Pashto phonetics

1
Pashto Phonetics
(A Description of the vowels and Consonants of the Standard
Pashto)
For Foreign & Native Learners of Pashto
Amjad Hussain Nassir
MA English, MA Pashto

3
Pashto Phonetics
(A Description of the vowels and Consonants of the Standard
Pashto)
For Foreign & Native Learners of Pashto
Amjad Hussain Nassir
MA English, MA

4
Foreword
All glory be to Allah, the creator and sustainer of the universe
and all what is beyond it.
It is my pleasure to put up before you the most wanted book on
Pashto Phonetics keeping in view two major needs; firstly, the demand
of my students wherever I have taught them; secondly, there is no book
available in the country specifically on Pashto Phonetics, the main
reason being that Pashto is the language of the inhabitants of the Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa Province, and the National Language of the country is
Urdu, thus the need at national level for the description of Pashto has
not been felt by the intellectuals or people in the power corridors, their
main focus being on Urdu and, of course, English, since the official
correspondence of the country is mostly in English. My experience of
teaching for the last seventeen years has taught me a lot of things about
the needs and psyche of the Pakistani students; their aims and
objectives in getting education; the trust of their parents in them for
achieving good grades in their studies; and the support, both financial
and moral, from parents, as they want their children to be educated, and
prove to be good citizens of Pakistan. In my opinion, education makes
good humans; humans with the requisite skills not only to benefit their
own self and families, but also the entire humanity at large. I have learnt
from scholars in psychology that we dream in our mother tongue
because our subconscious is primarily preoccupied by our mother
tongue, since our first ever encounter after being born in the world is
with our mother tongue, which remains there till death. It is easier for us
to talk in mother tongue, most often without making any conscious
effort to think and speak in it. This is a long debate which I do not want
to indulge in at this point in time, but our attitudes are determined by
our perception of the world and our behavior is determined by our
attitude towards the world. If want to be positive to the people around
us, a positive attitude is a prerequisite for this and humanity demands
from us that we behave well. Education makes us good humans, and true
education, in the point of view of scholars, is that which is achieved in a
natural environment rather than by rotting or continuous drills and
practices, which we can learn through practice, but which we may or
may not like to learn. Keeping the idea limited, there is no denying the
fact that education acquired in mother tongue is more effective and long

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lasting than one acquired in any other language. It is on account of this
fact that I focused my attention to the study of my mother tongue,
Pashto, and started exploring the various facts about it, one among
which is the phonetics of Pashto, which is an area of my interest. Other
aspects of Pashto such as syntax, semantics, and morphology etc are of
course a huge area to be explored. Not to mention the sociolinguistic
ambit of Pashto language, which also has a tremendous scope for being
explored by scholars and researchers in linguistics.
The book is open to you for reading with a hope that you benefit
from its reading. I would very much like to have your feedback on the
book in case you found technical, typing, thematic or semantic errors.
Any positive comments would not only benefit me but also the readers
at large which shall come in the form of revisions in the next edition.
Any comments, suggestions/feedback or review of this book can be sent
to amjadnaasir@gmail.com.
I am praying for your future success with hope that you will
benefit from reading the book.
Amjad Nassir

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Acknowledgments
Alhamdulillah! To the almighty, for bestowing upon me the
blessings of knowledge. Thanks to the teacher of teachers, the leader of
leaders, the guide of all guides and the prophet of all prophets, Muhammad
peace be upon him, who taught me how to live and how to please my
creator. After him, I am truly indebted to all my teachers who taught me
what I know; my mother, who taught me what I do; and my students who
taught me what I must teach. Equally I am thankful to my wife, Muneeba
Amjad, who has been so much supportive towards me in my intellectual
endeavors. I am thankful to my son Ryan, who has always taught me how to
be inquisitive and how to pursue things I never knew before. I am thankful to
all those friends who have given me moral support in any intellectual pursuit
I have been making so far.
I am highly indebted to the English authors Peter Roach, Daniel
Jones, O’Connor and John Lyon who inspired me for reading about language
and linguistics and particularly phonetics and phonology. I am especially
thankful to Noam Chomsky, for inspiring me to study the structure of
language in general and that of Pashto in particular. Indeed his scholarship
will go a long way in guiding my thoughts as long as I stay in touch with the
study of language. My teacher Professor Dr. Aurangzeb, who is not in
Pakistan, is missed every moment I talk of language, for he was the first
teacher who inspired me for pursuing my studies in linguistics. My other
teachers, Professor Muhammad Hussain, Prof Dilawar Said, Prof Fazal-e-
Sadiq who taught me at Government Degree College, Dargai, My teachers
and mentors, Sir Dr. Zulfiqar Ali, Dr. Amjad Saleem, Dr. Muazzam Shareef,
Dr. Yaser Hussain, Dr. Riazuddin and other teachers, I will be unable to
count in this little space, all deserve my gratitude and respect, who have
guided me all the way down to this moment, and without whose support, I
could not have been able to learn.
I pray for all the near and dear ones, my friends, relatives and
especially my children, Ryan Nassir, Mehwish Gulalay Amjad, Affan
Taimur Nassir, Sehrish Gulalay Amjad, and the little Sannan Abdullah
Nassir, who make my life beautiful by their constant smiles around the year.
amjad nassir

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ABOUT THIS BOOK
This book is intended for all those readers who have
interest in the study of phonetics, though it is a specialized
subject in linguistics. It is by no means an exhaustive book
which will serve the need of advanced level readers. It is brief,
and its contents are devised for self-study as well as for study in
groups of peers. It can also benefit teachers of Pashto Language
if they want to use it in class room situations. Effort has been
made to make the contents of the book as simple as possible.
One interesting fact about this book is that it is placed in a
context which the readers will find more local rather than
international. My experience of teaching at different levels of
academics has dawned upon me certain facts which are more of
psychological nature and which I cannot count in here, but
which I definitely had in mind when I embarked upon the
journey of conceiving this book in the first place, and later on,
preparing this book. I felt the need to work out on this book due
to many reasons. One reason is that I could not get any book on
Pashto phonetics in any library. There are many books available
in the market about English phonetics and phonology and my
reading has inspired me to make an attempt for writing on
Pashto Phonetics. The non-availability of books of Pashto
Phonetics may be attributed to various reasons. In my opinion
the reason might be that the readers of Pashto language are not
the readers of English and vice versa. This book will serve as a
bridge between the two languages because its medium is
English while the language it describes is Pashto. I hope I will
be right to claim that this book will be the very first book of its
kind to have been written. Since it is my first attempt, I believe
it will be deficient in many ways. But keeping restricted to our
limitations does not mean we should quit attempting new

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things. I have made an attempt, which may be poor, weak, and
wanting more knowledge and scholarship, but I did make an
attempt, no matter how weak or poor. Every new experience is
hard and non-conclusive. The fact that this book is not
exhaustive is accounted for by the very limited contents of this
book. It focuses only on phonetics of Pashto. The Phonology of
Pashto, the segmental and supra-segmental features are left for
the next edition of the book. I hope this book will inspire
scholars, and students like me, to make further greater attempts
in future.
This book will help those students a great deal who want
to clarify their key concepts in the area of phonetics. This book
is ideal for those students who are the beginners in the subject
because its contents are few, its language is simple and
examples are easy. It is equally of value to those who have a lot
of knowledge about the subject but who need material to teach
from. The best way to use book is to give sufficient time to each
session. After having read the session, the students must browse
through the internet for expanding the scope of their
understanding by finding the relevant examples from other
languages. once they grasp the topic completely, they should
move to the next session. This approach will help them learn
more effectively.
For foreign learners of Pashto, this book will be of help
to them in learning the phonetic aspect of Pashto language,
which will help them a great deal in learning correct
pronunciation, as the standard symbols of IPA have been used
and if they know how to use IPA symbols, they will definitely
learn how to use the same symbols in learning correct
pronunciation of Pashto sounds. For teachers of Pashto
language, this book, it is hoped, will prove to be a good read. It
will provide them the way forward for how to go about teaching
phonetics to the students of Pashto language and linguistics in
the classroom which will be of great use in their professions.

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Last but not the least, I would like to mention here that
this book is my solo flight and I had no support from any
organization or department. It was my love for the subject that
had been driving me to this day and which urged me to do the
research work and publish it on my own. My frequent visits to
the department of Pashto, The Pashto Academy University of
Peshawar went futile. I volunteered to design a course for the
Pashto Academy and the Department of Pashto for the MA
Pashto Previous and Final classes and expressed my willingness
to prepare books of Language and Linguistics and Pashto
Language Teaching to be taught at Masters level but my
generous offer fell on deaf ears. The Students of Pashto
Academy as well as the Pashto Department are not very lucky
to have missed this opportunity offered to their department by a
volunteer, and I believe the next generation will be deprived of
the studies in Linguistics in the future. It is high time for the
Academy as well as Pashto Department to introduce courses in
General Linguistics and Pashto Language Teaching, otherwise
too much water has already flown uselessly down the bridge. I
am always willing if my help in academics i.e. curriculum
designing, course material preparation etc. are required but it is
the need of the hour to develop curriculum for Pashto language
and literature on modern lines.
Towards the end, I would like to inform my readers with
utmost honesty, that being a Pukhtoon I have realized that the
Pukhtoons, as a nation, are mentally very sharp and highly
critical, though the criticism takes negative and destructive form
at times. I have observed in them that if one Pukhtoon becomes
rich, the other is jealous without any reason and criticizes him
in such words and phrases that the rich starts wishing to be
poor. The similar is the case with a Pukhtoon who becomes a
scholar. The other Pukhtoon scholar, if he has become one by
chance or by personal efforts, make fun of him by calling
different names to the effect that he starts wishing to be

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illiterate. In my personal opinion, this social phenomenon
among the Pukhtoons has caused more trouble and rather
destruction for the community at large. If one makes an attempt
to contribute to knowledge by making any research work etc.
majority of the Pukhtoons will try hard not let the gentleman
achieve his academic goals. No scholar of English and Pashto
among the Pukhtoons was ready to even give a proof reading to
this book which is a fact that I will always remember about my
Pukhtoon fellows. Therefore, my perception about the Pukhtoon
intellectuals is utterly pessimistic. It is my perception, which
might be wrong, but I believe the illiterate Pukhtoon is more
helpful, more hospitable, more sacrifice maker for fellow beings
and more responsible than these educated and so called
intellectual Pukhtoons, who get education not to become good
humans, but rather for fame and popularity among the majority
of the Pukhtoons who are very simple, innocent, brave,
courageous, candid, loving, caring and highly cooperative by
nature.
In preparation of this book, none of my friends, fellow
men helped except just a few, who did not extend any physical
help but rather emotional support that ‘Go man, you can do the
job’. The rest, this book is purely my own attempt and the mind
of one individual is limited. It will be faulty, poorly ordered,
lacking scholarship and needs a lot of improvement but it is one
man’s endeavor and I, as a human being, admit my weaknesses
but I don’t want to live an apologetic life due to this reason. I
made the attempt, and I always will.

