| Regulated by: | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | ps |
| ISO 639-2 | pus |
| SIL | PST |
Pushtu (پښتو; also known as Afghan, Pushto, Pashto, Pashtoe, Pashtu, and Pukhto) is the language spoken by the ethnic Afghan otherwise known as the Pashtun people who inhabit Afghanistan and the Western provinces of Pakistan.
The language is believed to have originated in the Kandahar/Helmand areas of Afghanistan. Persian often dominates over Afghan/Pashto in Afghanistan in everyday government use since the capital was moved to Kabul from Kandahar in the 18th century.Pashto is spoken by over 65% of Afghanistan's population.
Pushtu is presently classified in the Southeastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages.
From the time of Islam's rise in Central Asia, Pushtu has used a modified version of the Perso-Arabic script. In recent years, however, because of the InternetThis article is about the Internet the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. An internet is a more general term for a set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking''. WWW information network structu, it has become increasingly easier to write Pushtu in the Latin script.
It is alongside Persian, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan,
Pushtu is spoken by about 17 million people in in the south, east and a few northern provinces of Afghanistan, as well as the western provinces of Pakistan. It is spoken by circa 36% of Afghanistan population who are of the Pashtun tribe, as well as by ethnic Pashtuns who live on the other side of the disputed Durand Line in present day Pakistan.
Pushtu is one of the two official languages of Afhganistan. The other is the Persian language.