Pashto Language Blog

In English we have prepositions, the words that come before a noun and show its relationship to the other words in a sentence such as in, on, for. In Pashto the prepositions are not used alone. These words that do the job of a preposition in Pashto are called postpositions. As the name suggests, post positions are the words that come after a noun in Pashto and show its relationship to the other words in the sentence.

In English if we want to say “I am going to Kabul” we notice that the preposition “to” occurs before the noun “Kabul” in the sentence. on the contrary, if we say the same sentence in Pashto “za Kabul ta zam” we can see that the postposition “ta” occurs after the noun Kabul. in order to get used to post positions, it sometimes helps to write the literal meaning of a couple of Pashto sentence with post position and memorize them. For example the literal meaning of the sentence above will be “ I Kabul to go” this way you will remember the structure easier.  The following are examples of post positions in Pashto.

sara (سره)  = with  za ahmad sara zam. (زه احمد سره ځم .)  I am going with Ahmad.

Lapaara (لپاره)  = for   da sta lapaara day. (دا ستا لپاره دی.)  This is for you.

Ta nagde (ته نږدې) = near khaar ta nagde osaigam.     (ښار ته نږدې اوسیږم.) I live near the city.

Khowata (خواته)  = towards zamaong khowata raaza. (زمونږ خواته راځه.)  Come towards us.

Ghonday (غوندې) = like    hagha taa ghonday day. (هغه تا غوندې دی.)  He is like you.

1. The unique letters: Pashto adopted the Arabic alphabet and added some extra letters to accommodate for the sounds that are unique to Pashto.  In order to read the Pashto script correctly you need to be able to pronounce these letters correctly. The following are the letters that are unique to Pashto. You can listen to the correct pronunciation and example words in the accompanying video: څ ځ ښ ږ ڼ ړ ډ ټ

 2. Diacritic Marks: Diacritic marks are used to show the short vowel sounds. In Pashto, the short vowel symbols are not normally writing, but if you are learning Pashto as a second language it is always a good idea to have your instructor write the diacritic marks on the letters to make reading and pronouncing easier. There are three diacritic marks you can use in Pashto: َ  zabar which represents a short “a” sound and appears above a letter; ِ kasra represents a short “e” sound  and appears underneath a letter: ُ Paikh represents a short “o” sound and appears above a letter. The little circles are placeholders; when these marks are used in a word the circle does not appear. Here are the examples: لړَم “larram”, مِلت  “melat”  مُبارزه  “mobareza”.

3. Shape of letters: In Pashto, the letters have different shapes depending on where they appear in a word. Most of the letters in Pashto have three shapes: initial, medial, and final. Some of the letters may have a fourth form when they are not attached. If you know the letter, usually, you can recognize all the different shapes it takes. But it is important to know that they change and remember their identifying characteristics such as the number of dots, and the position of dots. Here is an example of how the letter “ain” ﻉ  looks like in different position in a word: initial  ﻋ medial  ﻌ finalﻊ

4. Letters that don’t connect: Majority of letters in Pashto connect to each other in a word, however, there is a group of ten letters that only can be connected to the preceding letter in a word, they never can be connected to the letter following them in a word. For example, the in the word لرم  the letter “ray”, highlighted in red, is connected only to the letter preceding it, but not to the letter following it. Also remember that letters in this group can never be connected to each other. د ډ ذ ر ړ ز ژ ږ و ا

5. The letters alef and laam: When the letter “alef” ا, and the letter “ laam” ل  appear in a word they look very similar and can be mistaken for each other quite often. For instance, in the wordلپاره  (read left to right) the two letters highlighted in red look very similar . As mentioned, alef is one of the letters that does not connect to the following letter, therefore, in this case we can easily recognize that the second letter is alef because it is not connected to the following letter.

بودن

The “to be” verb in English has only two forms (was, were) in the past tense. In Pashto, however,  we have at least six forms for the past tense of the verb “to be”. The reason we have so many forms for the verb “to be” is because unlike the English verbs, Pashto verbs have genders and also verbs are conjugated according to the subject of the sentence. For example, If we want to say Hagha wa “she was” vs.  Hagha woo“he is” as you can see the verb, which is underlined, is different and that is because in Pashto for the masculine nouns we use a masculine verb. As the example shows, wa “is” is used for feminine nouns and woo is used for masculine nouns.

And here are the past tense of the “to be” verbs:

Pashto                   transliteration                   meaning

زه وم                         za  wom                             I was

ته وې                         ta way                              you were

هغه و                        hagha wo                         He was

هغه وه                       hagha wa                         she was

مونږ وو                     moong woo                      we were

تاسې وئ                   taase  wai                         you were (plural)

هغوی وو                   haghoi  woo                     they were

دوی وو                     dooi woo                           they were

As y you can notice, the word “they “appears two times at the last two lines. That is because in Pashto there are two versions of the word “they”.  The first one haghoi refers to the group of people who are far away from the speaker. The second one, dooi , refers to a group of people who are located very close to the speaker.

Here are the example sentences for the verbs above.

زه خوشحاله وم          za khoshala wom                 I was happy.

هغه خوشحاله وه       hagha khoshala wa                she was happy.

تاسې خوشحاله وئ    taase khshala wai                  You were happy.