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Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 The Phoneme, phonetics and phonology
Chapter 3 The Production of Speech Sounds
Chapter 4 The International Phonetic Alphabet
Chapter 5 The Consonants of Pashto
Chapter 6 The Vowels of Pashto
Chapter 7 A Note for the Teachers of Pashto
Language

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Chapter 1
Introduction
Pashto language, whose speakers prefer to speak and
write it as Pukhto, is the language of the Pashtuns (Preferably
the Pukhtoons, as they call themselves, and the Afghans as the
Persians call them or the Pathans, as the Indians call them). It is
known in Persian literature as Afghani and
in Urdu and Hindi literature as Paṭhani. Speakers of the
language are called Pashtuns or Pakhtuns and sometimes
Afghans or Pathans by people outside the province in which
they live. Pashto is one of the two official languages of
Afghanistan (Hallberg 1992, Penzle 1955). The total number of
Pashto-speakers is estimated to be 45–60 million people
worldwide. Other communities of Pashto speakers are found
in Tajikistan, and further in the Pashtun diaspora. Sizable
Pashto-speaking communities also exist in the Middle East,
especially in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, North-
eastern Iran. According to the latest estimates, it is spoken by
some eight million people in Afghanistan, six million in
Pakistan, and about 50,000 in Iran. Pashto is thus the second in
importance among the Iranic languages and in Afghanistan the
official language, beside Darī.
The Pashtun diaspora speaks Pashto in countries like
the US, UK, Thailand, Canada, Germany,
Australia, Japan, Russia, New Zealand, and the Scandinavian
countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, etc.
In Pakistan, Pashto is spoken as a first language by
about 35-40 million people – 15.42% of Pakistan's 208 million
population. It is the main language of the Pashtun majority
regions of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and northern Baluchistan.
It is also spoken in parts of Mianwali and Attock districts of

13
the Punjab province and in Islamabad, as well as by Pashtuns
who live in different cities throughout the country. Modern
Pashto-speaking communities are found in the cities
of Karachi and Hyderabad in Sindh.
The two official languages of Pakistan are
Urdu and English. Pashto has no official status at the federal
level. The primary medium of education in government schools
in Pakistan is Urdu, but from 2014 onwards, the Government of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has placed more emphasis on English as
the medium of instruction. 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,
who also complain that Pashto is often neglected officially and
if the attitude of the central government towards Pashto remains
the same, there is a danger of Pashto becoming an extinct
language.
In Pashto, most of the native elements of the lexicon are
related to other Eastern Iranian languages. However, a
remarkably large number of words are unique to Pashto. Post-
7th century borrowings came primarily from the Persian
and Hindustani languages, with some Arabic words being
borrowed through those two languages, but sometimes directly.
Modern speech borrows words from
English, French and German.
A number of sources discuss various dialect divisions
within the Pashto language. One distinction which is almost
universally mentioned in these sources is the distinction
between hard and soft Pashto. On this
topic Grierson says, “Over the whole area in which it is spoken,
the language is essentially the same.” This will to some extent

14
be evident from the specimens which follow.
Such as they are they show that, while, as we go from
tribe to tribe there are slight differences in
pronunciation and grammar, the specimens are all
written in various forms of what is one and the same
language. Two main dialects are, however, recognized,
that of the north-east, and that of the south-west. They
mainly differ in pronunciation. The Afghans of the
North-east pronounce the letter ‘kha’ and those of the South-
west pronounce them ‘Sha’ (1921:7). Another statement
determines where Grierson thought these two varieties to be
spoken: The North-Eastern dialect is spoken in the district of
Hazara, and over the greater part of the districts of
Peshawar and Kohat, but in the two latter the members
of the Khatak tribe use the South-Western dialect. In
the districts of Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan the SouthWestern
dialect is universal (1921:10). In yet another statement, when
speaking about South Western Pashto speakers besides the
Khataks, Grierson says: Other speakers of the South-Western
dialect are the remaining Pathan tribes of Bannu, among whom
the principal are Marwats, the Nyazis, the Bannuchis, and
the Wazirs (Grierson 1921:69). Many other writers have also
pointed out this major two part division between Pashto
varieties, but in later writings a finer distinction based on
pronunciation is delineated. One such writer is D.N.
MacKenzie, who, in his 1959 article entitled ‘A Standard
Pashto, distinguishes four dialect areas based on five different
phonemes. These are: South-west (Kandahar), South Pashto,
east (Quetta), North-west (Central Ghilzai), and North-east
(Yusufzai) (1959:232)
In addition to the unique qualities found in Waziri, it
also seems that other Pashto varieties exhibit qualities that are
not specifically revealed by the simple four-part division
mentioned above.

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Morgenstierne says: ‘… the dialectal variety of Pashto
is far greater than that of Baluchi. And among the Afghans, the
nomadic Ghilzais and the comparatively recent
invaders of Peshawar, Swat, etc. show the least amount
of dialectal variation, while the central part of Pashto
speaking territory is the one which is most split up into
different dialects (1932:17).
The lexical data as displayed by the Sociolinguistic
Survey of Northern Pakistan Vol IV, shows that the Northern
Pashto, as called by some researchers as the Eastern or
Northeastern Pashto includes the word list locations of
Peshawar and Charsadda in District Peshawar, Mardan and
Swabi in District Mardan, Madyan and Mingora in District
Swat, Batagram, Baffa, and Oghi in District Mansehra, and Dir
in District Dir and with only a few exceptions, all of the
similarity counts between these locations were 90 percent or
above. In addition, within this larger Northern group there were
sub-areas of greater similarity. For example, Madyan and
Mingora, in District Swat, have 99 percent lexical similarity;
Batagram, Baffa, and Oghi share 99 to 100 percent lexical
similarity; and Peshawar and Charsadda are 97 percent similar.
In contrast, similarity percentages between Northern locations
(including tribal locations) and nearly all of the
Southern-group localities were in the 70s or
low 80s. Many percentages between the two major groups were
in the 70s.
The morphological differences between the most
extreme north-eastern (i.e. the Peshawari dialect) and south-
western dialects (i.e. the Kandahari dialect) are comparatively
less considerable. Pashto is spoken slightly differently from
place to place (e.g., Swat, Peshawar, Hazara), but the
differences do not appear to be very great. However, there is a
marked difference between the extreme north and extreme south
varieties both lexical and phonological. The criteria of dialect
differentiation in Pashto are more of a phonological nature than

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lexical or morphological. The differences other than
phonological are not so great as to divide Pashto as a language
into contrasting dialects. With the use of an alphabet which
disguises these phonological differences the language has,
therefore, been a literary vehicle, widely understood, for at least
four centuries. This literary language, in the words of D. N.
MacKenzie (1959), has long been referred to in the West as
'common' or 'standard' Pashto without, seemingly, any real
attempt to define it. On this account it seems appropriate to
attempt to define standard Pashto in more concrete phonemic
terms than any adaptation of the Arabo-Persian script allows it
to stay as a distinct language with a definite standard dialect and
a number of other local varieties. Dialects, particularly of the
north-east, have abandoned a number of consonant phonemes
but have generally confirmed the vowels in their morphological
positions. It is an obvious inference that an older stage of
Pashto, combined a 'south-western' consonant system with a
'north-eastern' vowel phoneme system. It is this conceptual
phonemic system, therefore, which is reflected in the verse of
the classical period of Khushal Khan and Rahman Baba. Apart
from the evident value of this 'Standard Pashto', in its discreet
native dress, as a universal literary medium among Pashtuns, it
appears to have another important application. It permits the
description of Pashto morphology in more accurate and
universal terms than does any single dialect. Moreover, once
established, by a comparison of the main north-eastern and
south-western dialects, it may well serve as the basis for a
simple description of the regular phonetic divergences of other
dialects. Of the 36 consonant signs of the standard alphabet, D.
N. Mackenzie states, seven, appear almost exclusively in
loanwords of Arabic origin and represent no
additional phonemes of Pashto. They are mere ' allographs ',
marked in the transliteration by a subscript line. Here D. N.
Mackenzie seems to have left a gap. The current phonemes of
standard Pashto may or may not be the same as mentioned by

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him and it needs further investigation, which this study will
attempt to find out.
Pashto is an ancient language that is written in Perso-
Arabic script. Its vocabulary contains words borrowed from
Ossete, Persian, Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu and other regional
languages of Pakistan, also some Indo-Aryan languages. It is
considered to be in close relation with Persian but there are
certain features in Pashto that are not found in Persian e.g. there
are certain consonants and vowels in Pashto that are not found
in Persian like retroflex oral stops [‫]ټ‬ and [‫,]ډ‬ retroflex flap [‫,]ړ‬
retroflex nasal [‫]ڼ‬ etc. Secondly in Persian, there is no gender
and noun case, nouns have only categories of definiteness and
number but in Pashto there is. Stress pattern is also different, in
Pashto the emphasis, again unlike Persian, is not on the last
syllable, but can vary. This freedom of shift from one syllable to
another plays a very important grammatical role in Pashto and
allows it to give different meanings to same words. Due to these
facts many researchers have suggested that origin of Pashto is
not Persian rather it is either Ossete or a language from which
Ossete has originated though Pashto has borrowed a number of
lexical items from Persian. As far as phonetical borrowings are
concerned, Pashto has borrowed phonemes from Arabic in exact
form and shape. The main reason being, Pashto is spoken by
people, who accepted Islam as a community, and the reading of
the holy book, Al Qur’an or the Qur’an is obligatory for
everyone who believes in Islam. The reading of the Qur’an was
impossible without Arabic in the days when the Qur’an was not
translated in languages other than Arabic. Even now, its reading
is mandatory in Arabic for spiritual satisfaction and pleasure of
the Almighty Allah.
Let us examine an excerpt of the Yusafzai Pashto as
recorded on page 32 of Vol X of the Linguistic Survey of India
by Sir George Abraham Grierson who placed the Yusafzai
Dialect in Vol X for the reason that this dialect belongs to the
Iranian Family, the specimen of which he included in the book

18
and the following excerpt was included with the courtesy of Sir
Herold Deane. A snap shot of the excerpt of the Yusafzai
Dialect is shown here below:
The same paragraph, if transcribed in today’s Peshawari
Pashto, it will be reading as follows:
‫برخه‬ ‫خپله‬ ‫له‬ ‫ما‬ ‫پالره‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ووېل‬ ‫ته‬ ‫پالر‬ ‫خپل‬ ‫کشر‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫نو‬ ‫وو‬ ‫زامن‬ ‫دوه‬ ‫سړي‬ ‫يو‬ ‫د‬
‫کشر‬ ‫پس‬ ‫ورځې‬ ‫څو‬ ‫يو‬ .‫وويشو‬ ‫دواړو‬ ‫په‬ ‫جائېداد‬ ‫خپل‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫نو‬ .‫راکړه‬ ‫نه‬ ‫مال‬ ‫د‬
‫په‬ ‫مال‬ ‫خپل‬ ‫يې‬ ‫هلته‬ ‫او‬ .‫وکړو‬ ‫کوچ‬ ‫يې‬ ‫ته‬ ‫ملک‬ ‫لرې‬ ‫يو‬ ‫او‬ ‫کړل‬ ‫جمع‬ ‫څۀ‬ ‫هر‬ ‫زويي‬
‫خال‬ ‫يې‬ ‫ټول‬ ‫چې‬ ‫نو‬ .‫والوزولو‬ ‫مستۍ‬‫راغے‬ ‫قحط‬ ‫يو‬ ‫باندې‬ ‫ملک‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫په‬ ‫نو‬ ‫کړو‬ ‫ص‬
‫او‬ .‫شو‬ ‫نوکر‬ ‫سره‬ ‫سړي‬ ‫معتبر‬ ‫يو‬ ‫وطن‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫د‬ ‫او‬ ‫الړو‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫نو‬ .‫شو‬ ‫تنګ‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫او‬

19
‫په‬ ‫سره‬ ‫خوشحالۍ‬ ‫په‬ ‫به‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫او‬ .‫اولېګو‬ ‫ته‬ ‫پټو‬ ‫خپلو‬ ‫دپاره‬ ‫څرولو‬ ‫د‬ ‫خنزيرانو‬ ‫د‬ ‫هغه‬
‫پيا‬ .‫ورکول‬ ‫نۀ‬ ‫هيچا‬ ‫خو‬ .‫وه‬ ‫کړې‬ ‫ډکه‬ ‫ګېډه‬ ‫خپله‬ ‫خوړل‬ ‫خنزيرانو‬ ‫چې‬ ‫بوسو‬ ‫هغه‬
‫چ‬‫ډوډۍ‬ ‫شان‬ ‫ښۀ‬ ‫په‬ ‫نوکران‬ ‫پالرڅومره‬ ‫د‬ ‫ځما‬ ‫چې‬ ‫وئېل‬ ‫ويې‬ ‫نو‬ ‫شو‬ ‫خود‬ ‫په‬ ‫ې‬
‫وايم‬ ‫به‬ ‫ورته‬ ‫او‬ .‫ورشم‬ ‫به‬ ‫له‬ ‫پالر‬ ‫خپل‬ ‫او‬ ‫پاڅم‬ ‫به‬ ‫زۀ‬ .‫مرم‬ ‫لوګې‬ ‫د‬ ‫زۀ‬ ‫او‬ .‫مومي‬
‫زوے‬ ‫ستا‬ ‫چې‬ ‫يم‬ ‫نۀ‬ ‫الئق‬ ‫ددې‬ ‫او‬ .‫هم‬ ‫ستا‬ ‫او‬ ‫ده‬ ‫کړې‬ ‫ګناه‬ ‫خداے‬ ‫د‬ ‫ما‬ ‫پالره‬ ‫چې‬
‫پاڅېدو‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫او‬ .‫واچوه‬ ‫مې‬ ‫کښې‬ ‫نوکرانو‬ ‫په‬ ‫خو‬ .‫شم‬‫خو‬ .‫راغے‬ ‫له‬ ‫پالر‬ ‫خپل‬ ‫او‬
‫وروزغلېيدو‬ ‫او‬ ‫وکړو‬ ‫پرې‬ ‫يې‬ ‫ترس‬ ‫وليدواو‬ ‫پالر‬ ‫خپل‬ ‫نو‬ ‫وو‬ ‫بېرته‬ ‫ال‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫چې‬
‫او‬ ‫خداے‬ ‫د‬ ‫ما‬ ‫پالره‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ووئېل‬ ‫ورته‬ ‫زويي‬ ‫او‬ .‫کړو‬ ‫يې‬ ‫ښکل‬ ‫او‬ ‫وتو‬ ‫ورترغاړه‬
‫نوکرانو‬ ‫خپلو‬ ‫يې‬ ‫پالر‬ ‫ولې‬ .‫شم‬ ‫زوے‬ ‫ستا‬ ‫چې‬ ‫يم‬ ‫نه‬ ‫الئق‬ ‫ددې‬ ‫نو‬ .‫ده‬ ‫کړې‬ ‫ګناه‬ ‫ستا‬
‫جام‬ ‫ښه‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ووئېل‬ ‫ته‬‫کړئ‬ ‫الس‬ ‫په‬ ‫يې‬ ‫ګته‬ ‫يوه‬ ‫او‬ .‫واغوندئ‬ ‫يې‬ ‫ته‬ ‫دۀ‬ ‫او‬ ‫راوړئ‬ ‫ه‬
‫ځکه‬ .‫وکړو‬ ‫خوشحالي‬ ‫او‬ ‫وخورو‬ ‫ډوډۍ‬ ‫چې‬ ‫راځئ‬ ‫او‬ .‫کړئ‬ ‫ښپو‬ ‫په‬ ‫ورته‬ ‫پڼې‬ ‫او‬
‫هغوي‬ ‫او‬ .‫دے‬ ‫شوے‬ ‫پېدا‬ ‫او‬ ‫ؤ‬ ‫ورک‬ .‫دے‬ ‫شوے‬ ‫ژوندے‬ ‫او‬ ‫ؤ‬ ‫مړ‬ ‫زوے‬ ‫زما‬ ‫دا‬ ‫چې‬
.‫کړه‬ ‫جوړه‬ ‫خوشحالې‬
‫ت‬ ‫کور‬ ‫او‬ ‫راغے‬ ‫چې‬ ‫او‬ .‫ؤ‬ ‫کښې‬ ‫پټي‬ ‫په‬ ‫زوے‬ ‫مشر‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫د‬ ‫اوس‬‫نزدے‬ ‫ه‬
‫او‬ ‫وکړو‬ ‫اواز‬ ‫يې‬ ‫ته‬ ‫نوکر‬ ‫يو‬ ‫نو‬ ‫واورېدو‬ ‫يې‬ ‫اواز‬ ‫ګډېدو‬ ‫د‬ ‫او‬ ‫سرود‬ ‫د‬ ‫نو‬ ‫شو‬
‫رور‬ ‫ستا‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ووئېل‬ ‫ورته‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫نو‬ ‫دے؟‬ ‫مطلب‬ ‫څه‬ ‫ددې‬ ‫چې‬ ‫وکړه‬ ‫ترې‬ ‫يې‬ ‫پوښتنه‬
‫موندلے‬ ‫جوړ‬ ‫روغ‬ ‫يې‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ځکه‬ .‫دے‬ ‫کړے‬ ‫خېرات‬ ‫دې‬ ‫پالر‬ ‫او‬ ‫دے‬ ‫راغلے‬
‫را‬ ‫يې‬ ‫پالر‬ ‫نو‬ .‫تللو‬ ‫نۀ‬ ‫دننه‬ ‫او‬ ‫شو‬ ‫مرور‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫نو‬ .‫دے‬‫ورته‬ ‫يې‬ ‫منت‬ ‫او‬ ‫اووتو‬
‫ستا‬ ‫ما‬ ‫کالونه‬ ‫ډېر‬ ‫دومره‬ ‫ګوره‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ووئېل‬ ‫ته‬ ‫پالر‬ ‫کښې‬ ‫جواب‬ ‫په‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫نو‬ .‫اوکړو‬
‫ما‬ ‫چرته‬ ‫تا‬ ‫هم‬ ‫بيا‬ ‫او‬ ‫کړے‬ ‫مات‬ ‫دے‬ ‫نۀ‬ ‫حکم‬ ‫ستا‬ ‫مې‬ ‫هيچرې‬ ‫او‬ ‫دے‬ ‫کړے‬ ‫خدمت‬
.‫وې‬ ‫کړې‬ ‫خوشحالي‬ ‫سره‬ ‫دوستانو‬ ‫خپلو‬ ‫د‬ ‫پرې‬ ‫ما‬ ‫چې‬ ‫دے‬ ‫نه‬ ‫راکړے‬ ‫چيلے‬ ‫يو‬ ‫له‬
‫مال‬ ‫چې‬ ‫زوي‬ ‫ستا‬ ‫دا‬ ‫چې‬ ‫خو‬ ‫ولې‬‫تا‬ ‫نو‬ ‫راغے‬ ‫دے‬ ‫کړے‬ ‫خراب‬ ‫ډمو‬ ‫په‬ ‫درته‬ ‫يې‬
‫ځما‬ ‫او‬ ‫يې‬ ‫سره‬ ‫ما‬ ‫همېشه‬ ‫ته‬ ‫زويه‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ووئېل‬ ‫وراه‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫نو‬ .‫ورکړله‬ ‫مېلمستيا‬ ‫ورته‬
‫دا‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ځکه‬ ‫شو‬ ‫خوشحاله‬ ‫او‬ ‫وکړو‬ ‫ښادي‬ ‫مونږ‬ ‫چې‬ ‫وو‬ ‫مناسب‬ ‫دا‬ .‫دي‬ ‫ستا‬ ‫څۀ‬ ‫هر‬
.‫دے‬ ‫شوے‬ ‫موندلے‬ ‫ؤ‬ ‫ورک‬ ‫او‬ .‫شو‬ ‫ژوندے‬ ‫بيا‬ ‫ؤاو‬ ‫مړ‬ ‫رور‬ ‫ستا‬
This transcription of current day Pashto is the current
trend in writing Pashto in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province,
which has been, or is supposed to be officially, adopted after the
Pashto Academy, the University of Peshawar announced that a
standard for writing Pashto is the need of the day and must be
adopted for the future literary and linguistic works in Pashto
Language and Literature. This transcription is to be made the

20
standard transcription due to the fact that almost three decades
ago, the Barra Gali Conference held on July 11 and 12, 1990,
which was attended by famous scholars, writers, linguists and
researchers of Pashto Language and Literature from Northern
and Southern Pukhtunkhwa including Afghanistan, the entire
Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province and the northern areas of
Baluchistan, where Pashto is spoken as first language, stressed
the importance of adopting a standard and uniform transcription
system in order to bring about uniformity and consensus among
the writers of Pashto. A number of decisions, total seventeen
decisions to be more precise, were taken unanimously by the
delegates (copy of the minutes of the conference attached). The
purpose of the conference was to mutually decide upon the
alphabets of the Pashto language to take conclusive steps in
order to make a standard phonetical and phonological system of
the Pashto language, not only for indigenous speakers and users
of Pashto but also to make the job of the foreign learners of
Pashto easy. In fact certain linguists and literary scholars still
have reservations about a few sounds of Pashto which are not,
according to them, precisely transcribed, or proposed to be
transcribed, by the scholars who participated in the Conferences
held from time to time, about taking conclusive steps, and
reaching to conclusions about the transcription about the
alphabets of Pashto language.
Let us see another paragraph in Peshawari Pashto which
is written in current standard transcription of Pashto as
approved by the Pashto Academy, University of Peshawar, the
institution who is responsible for ensuring to serve the Pashto
Language and Literature in any capacity. The paragraph reads
as follows:
‫نو‬ .‫دے‬ ‫زوړ‬ ‫ډېر‬ ‫ته‬ ‫لوري‬ ‫يو‬ ‫کول‬ ‫بحث‬ ‫دا‬ ‫نه؟‬ ‫که‬ ‫او‬ ‫دے‬ ‫پکار‬ ‫مقصد‬ ‫څۀ‬ ‫ادب‬ ‫ده‬
‫پوهان‬ ‫چې‬ ‫ځکه‬ .‫دي‬ ‫ضروري‬ ‫پوهيدل‬ ‫دے‬ ‫په‬ ‫او‬ ‫ذکر‬ ‫ددے‬ ‫هم‬ ‫اوس‬ ‫ته‬ ‫لوري‬ ‫بل‬
‫د‬ ‫هغې‬ ‫د‬ ‫او‬ ‫ليک‬ ‫خپل‬ ‫د‬ ‫هغه‬ ‫نو‬ ‫وي‬ ‫نۀ‬ ‫پوهه‬ ‫ښه‬ ‫دې‬ ‫په‬ ‫ليکونکے‬ ‫يو‬ ‫که‬ ‫فرمائي‬
‫خپل‬ ‫نه‬ ‫نظريه‬ ‫بشپړه‬ ‫کيدونکې‬ ‫پيش‬ ‫سره‬ ‫طور‬ ‫واضحه‬ ‫يو‬ ‫هيچرے‬ ‫حقله‬ ‫په‬ ‫اظهار‬
‫د‬ ‫چې‬ ‫او‬ .‫شي‬ ‫کولې‬ ‫وړاندې‬ ‫ته‬ ‫اورېدونکو‬ ‫او‬ ‫لوستونکو‬ ‫نورو‬ ‫نه‬ ‫او‬ ‫ته‬ ‫ځان‬

21
‫نه‬ ‫اثر‬ ‫پوره‬ ‫پوره‬ ‫هم‬ ‫چرته‬ ‫لوستونکي‬ ‫په‬ ‫نو‬ ‫وي‬ ‫نه‬ ‫واضحه‬ ‫نظريه‬ ‫خپله‬ ‫ليکونکي‬
‫خو‬ ‫ليکوال‬ ‫چې‬ ‫وي‬ ‫پکار‬ ‫ستائيل‬ ‫ټول‬ ‫هله‬ ‫دوزخ‬ ‫جنت‬ ،‫جهان‬ ،‫ژوند‬ .‫پرېوتلے‬ ‫شي‬
‫ازادۍ‬ ‫په‬ ‫رائې‬ ‫خپله‬ ‫کنه؟‬ ‫ده‬ ‫منظوره‬ ‫ته‬ ‫تاسو‬ .‫کنه‬ ‫پوهيږي‬ ‫هم‬ ‫خپله‬ ‫په‬ ‫پرې‬
‫وي‬ ‫نه‬ ‫ګيله‬ ‫به‬ ‫زمونږ‬ .‫کوئ‬ ‫مۀ‬ ‫غندنه‬ ‫خو‬ ‫وي‬ ‫څه‬ ‫هر‬ ‫که‬ ‫عنوان‬ .‫..راکړئ‬
This excerpt contains the Pashto alphabets which are
used in the Peshawari dialect which is spoken in the capital of
the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, Peshawar and the adjacent
districts of Charsadda, Mardan, Noshera, Kohat, Swabi and by
speakers of the tribal regions of District Khyber, District Bajaur
and Muhmand erstwhile Khyber Agency and Muhmand Agency
and Bajaur Agency. The regions such as District Swat, Dir
Lower and Dir Upper, Buner and Malakand which are closer to
these adjacent districts of Peshawar and Swabi, also speak the
same Peshawari Dialect with slight variations of pronunciation
and vocabulary which are mutually comprehendible for the
listeners of the entire province. It is perhaps this reason that the
electronic and print media makes use of this dialect. Few
geographical, historical and literary facts oblige me to consider
the Peshawari Pashto as the dialect of Pashto which is the most
important dialect of Pashto and it is the dialect which must be
designated as the Standard Dialect for both the native and
foreign learners of the Pashto language. Other than the
historical and literary reasons which will follow later, certain
geographical statistics show that the Peshawari Pashto is the
dialect of Pashto which is equally understood by all speakers of
the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province and is spoken by most of the
residents of the region where Pashto is the mother tongue of the
speakers with the exception of the residents of the few southern
districts, which in themselves have a variety of the Pashto
language with certain variations of grammar, vocabulary and
pronunciation. According to the census of 2017, after the

22
merger of erstwhile tribal agencies, and FR regions the total
population of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is 35,525,047
out of which 21,081,158 (59%) population of the three divisions
namely Malakand, Mardan and Peshawar divisions speak the
Peshawari Pashto while the rest of the population i.e.
14,443,889 (41%) which reside in other divisions of the
province, the majority of whom understand the Peshawari
Pashto, although the speakers of the Peshawari dialect are lesser
in number. It must be kept in mind that the speakers from the
other divisions, who have frequent interaction in the field of
business, education or who keep family relations or friendships
with people in the Peshawar or its adjacent regions, understand
the Peshawari Pashto, since it is capital of the province, and off
course, carries historical, political and financial significance not
only for the people of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but also for the
country and the world at large. This book considers the
Peshawari Pashto as the Pashto spoken and understood by all
those Northeastern speakers of the Pashto language who reside
in or around the Peshawar region including the Peshawar
division and the adjacent divisions of Mardan and Malakand.
Apart from the districts of Peshawar Division, all the
districts of Mardan and Malakand division also speak the same
Peshawari Pashto, though with slight variations of
pronunciation, but not necessarily those of grammar and
vocabulary. The districts of Swabi, Charsadda, Noshera, Buner,
Swat, Malakand, Dir Upper and Dir Lower, Bajaur, Mohmand,
Khyber, and Kohat have the same dialect of Pashto which is
spoken and understood alike. The common observation that
language changes after each twelve to fifteen kilometers is a
reality yet to be proved thought, these districts are spread well

23
over a radius of 25,620 sq. km out of the entire area of the
Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province which is 101,741 sq km after
the merger of the erstwhile FATA. Research about the exact
number of those speakers who can speak or understand the
Peshawari Pashto, particularly after the merger of the erstwhile
FATA region into the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, is an
open option for any independent researcher. Due primarily to
lack of time, testing was not done in the reverse
direction — testing the Quetta story in Yusafzai/Peshawar
territory. This is something which probably should be done in
the future to verify that Yusafzai really is more widely
understood than the Quetta dialect.
Apart from geographical significance, the Peshawari
Pashto carries historical as well as literary significance when it
comes to describing a dialect of Pashto which is understood by
all and used by majority of the Pukhtoon population. As
mentioned earlier, a huge population of the Pukhtoons is living
abroad in different parts of the world as well. Their channel of
communication with their community back home is either the
internet or the TV channels, which are a formal mode of
communication and for the formal mode, the Peshawari Pashto
is utilized by the TV Channels. We will come to this point later
in our discussion. Let us briefly discuss the various reasons for
why the Peshawari Pashto be considered as the standard dialect
for the native as well as the foreign learners of Pashto.
The oldest form of poetic composition in Pashto literature is the
‘Tapa’. It is said that Pashto poetry was born out of the womb
of Tapa which is a literary form that has a very simple metrical
composition but a very comprehensive and pregnant thematic
make up. It is one of the oldest forms of folk literature and is

24
traced by historians to the pre-Greek era. The first ever Tapa
recorded in the books of history which is:
‫سپوږمي‬‫خيژه‬ ‫را‬ ‫وهه‬ ‫کړنګ‬ ‫ه‬
‫ريىبينه‬ ‫ګوتې‬ ‫کوي‬ ‫ؤ‬َ‫لـ‬ ‫ګلو‬ ‫ده‬ ‫مـى‬ ‫يار‬
Spogmaya Krung Waha Rakheeja
Yaar Me Da Gulo Lao Kawi Gutey Rebeenaa
And is translated into English as follows;
O Moon! Come out soon with jingle and light up the sky,
My lover is out at midnight to harvest flowers who might hurt his
fingers in the dark.
If we look at the syntactic structure of the above Tapa, it
is written in the Peshawari dialect although it was not known in
those days that the Peshawari dialect will ever exist.
Another Tapa which is recorded about a 1000 years ago,
by famous historian Khursheed Jahan, when the Armies of the
Great Sultan Mehmood of Ghazna came to India in their series
of battles which they won one after the other. There was a
commander in his armies by the name ‘Khaalo’ who belonged
to the Gomal Pass, in the current Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Province. His beloved fiancé was reported to have uttered the
following Tapa when she came to know that the Armies of
Mehmood of Ghazna are about to cross the Gomal Pass in a
couple of days:

25
‫راشي‬ ‫لښکرے‬ ‫خالو‬ ‫د‬ ‫چې‬
‫ځمه‬ ‫له‬ ‫ديدن‬ ‫يار‬ ‫خپل‬ ‫د‬ ‫ته‬ ‫ګومل‬ ‫به‬ ‫زه‬
Che Da Khaalo Lakhkaray Rashi
Za Ba Gomal Ta da Khpal Yar Deedan La Zama
Which can be translated into English as:
When the Armies of ‘Khaalo’ would reach,
I would go to the Gomal Pass to meet my lover there.
Although it was sung by a lady of the southern districts
of the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa and it should have been in the
southern dialect but, against our expectations, it is in the
Peshawari dialect. Similarly, a book named ‘Roohi Sandary’ at
the Pashto Academy, University of Peshawar, contains about
26000 Tapas and hardly a few might be in the dialects other
than the Peshawari dialect. Thus historically, the very beginning
of Pashto literature is woven into a dialect which was a
standard, because every speaker and every writer knew that it is
the dialect which is understandable for every speaker of Pashto.
This fact is narrated by Morgenstierne when he says that the
orthography of Pashto was fixed in the
16th century, the distinction between ‫ش‬ /ʃ/, ‫ژ‬ /ʒ/ and ‫خ‬ , ‫ږ‬
seems still to have been preserved even among the
north-eastern tribes, who were probably the creators of
Pashto literature (1932:17).
The first ever recorded book of Pashto which exists, is
Bayazid Ansari’s book, “Khair-ul-Bayan. Bayazid, the Geoffrey
Chaucer of Pashto literature, lived between 1526? and 1574?,

26
and influenced not only the literature of Pashto language, in
which he composed both prose and poetry, but is also greatly
contributed to the Phonetic studies of Pashto, by devising
thirteen new alphabets adding them to the set of the existing
inventory of Pashto alphabets at that time. Thus he can be called
as the first phonetician of the Pashto language. His book was
written in the Nastaliq, the Arabic-based script as adapted the
writing script of Persian, which itself ‘began to be recognized as
an independent form in the second half of the fourteenth
century’ (Hanaway & Spooner 1995). It is considered to be a
textbook by recent critics and researchers (Haq1986; Guide
1990). It does contain passages about the essentials of Islam,
and the message of God the writer wanted to convey to the
common masses, which may be understood by ordinary people.
Rozi Khan Barki writes about the script of Khair-ul-
Bayan that it was composed by the learned author in ‘standard’
Pashto, a dialect which had no legal or official status at that
time, but which at least was the dialect which was in vogue for
literary compositions, and was not only understandable to all
the readers of Pashto but was also the language of formal
communication in which religious as well as moral ideas were
communicated by learned authors to the masses at large. His
belonged to the people of Urmar who was an Urmary or
Bargasta speaking tribe (Himayatullah Yaqubi, 2013) but since
he was a man of erudition, he knew how important his message
was for the masses at large, and that was why he used a dialect
of Pashto for his communication which was more prolific and
universal so as to spread his message to everyone. He knew that
the dialect of his mother tongue, the Waziri Pashto was not
understood in the Peshawar valley as the Peshawari dialect

27
which was the language of formal communication. Bayazid also
knew the fact that it is the Peshawari Pashto in which the
literary composition will be made as the reading lot consisted
mainly of the ones who read and spoke the Peshawari Pashto.
Dr Yar Muhammad Maghmoom also adopts the same
stance in describing the linguistic significance of that book and
states that the book was composed in a universal dialect which
would be spread and read all over the Pukhtoon readers both in
Afghanistan and the current Khyber Pukhtunkhwa as well as the
Pukhtoons living in the part of the subcontinent to be later
called India. Thus he used a dialect, standard for that time,
though that was not defined to be standard as such. But its
acceptance as a standard dialect was in place. In response to
Bayazid’s book, Akhund Darweeza Baba (1533-1619), wrote
his own book Makhzan ul Islam. The Makhzan (or treasure)
was a rich collection of Arabic religious texts translated in
Pashto. Moreover, the language of exposition was Pashto. This
book is said to have been taught both in the madrassas and at
homes by women to other women and children. It was also read
out to those who could not read it themselves. This book was
also composed in a dialect easily understandable for the entire
community of Pashto speakers, and that dialect was the
Peshawari Pashto. Another book which is said to be part of the
curricula, especially for women, is Mulla Abdur Rashid‘s
Rashid-ul-Bayan. This was written in AH 1124 (1712).
Rashid‘s ancestors are said to have come from Multan and he
lived at Langarkot. It was read by women in their homes and
was a kind of sermon in verse. The following lines from it will
serve as illustration of the whole. The nature of the deity, for
instance, is described as follows:

28
Na e naqs shta pa zat ke/ Na e aeb shta pa sifat ke
i.e. Neither has He any defect in His Being nor has He any fault
in His qualities.
Bayazid Ansari, an influential politician and religious
leader of Pathan origin who had lived during the second period
of the literary evolution of the linguistic system known today as
Pashto, has been known to pride himself to be the creator of the
letters of the alphabet which he had developed through the
superimposition of Pashto letters over those of Arabic and as a
result developing the new alphabet according to oral traditions.
Similarly, Khoshal Khan Khattak had devised a new Pashto
script after substantial amendments but that could only last up
to his family because Mukhzin-ul-Islam which was taken as a
text book, and its script obtained popularity and became deep
rooted in society during a short span of time, and the same
script remained functional with slight modifications until the
recent past (Pakhto Lik Laar 1991).
The literature of Pashto, as well as its script, has
undergone evolutionary changes mainly put into effect by
Pathans like Khatak, Darwaiza and Bayazid. The Pashto
Academy at Kabul Afghanistan was created for the
standardization of the language in Kabul in the early nineteen
hundreds, contributed to this very task to research on the
influence of foreign languages, more concretely Persian and
Arabic which had influenced the writings of the Pashto authors
who used the languages as a model for their style and topic
selection. Nevertheless, they kept in mind the preservation of
the characteristic norms of Pashto.

29
A glance at the books of prose and poetry available in
the libraries reveals that the poets and prose writers since the
17th Century have been using the same dialect for their literary
compositions. Great scholars, intellectuals and poets as well as
prose writers of Pashto literature in the entire region have been
using the same dialect for their literary compositions. As D. N.
Mackenzi puts it, a 'Standard Pashto', in its discreet native dress,
as a universal literary medium among Pashtuns, carries a
conceptual phonemic system which is reflected in the verses of
the great classical poet Khushal Khan Khatak (1613-1689), who
was a Khatak by tribe, and whose father was killed by the
Yusufzais in a battle, remained a declared enemy of the
Yusufzai tribe and had fought several battles with them on
behalf of the Mughal emperors. But if we study the literary
works of Khushal Khatak, we see that he used the Peshawari
dialect for all type of literary composition, poetry or prose. The
Peshawari dialect was spoken by the Yusufzais and composed
literature in the same dialect, Khushal Khan, despite all his
enmity with the Yusufzais, adopted the same dialect for his
literary compositions since he knew that it was widely used and
understood by Pukhtoons not only in the region but by the
Pashto speakers the entire Indian subcontinent. Similarly,
Abdur Rahman Baba (1632-1711), who was a Momand by
birth, but he used the Peshawari dialect for his poetry and in his
entire Diwan (collection of his poems) no single verse could be
found in the Momand or other dialect of Pashto.
Poets of great repute in the following century also
composed poetry in the Peshawari dialect. The famous poet,
known by the name ‘hair splitter’ for his glorious imagery,
Abdul Hameed Baba (1669-1732), and Ali Khan Baba (1737-

30
1766) were Momand by birth but they composed poetry in the
Peshawari dialect.
Famous Pashto Poets of the modern era also used the
Peshawari dialects for their literary composition whether prose
or poetry. Famous poet, Fiction writer and Dramatist, Amir
Hamza Khan Shinwari (1907-1994) was a Shinwari by tribe.
Similarly, Misri Khan Khatir Afridi (1929-1961), known as the
John Keats of Pashto for his beautiful imagery and rosy
expression in his poetry, was an Afridi by tribe, but no single
verse can be found in Shinwari or Afridi dialects in their entire
poetry. Famous novelists and dramatist, fiction writer and
journalist, Rahat Zakhaeeli (1885-1963), famous poet and
literary figure Abdul Akbar Khan (1899-1977), one among the
most influential critics and literat, Siyyid Taqweemul Haq
Kakakhel (1927-1999), renowned scholar, critic and researcher,
Dost Muhammad Kamil (1915-1981), renowned poet, famous
by the name ‘the crazy philosopher’, Khan Abdul Ghani Khan
(1914-1996), reputed scholar, researcher, critic and poet,
Qalandar Momand (1930-2003), revolutionary poet, Ajmal
Khatak (1926-2010), a living legend among the poets of Pashto,
Rahmat Shah Sayil (1949- ), research and critic, Hameesh
Khalil (1930- ), researcher, scholar and a poet of high repute,
Dr Salma Shaheen (1958- ), famous critic, scholar, researcher
and poet Dr Sahib Shah Sabir (Late), famous poet and
dramatist, Dr Muhammad Azam Azam, renowned scholar,
researcher and literat, Dr Nasrullah Wazir (Director Pukhto
Academy), research fellow at the Pashto Academy, Dr Sher
Zaman Seemab, research fellow at Pashto Academy, Dr Noor
Muhammad Betani and many other great scholars, researchers,
critics, linguists and intellectuals whose names are difficult to

31
list here, are few of the many writers who composed literature,
both in prose and poetry, in the Peshawari dialect.
Another fact which invites our attention is the writings
of the foreigners who either composed poetry and prose in
Pashto literature or any book of grammar or syntax, they wrote
it in the Peshawari dialect. The British knew the significance of
Pashto language in dealing successfully with the Pukhtoons. Its
importance can be gauged from a report on Pashto language
which reveals that, in addition to being spoken in Afghanistan
Pashto is also spoken by 1,200,000 people in India. The report
states:
Pashto is all important as the lingua franca on the Indian
North West Frontier. If there is any trouble there, a knowledge
of Pashto is indispensable. Its political importance can
be gauged from the fact that it is studied in both German and
Russian Universities. It is also the language of our Pathan
troops (Committee 1909: 117).
The learned Englishmen, at least, were supposed to learn
Pashto if they wanted to successfully deal with the Pukhtoons in
the area called by them the North West Frontier Province. The
official orders by the British Government reveal the
significance of Pashto for the rulers at that time.
One of such orders states as follows:
All the Indian Frontier officers and Missionaries in the
frontier must know Pashto. These are many in number. At
present they have to learn the language on the spot, and some
who are good linguists know a good deal about it, but once they
leave their duty their accumulated knowledge is lost. The

32
arrangements for teaching on the frontier are
imperfect (Committee 1909: 117).
The arrangements made to teach to such British officers
were generally private ones. Englishmen generally hired the
locally available private tutors for nominal payments, crammed
grammars and lists of certain vital words written by English
authors or took lessons from tutors hired by their organizations
for the purpose.
Among the officers, who were linguists, there were
many who wrote grammars and dictionaries. The most well
known among these are Captain H.G. Raverty, H.W. Bellew,
George Morgenstierne and, George Grierson. Raverty’s
dictionary, completed in July 1860, in its preface refers almost
entirely to the military, and political, significance of the
language. Among other things he said, was an important point
to make which is that, the Indian Pathans, or go-betweens of
Afghan origin from India, should not be sent to Afghanistan for
the purpose of mediating between the Afghans and the
government. Rather we must free ourselves from dependence
upon them, and that could be done by sending as agents into the
country men practically acquainted with the language spoken by
the people, or, at least, with the language in general use at the
court of the ruler to which they may be accredited’ (Raverty
1860). Raverty also added that the Pashtuns had sided with the
British during the upheaval of 1857 and, the Afghans should be
enlisted, as well as Sikhs and Gurkhas, into every regiment or,
even regiments of each ethnic group may be created. He goes
on to say further that another reason was that the Russians, who
taught Pashto at St. Petersburgh, would be advantaged by their
knowledge of the language whereas the British, who actually

33
ruled over the Pashtuns, would not be able to influence them.
Raverty argued that schools should be established ‘for the
express study of Pashto and the government must make it
compulsory for its officers. His own dictionary; textbook called
Gulshan-i-Roh; and grammar; he says, are meant to facilitate
the learning of this important language. Raverty’s complaint
about British indifference to Pashto gained some support from
the fact that a German scholar, H. Ewald, rather than an English
one, pioneered the study of Pashto. Ewald and other German
linguists with interest in Pashto, wrote books of grammar and
articles on the sound system and a grammar of Pashto from
1893 onwards. Indeed, as Annemarie Schimmel in her
extremely useful study of the German linguists who have
studied Pakistani languages puts it, ‘Geiger’s contribution gave
the study of Pashto a new, firm ground on which the coming
generation could work’ (Schimmel 1981). Such German works
provided material for the study of Pashto to British officers.
However, since they were meant for linguistic study, they had
less specifically pedagogical material than the works of British
linguists.
The Indian tutors facilitated their British pupils to learn
Pashto. Indeed, the very first grammar of Pashto, entitled Riyaz
al-mahabba was written by Mahabbat Khan, son of Hafiz
Rahmat Khan Rohila, in 1806-7 ‘for a British officer’
(Schimmel 1981). One of the first such books was
Tutor to Pushto and it was published in 1896 by Moulvi Ismail
Khan as ‘a perfect help to the lower and higher standard Pashto
examination’ (Khan 1896). Some of the tutors of Pashto, such
as Qazi Najamuddin Khan and Qazi Behram Khan, both father
and son, made this practice a family profession. Behram’s son

34
Qazi Abdul Khaliq was also an ‘officers language teacher’ in
Peshawar and wrote his short booklet Fifty Lessons to Learn
Pashto.
Moreover, the medium of communication in mass media
is also the same dialect which has a wide circulation and
recognition and is a source of communication for the Pukhtoons
of the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa with the rest of the world. The
textbooks, the novels, the drama and other pieces of writing
such as essays, treatises and articles are composed in the same
dialect. This dialect is also the unofficial medium of instruction
in schools and colleges as well as in the Academy of Pashto in
the University of Peshawar, though Urdu is the official medium
of communication in the government organizations and
educational institutions and English is the medium of
instruction in the private educational institutions.
In my view this dialect is selected by the users of Pashto
language due to a number of reasons. Apart from the historical
reasons, in my own assessment, most important reason is the
metrical and structural simplicity of the Peshawari dialect.
Though it is called the ‘hard’ dialect due to the presence of
certain phonetic elements, which this book will try to address, if
it could, but the overall impression of the Peshawari dialect is
that of a smooth and easy to understand dialect. Therefore, the
focus of attention for this book is also the Peshawari dialect. As
enunciated above, D. N. MacKenzie has rightly pointed out that
despite being the most widely used dialect, and despite the fact
that literature of international standing has been composed in
the Peshawari dialect, it is yet to be recognized as standard
dialect. He says, “This literary language has long been referred

35
to in the West as 'common' or 'standard' Pashto without,
seemingly, any real attempt to define it.”
The knowledge of phonetics and phonology of English
is necessary for all those who want to know
the principles regarding the correct use of English speech
sounds. It is important to learn English pronunciation in terms
of phonemes rather than letters of the alphabet, because of the
confusing nature of English spelling (Peter Roach 2000). The
accent that is used as a model for foreign learners
is Received Pronunciation (BBC Pronunciation). It is the accent
that has been used as the basis for textbooks and pronunciation
dictionaries and so is described in more detail than other accents
of English (Roach, P 2000) This book is dedicated to the same
cause. It focuses on the Peshawari dialect and if its reading
could convince the readers as well as the authorities who define
and declare a specific dialect of Pashto as the standard dialect,
this might well be a successful attempt to prove that it is the
Peshawari dialect that is the standard. In the words of
MacKenzie, the criteria of dialect differentiation in Pashto are
primarily phonological. It is the same reason that this book is
designed to address the phonological aspect of the Peshawari
dialect. It does not mean that the orthographic aspect is ignored.
It rather means that the phonological aspect of the dialect is
taken into consideration due to the fact that the other differences
of vocabulary and syntax are not so great as to invite immediate
attention and a detailed focus. This book is an attempt to
describe the phonetical aspect of the Peshawari dialect, a variety
of Pashto used since centuries.

36
What is a dialect?
Hudson (1996, p. 22) defines a variety of language as ‘a
set of linguistic items with similar distribution. According to
Hudson, this definition also allows us ‘to treat all the
languages of some multilingual speaker, or community, as a
single variety, since all the linguistic items concerned have a
similar social distribution. Ferguson (1972, p. 30) offers another
definition of variety: ‘A body of human speech patterns which
is sufficiently homogeneous to be analyzed by available
techniques of synchronic description and which has a
sufficiently large repertory of elements and their arrangements
or processes with broad enough semantic scope to function in
all formal contexts of communication.’ Note the words
‘sufficiently homogeneous’ in this last quotation. Complete
homogeneity is not required; there is always some variation
whether we consider a language as a whole, a dialect of that
language, the speech of a group within that dialect, or,
ultimately, each individual in that group. Such variation is a
basic fact of linguistic life.
Hudson and Ferguson agree in defining variety in terms
of a specific set of ‘linguistic items’ or ‘human speech patterns’
(presumably, sounds, words, grammatical features, etc.) which
we can uniquely associate with some external factor
(presumably, a geographical area or a social group).
Consequently, if we can identify such a unique set of items or
patterns for each group in question, it might be possible to say
there are such varieties as Standard English, Cockney, lower-
class New York City speech, Oxford English, legalese, cocktail
party talk, and so on. One important task, then, in

37
sociolinguistics is to determine if such unique sets of items or
patterns do exist.
As we proceed we will encounter certain difficulties, but
it is unlikely that we will easily abandon the concept of
‘variety,’ no matter how serious these difficulties prove to be
and see whether the description of this dialect can help in
understanding the aspects of the other regional dialects of
Pashto. From the very outset it is essential for me to make a
point clear to the readers that there is a difference between an
accent and a dialect. Accent is the way a person or a group of
persons speak a specific language. It means that accent is
specifically related only to the pronunciation of a language. For
example, a speaker of Peshawar pronounces the English word
‘how’ as ‘sanga’ in Pashto. The speakers of Swabi, Swat,
Buneer and Dir districts pronounce it as ‘sanga’ while a speaker
from district Charsada will pronounce it as ‘Singa’. The
pronunciation of the same word differently by different
speakers of the same language is said to be an aspect of accent.
Accent tells us where a speaker is from. When a speaker starts
speaking to us, he speaks our language Pashto but a careful
listener automatically understands that the speaker is either
from Charsada or Kohat or Peshawar or any other region of the
province. What is it that helps us in recognizing a speaker from
his very act of speaking a few words? We do not wait to
understand the structure of his sentence but get the feeling from
few words that the speaker is from this or that district. This is
because of his accent. Languages have different accents: they
are pronounced differently, people from different geographical
place, from different social classes, of different ages and
different educational backgrounds (Roach, 2000). Thus accent

38
relates only to the way a speaker pronounces certain words.
Accent is the way different people pronounce the same
language. The difference might be because of the fact that its
speakers belong to different geographical regions, social classes
and educational backgrounds or different age and gender
groups. We will come to this discussion in the later part of the
book. Speaking about a dialect is more comprehensive than that.
A dialect is a variety or type of language which is not
only different in pronunciation but also different in syntax
(grammar and sentence structure) and vocabulary and
sometimes different in morphology or the order of words.
Accent is only one part of a dialect. Other parts are vocabulary,
syntax, morphology and word order etc. This book will focus
only on the Peshawari dialect and will take into account mainly
its pronunciation, and of course some of its vocabulary items to
elaborate its phonetical aspect, and to some extent the syntax
and morphology for the purpose of elucidating the phonetics
and phonology of this dialect. The reason is that it is the
Peshawari dialect that appears in print media and newspapers
and textbooks. It is the dialect which is heard on the TV and
Radio channels in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province. Pashto is
also spoken in the accent of the Southern Districts such as
Waziristan, Bannu, DI Khan and Kurram etc. But the Pashto of
those districts is different in pronunciation as well as in
vocabulary and syntax. Those dialects are to be treated
separately in another such book because during a discourse
situation sometimes even the speaker of the Peshawari dialect
has to ask the speakers of the southern districts to repeat what
they said because it is not understandable for him in the first go,
particularly when he hears a faster speaker. It is not like the

39
southern districts speak different language. They speak the same
Pashto. It is because of the difference in vocabulary and
pronunciation that sometimes the speakers of one dialect look
alien to the speakers of another dialect or accent. After carefully
listening they understand each other though. This is not the
scope of this book to discuss all the dialects of Pashto. A
detailed description of the southern dialects will require another
book of such nature which can be composed by a speaker of
those dialects.
The accent that this book concentrates on and uses as a
model is the one that is recommended for the foreign learners of
Pashto which can help them understand the TV and Radio news
channels in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Province, as well as the
newspapers and journals published in Pashto around the
country. It is also for the native speakers of Pashto who want to
learn the language of formal communication and understand
what is disseminated in the media. The dialect which this book
will describe should be called the Standard Dialect of Pashto i.e.
the Peshawari dialect, which would be abbreviated as SDP in
the following pages. There is no implication in selection of SDP
as a standard dialect that other accents or dialects of Pashto are
inferior or less standard. It is only for the purpose of making the
job of Pashto language teachers easier who want to teach Pashto
language either to foreign learners of Pashto or the natives
speakers of Pashto at school, college or university level. It is
supposed to make the job of those foreign learners of Pashto
easier who want to have some knowledge of the Pashto
language, even without the help of a teacher. For those readers
of this book, who are the native speakers of Pashto, it is not
mandatory to change their pronunciation patterns after having

40
gone through the book. I do not ask the native speakers to
change their own way of speaking their native tongue after
reading this book. It is, of course, suggested for the native
speakers of Pashto, to read the book and concentrate on SDP,
which over the course of reading this book, they will find it
interesting to know that they can identify the ways in which
their own dialect is different or similar to the SDP and how can
they judge whether their dialect is close to the SDP or
otherwise. The readers can even learn to pronounce utterances
of accents other than their own and that will benefit them in
their knowledge of the dialects of their native tongue.
The Pukhtoons have always been a very important
nation for those who aspired to influence the western part of the
subcontinent in olden times. From the time of the Guptas down
to the Greek Alexander and in the 19th
century to the British,
this region where the Pukhtoons have resided for thousands of
years has been a focus of attention for many rulers and invaders.
The Pukhtoons have kept their traditions intact during several
centuries. They consider themselves born warriors and never let
any ruler rule them unless the invader has come to good terms
with them. One way of winning the Pukhtoons is by behaving
good towards them. Leaning their language and interacting with
them is yet another trick to subdue this nation. It is somehow a
general rule of thumb to avoid enmity of a nation by learning its
language. If interaction with the Pukhtoons is needed, one must
learn their language because of many reasons, the first and
foremost being that most of the Pukhtoons lack exposure to
foreign language and cultures. The British had adopted a policy
for the Pukhtoons to keep them deliberately away from

41
education, and thus had closed one big gateway for them to
achieve progress and economic prosperity.
Keeping in view the competitive and economic age of
today, the significance of any language cannot be
underestimated. Particularly, in a region like the Khyber
Pukhtunkhwa province where a global economic activity in the
form of China Pak Economic Corridor is proposed to be
launched, the regional language of the province is of supreme
importance for all investors in the project, particularly China, in
that the jobs and employment opportunities are to be availed by
the residents of the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province. The
Chinese or other investors cannot afford to bring their own staff
from the top level to the bottom, and thus some of the
employments slots have to be filled by the regional residents, no
matter higher or lower in ranks, who will have to interact with
the foreigners, be it Chinese, Saudis or other investors. It is
believed that the CPEC project will open new avenues of
growth and progress which will result in regional prosperity for
the country. In this regard, the residents’ multilingual skills will
go a long way in tapping the maximum benefits towards
attaining the goal of a sustainable economic development. In
order to make CPEC a success, bridging the language and
cultural gap between the regional and the global stakeholders is
of supreme importance, besides catering to the investment and
profit needs of the investors. The Pakistani scholars, in matters
of finance and linguistics, have to play a vital role in coming up
to the expectations of the two countries in order to make CPEC
a true success for the country as well as for the region.
Pakistanis need to learn Chinese language, and culture and
reciprocally the Chinese and other stakeholders of CPEC need

42
to learn about Pakistani culture, as well as the regional
languages, in order to break the linguistic barriers to realize the
full potential of the CPEC project.
It is with such a crucial purpose in mind that this
research work was conceived for providing a platform both to
the native and non-native learners of Pashto, not only with
CPEC in mind, but the interest of global powers in the region
ever since the start of the cold war. For thousands of years this
region, the Peshawar valley, has been a center of attraction for
rulers, investors and religious missionaries. Only the British
realized for the first time that along with political and financial
knowledge of this region, a more in depth cultural and linguistic
understanding was also needed if the Pukhtoons have to be
handled in a shrewd way.
The bilateral relations between Pakistan and China are
excellent since the independence of Pakistan, but unfortunately
people of both the countries have less awareness about each
other’s culture and languages. After CPEC, China and Pakistan
both need to have an in depth understanding of each others’
culture and language because it is understanding of such values
which goes a long way in bilateral relations, apart from the use
of money and power between two countries.
The purpose of this book is two-fold. In the first place it
intends to describe the vowels and consonants of Pashto to
elucidate it by putting it in comparison with vowels and
consonants of English, which is an international language, and
will help every leaner of Pashto who aims to master the
phonology of Pashto and that will sound more easy if the base
for understanding Pashto phonology is the phonological system

43
of English which is known worldwide. Secondly, this research
work intends to propose a theoretical framework for the study
of Pashto language, particularly the Peshawari dialect, since it is
the dialect that appears in the print and electronic media.
Learners, particularly the non native learners of Pashto, and to
some extent the natives learners of Pashto have difficulty in the
pronunciation of certain phonemes and phonological patterns,
which they needed to comprehend in order to easily understand
Pashto and its literature. As for the users of Pashto language at
an advanced level, say, at research or Teaching of Pashto as a
native tongue or Teaching of Pashto as a foreign language level,
this book is hoped to be of help to such users in that it will
provide to them a theoretical framework in understanding the
principles regulating the description and use of sounds in Pashto
language. The general readers of this book will also receive help
in identifying and differentiating the vowel and consonant
sounds of Pashto for a deeper understanding of the sound
patterns which are similar or different between Pashto and
English. Keeping in view the number of speech sounds in
Pashto language, it might be theorized that the native speakers
of Pashto are at an advantage to master the sound system of any
language in the world, as the range of speech sounds covered in
Pashto is vast.
Last but not the least, the standard for pronunciation in
this book will be the one prescribed by the International
Phonetic Alphabet. Over the course of reading, the readers will
compare the speech sounds of Pashto with the standard speech
sounds given in the IPA chart, which has been utilized by Peter
Roach for his description of the English vowels and consonants.
We will see whether a vowel or consonant of Pashto matches

44
the vowels or consonants in the IPA or deviate from them. In
case of deviation, what is the level and degree of deviation and
to what extent is the English Language helpful in identifying
such sounds and how to resolve the problem faced by learners
of Pashto. It is worth mentioning that the speech sounds of
Pashto are not supposed to follow the set pattern of the speech
sounds in IPA chart. We will bring the comparison in our
discussion for the sake of the convenience of the learners of
Pashto as the IPA is an international standard which can be
followed by learners of any language worldwide. The IPA
charts for the vowels and consonants are given on the next page.

46
Chapter 2
The Phoneme, phonetics and phonology
The Phoneme
The word phoneme has been derived from the Greek
word ‘phone’ which means ‘a sound’. Phoneme is defined as,
‘any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified
language that distinguish one word from another, for
example p, b, d in English language.
The Oxford Dictionary defines a phoneme as, ‘Any of
the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language
that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and
t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat.’
In Pashto phonetics and phonology, the same definition
is to be utilized for explanation. Consider, for example the
words ‘‫’کټ‬ i.e. ‘bed’ and ‘ ‫بند‬ ’ i.e. ‘closed’. The first word
contains /k/ and /t/ consonants which are called phonemes. The
/a/ in the middle of ‘‫’کټ‬ is a vowel which is also a phoneme.
Similarly, in the word ‘bund’, the phonemes are /b/, /u/, /n/ and
/d/. Phoneme is the minimal distinctive unit of sound, whether a
consonant or a vowel, which cannot be further divided into
smaller parts. It means that a phoneme is that unit of sound
which cannot be simplified. The term ‘distinctive’ is also
important to understand. Distinctive means ‘unique’. It means a
sound which cannot be replaced. If it is replaced by any other
sound, it will change the meaning of the word totally. For
example, if we replace the /k/ in the word ‘kat’ by a phoneme
/s/, the word will become ‘sat’ and it means different than the
word ‘kat’. Thus both the /k/ and /s/ are distinctive phonemes of
Pashto and if we replace them in words with different
phonemes, the meaning of the word will be totally changed. A

47
phoneme is not a letter or alphabet. There can be alphabets
which might contain a number of phonemes. For example the
alphabet /‫./ﺝ‬ If we pronounce the alphabet as ‘jeem’ it will
contain three phonemes namely, /j/, /e/, /m/. The first is a
consonant while the second is a vowel which is pronounced as a
long vowel equal to the length of two e vowels but we will
come to the length of vowel in the chapter that deals vowels.
The phoneme /j/ will also be discussed at length in the chapter
which deals with consonants.
Allophone
At this stage it will complicate things too much but I
suppose it is important for readers to understand another
concept related to phoneme which is ‘allophone’. The Oxford
Dictionary defines an allophone as, ‘Any of the various
phonetic realizations of a phoneme in a language, which do not
contribute to distinctions of meaning. For example, in English
an aspirated p (as in pin) and unaspirated p (as in spin) are
allophones of /p/.
Aspiration here means the release of a puff of air while
pronouncing certain phonemes. For example in Pashto the word
‘pat’ i.e. ‘hidden’ can be pronounced without aspiration as /pat/
and the ‘p’ can be pronounced with aspiration as /phat/. Here it
is worth noting that the aspiration does not change the meaning
of the word. Only a specific feature of pronunciation is added to
the phoneme /p/ i.e. aspiration. If we replace the /p/ by any
other phoneme e.g. /s/ then the word becomes /sat/ and its
meaning will be changed. It means that an allophone is not a
different phoneme. It is in fact the same phoneme but some
feature of pronunciation is added to it. Or we may say that its
realization becomes slightly different because of some feature
of pronunciation such as aspiration. Aspiration depends on the

48
choice of the speakers. It may also depend on the accent one
uses. Some accents have more aspirations while others may
have lesser aspiration. Particularly in literary speeches, such as
narration of poetry or a treatise, the speaker may choose to use
more aspirated words to create special effects for impressing the
audience. For example the simple word, /sta/ i.e. ‘your’ or
‘yours’ might be pronounced as /stha/ for creating a more poetic
impression on the audience. Similarly, words likes /starry/ i.e.
‘tired’, might be pronounced as /stharray/ by the speaker to let
the audience realize the very meaning of tiredness. There are
other phonetic features such as stress and intonation in Pashto,
which are called supra-segmental features of phonology, the
detail description of which will be made in the relevant chapter.
After having cleared our concept of phoneme and
allophone, we can now afford to move forward and step into the
discussion of phonetics.
Phonetics and Phonology
Many readers of language and linguistics take phonetics
and phonology to be synonymous. After spending some time
with the study of language, the difference between the two
terms gets clearer and clearer but it is only the matter of time
and attention. Let us define phonetics separately and then we
will discuss its relation to phonology.
Phonetics
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Phonetics as, it the
study of speech sounds and their physiological production and
acoustic qualities. Acoustic means something relating to sound
or the sense of hearing. Britannica further goes on to say that

49
the study of the anatomy, physiology, neurology,
and acoustics of speaking is called phonetics. The scope of this
definition is much wider and much more comprehensive. To the
extent of this book, we can rely on understanding phonetics in
simple words that phonetics studies the physical characteristics
of speech sounds that are uttered by human beings for making
speech utterances. It takes into account where and how the
speech sounds are produced in the oral or nasal cavity and any
other place of articulation involved in the production of speech
sounds. This also includes the study of the air stream produced
in the diaphragm and the vocal box which produces an air
stream that helps in creating the speech sounds in the oral or
nasal cavity.
The speech of human beings is more complex than it
apparently looks. A number of different studies are involved
only in the sound aspect of human speech. It requires the help of
various scientific apparatus to observe and bring under
experiment if we want to explain its various aspects. For this
purpose various branches of phonetics have been identified in
which separate aspects of human speech are studied. The branch
of phonetics that deals with the configurations of the vocal tract
used to produce speech sounds is called articulatory phonetics.
Similarly, the study of the acoustic properties of speech sounds
is known as acoustic phonetics, and the manner of combining
sounds so as to make syllables, words, and sentences is
linguistic phonetics. Yet another branch of phonetics that deals
with the study of the medium of the speech sound, is called
auditory phonetics. We will limit the scope of our study of
phonetics only to articulatory phonetics due to the fact that our
concern here in this book is with the study of the physical

50
characteristics and articulation of the speech sounds of Pashto
language. Through articulatory phonetics we will try to identify
the number of speech sounds in Pashto language and their
manner and place of articulation. We will also attempt to
differentiate between the consonants and vowels of the Pashto
language, in the context of the Peshawari dialect specifically.
The standard, against which this book will attempt to
describe the phonetics and phonology of the Peshawari dialect
of Pashto language, is the International Phonetic Alphabet
which has been designed by the International Phonetics
Association.
International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), is a set
of alphabet developed in the 19th century to accurately
represent the pronunciation of languages. The International
Phonetic Association is responsible for the alphabet and
publishes a chart summarizing it. One aim of the International
Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) was to provide a unique symbol for
each distinctive sound in a language—that is, every sound,
or phoneme, that serves to distinguish one word from another.
The concept of the IPA was first broached by Otto
Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy of the International Phonetic
Association and was developed by A.J. Ellis, Henry Sweet,
Daniel Jones, and Passy in the late 19th century. Its creators’
intent was to standardize the representation of spoken language,
thereby sidestepping the confusion caused by the inconsistent
conventional spellings used in every language. The IPA was
also intended to supersede the existing multitude of individual
transcription systems. It was first published in 1888 and was
revised several times in the 20th and 21st centuries.

51
The IPA primarily uses Roman characters. Other letters
are borrowed from different scripts (e.g., Greek) and are
modified to conform to Roman style. Diacritics are used for fine
distinctions in sounds and to show nasalization of vowels,
length, stress, and tones.
The IPA can be used for broad and narrow transcription. For
example, in English there is only one t sound distinguished by
native speakers. Therefore, only one symbol is needed in a
broad transcription to indicate every t sound. If there is a need
to transcribe narrowly in English, diacritical marks can be
added to indicate that the t’s in the words tap, pat,
and stem differ slightly in pronunciation.
The IPA did not become the universal system for phonetic
transcription that its designers had intended, and it is used less
commonly in America than in Europe. Despite its
acknowledged shortcomings, it is widely employed by linguists
and in dictionaries, though often with some modifications. The
IPA is also used by singers.
Articulatory Phonetics
The traditional method of describing speech sounds is in
terms of the movements of the vocal organs that produce them.
The main structures that are important in the production of
speech are the lungs and the respiratory system, together with
the vocal organs shown in Figure 1.

52
Figure 1
The airstream from the lungs passes between the vocal
cords, which are two small muscular folds located in the larynx
at the top of the windpipe. The space between the vocal cords is
known as the glottis. If the vocal cords are apart, as they are
normally when breathing out, the air from the lungs will have a
relatively free passage into the pharynx and the mouth. But if
the vocal cords are adjusted so that there is a narrow passage
between them, the airstream will cause them to be sucked
together. As soon as they are together there will be no flow of
air, and the pressure below them will be built up until they are
blown apart again. The flow of air between them will then cause
them to be sucked together again, and the vibratory cycle will
continue.

53
Voiced and voiceless sounds
The feature of voicing is a feature that is common to all
vowels and might be to some consonants. The sounds produced
when the vocal cords are vibrating are said to be voiced. It can
be felt by placing the fingers on the Adam’s apple while
producing speech sounds. If there is a vibration in the vocal
box, the sounds are voiced. As opposed to those in which the
vocal cords are apart, and no vibration is felt in the vocal box,
the sounds are said to be voiceless. Some consonants might be
voiced, other might be voiceless. The detail will be given in the
description of the vowels and consonants ahead.
The air passages above the vocal cords are known
collectively as the vocal tract. For phonetic purposes they may
be divided into the oral tract within the mouth and the pharynx,
and the nasal tract within the nose. Many speech sounds are
characterized by movements of the lower articulators—i.e., the
tongue or the lower lip—toward the upper articulators within
the oral tract. Articulators in the strict terms of the word are the
places where the speech sounds are produced. For example the
bilabial sound /b/ is produced with the help of the two lips
touching together, therefore, the lips is one articulator. Similarly
the upper surface includes several important structures from the
point of view of speech production, such as the upper teeth.
The alveolar ridge is a small protuberance just behind the upper
front teeth that can easily be felt with the tongue. The major part
of the roof of the mouth is formed by the hard palate in the
front, and the soft palate or velum at the back. The soft palate is
a muscular flap that can be raised so as to shut off the nasal tract
and prevent air from going out through the nose. When it is
raised so that the soft palate is pressed against the back wall of
the pharynx there is said to be a velic closure. At the lower end
of the soft palate is a small hanging appendage known as the
uvula.

54
As may be seen from Figure 1, there are also specific
names for different parts of the tongue. The tip and blade are the
most mobile parts. Behind the blade is the so-called front of the
tongue; it is actually the forward part of the body of the tongue
and lies underneath the hard palate when the tongue is at rest.
The remainder of the body of the tongue may be divided into
the centre, which is partly beneath the hard palate and partly
beneath the soft palate; the back, which is beneath the soft
palate; and the root, which is opposite the back wall of the
pharynx.
Speech sounds are either vowels or consonants.
Phoneticians have identified few sounds as semi vowels and
semi consonants too. Let us now consider the two major
divisions of speech sounds which are vowels and consonants.
Before the description of Pashto consonants, let me make few
more terms clear about articulation, the major of which is
secondary articulation which is made in the production of
certain sounds, particularly those borrowed from Arabic by
Pashto. This is also used in the production of certain
approximants too. The early description of secondary
articulation will prove to be handy for the learners of Pashto
phonetics.
Secondary articulations
When an approximant articulation occurs at the same
time as another articulation is being made at a different place in
the vocal tract, the approximant is said to form a secondary
articulation. There are special terms for some of these
possibilities. Added lip rounding is called labialization; it
occurs in the formation of several Pashto sounds—e.g. during
the pronunciation of the palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ such as in
the word ‫شوم‬ /ʃu:m/ i.e. miserly.

55
Raising of the front of the tongue while simultaneously
making another articulation elsewhere in the vocal tract is
called palatalization. Raising of the back of the tongue to form a
secondary articulation is called velarization. Retracting of the
root of the tongue while making another articulation is
called pharyngealization. These type of articulation will be
discussed in the phonemes which make use of them.
In fact a consonant, in Pashto, may be described by
reference to the following factors:
(1) state of the glottis, (2) secondary articulation (if any), (3)
place of articulation, (4) central or lateral articulation, (5) velic
closure—oral or nasal, and (6) the manner of articulation. Thus
the consonant at the beginning of the word ‘soor’ i.e. the
English word ‘red’ is a (1) voiceless, (2) labialized, (3) alveolar,
(4) pulmonic, (5) central, (6) oral, (7) fricative. Unless a
specific statement is made to the contrary, the Pashto
consonants have a pulmonic airstream and secondary
articulation, and a three-term description e.g. voiceless alveolar
fricative is sufficient to describe them.
The Consonants
In the production of consonants, the airstream through
the vocal tract is obstructed in some way. We may say that
consonants are the sounds during the production of which there
is either total or partial obstruction to the air stream in the oral
or nasal cavity, depending on the position of the soft palate.
Consonants are those phoneme sounds “which do obstruct the
airflow” (Roach 2009: 20) Consonants can be classified
according to the place and manner of this obstruction. The
principal terms that are required in the description
of Pashto articulation, and the structures of the vocal tract that
they involve are the following:

56
The Labials, the two lips;
The dental, the set of front teeth,
The tongue, its tip or blade or sides and its root
The alveolar, the area behind the upper front teeth,
The palato-alveolar region;
The Hard Palate;
The velar;
The pharynx, and,
The glottis.
Certain sounds in Pashto are produced either totally in
the nasal cavity or both with the help of the nasal cavity and
specific places in the oral cavity, which will be described
separately.
Note that the terms for the various places of articulation
denote both the portion of the lower articulators (i.e., lower lip
and tongue) and the portion of the upper articulatory structures
that are involved. Thus velar denotes a sound in which the back
of the tongue and the soft palate are involved and retroflex
implies a sound involving the tip or blade of the tongue and the
back part of the alveolar ridge or the hard palate. If it is
necessary to distinguish between sounds made with the tip of
the tongue and those made with the blade, the terms apical (tip)
and laminal (blade) may be used.
There are two essential concepts to consider in the
production of speech sounds in every language, namely i. the
manner and ii. Place of articulation. Following are the concepts
related to the manner of articulation for the production of
speech sounds:
1. The Plosives, which are non-continuants and
sometimes called stops (Crystal 2010). They are
made in several stages, namely the following:
1. The closing phase: creating the total

57
obstruction of the air stream,
2. The compression phase: holding the air stream
behind the closure
3. The release phases: releasing suddenly the air
stream from behind the obstacle
4. The post-release phase: accompanying the
pronunciation of the sounds by audible
aspiration, unless they are preceded by /s/, which
causes the plosive sounds to lose their aspiration.
2. The Fricatives, which are made by forming a
narrow passage to the air stream and a slow
separation of the articulators from one another.
They are continuants; they can be made as long
as possible.
3. The Affricates, which are pronounced in two
stages – they start as plosives and end in
fricatives. The affricates are only made by
homorganic phonemes, i. e. they are made by the
same set of articulators. There are the palato-
alveolar /tʃ/ and /dʒ/. Also in the transcription,
the symbols consist of two symbols which can
also be used individually.
4. The Laterals, which are created by placing an
obstacle in the middle of the oral cavity and the
air stream escaping along the sides (latera) of the
tongue.
5. The Approximates, which are made by the
positioning of articulators close to the other
articulator (proximity), but never really making
the full contact.
6. The Glottal, the sound which is made in the
glottis, the opening between the vocal folds.
7. The Semivowels, which are made as vowels (no
obstacle to the air stream), but are used as
consonants (as edges of syllables).

58
8. The Nasals which are made by lowering the soft
palate to touch the back of the tongue, allowing
the air stream to escape through the nose. For all
other phonemes in Pashto, the soft palate is
raised.
The Plosives or Stops
Plosives are those consonants which involve closure of
the articulators to obstruct the airstream. The air stream is
totally blocked and when it is released suddenly, the consonant
is produced. The blockage of air takes place stage wise when
the production of these plosive sounds are observed closely.
Peter Roach identifies four phases for the production of the
plosives. The first phase is the closure phase in which the
articulator or articulators move to form the stricture for the
plosive. The second phase is when the compressed air is
stopped from escaping. This is called the hold phase. The third
phase is when the articulator or articulators are moved to release
the air. This is called the release phase. The final phase is the
post release phase in which the plosive is actually produced.
Pashto plosives
The set of Pashto plosives or stops which are produced
in the oral cavity are the following:
‫ﭖ‬ /p/,
‫ب‬ /b/,
‫ت‬ /ṱ/,
‫د‬ /ḓ/,
‫ټ‬ /ʈ/,

59
‫/ډ‬ɖ/,
‫ک‬ /k/,
‫ګ‬ /ɡ/,
‫ق‬ /q/
‫ط‬ /tˤ/
‫ﺽ‬ /dˤ/
Let us discuss these phonemes in slight detail according to their
place of articulation.
The bilabial stops of Pashto
‫ﭖ‬ /p/,
‫ب‬ /b/,
The first pair of phonemes in Pashto is the bilabials ‫ﭖ‬
/p/ and ‫ب‬ /b/. Children usually start their speech from these
bilabials as they are easy to pronounce. Both sounds are
bilabials and plosives or stops. They are similar to the English
/p/ and /b/ in their manner and place of articulation. Examples
in Pashto are ‫پالر‬ /ꞌplɑ:r/ i.e. father and ‫بابا‬ /bɑ:ꞌbɑ:/ i.e. the
honorary name given to father or any other elderly man.
The /p/ sound is voiceless i.e. there is no vibration in the vocal
chords when we pronounce it in isolation. However, in
continuous speech it might be voiced or voiceless depending
upon the succeeding and preceding phonemes whether they are
vowels or consonants and whether they are voiced or voiceless.
We will discuss this aspect of these bilabials in the phonology
section.
The dento-alveolar plosives of Pashto
‫ت‬ /ṱ/,
‫د‬ /ḓ/

60
The two sounds i.e. ‫ت‬ /ṱ/ and ‫د‬ /ḓ/ are not like the
English /t/ and /d/ which are typically alveolar sounds. The ‫ت‬ is
voiceless like the English /t/ while the ‫د‬ is voiced just as the
English /d/. However, these sounds are rather more laminal and
tend to be more dental rather than alveolar as against the
English /t/ and /d/. Examples in Pashto are, ‫ت‬‫ګ‬ /ṱʌɡ/ i.e. going as
a noun, and ‘‫/’دا‬ḓɑ:/ i.e. this.
Some speakers of the Pashto language, Peshawari
dialect, pronounce these two plosive stops i.e. ‫ت‬ and ‫د‬ with the
tip of the tongue held between the upper and the lower teeth
while the lamina is pressed against the alveolar ridge. The denti-
alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is
a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against
the alveolar ridge and upper teeth, such as /t/ and /d/ in
languages like Spanish and French. That is, a dento-alveolar
consonant is one that is alveolar and laminal. In Pashto the tip
of the tongue is behind the upper teeth or with some speakers,
the tip of the tongue is between the upper and the lower teeth
but not conspicuously exposed externally, while the lamina is
touching the alveolar ridge. Some other speakers of the same
dialect tend not to touch the alveolar ridge while producing
these dento alveolars and that is why for them they are dentals
but not definitely pure alveolar or post alveolar sounds.
Although denti-alveolar consonants are often labeled as
"dental" because only the forward contact with the teeth is
visible, the point of contact of the tongue that is farthest back is
most relevant, which defines the maximum acoustic space of
resonance and gives a characteristic sound to a consonant. But
in case of the Pashto ‫ت‬ and ‫د‬ the laminal and alveolar contact is
of lesser significance in that they can be easily pronounced even
without the lamina touching the alveolar ridge, which is
practically the case with the speakers of the Peshawari dialect,
and that is why they tend to be more dental rather than alveolar.

Pashto phonetics

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