Hello, everybody! I’d like to introduce you to our brand new Pashto blog. It aims to help you learn and appreciate a language that for many is unfamiliar and intimidating.

I promise you that Pashto is possible to learn. It may even be easy. But how do you know? You may have never even tried.

We’ll help you from start to finish to understand why Pashto is so important. But first, let’s provide a little history.

Pashto (also called Pashtu, Pushtu, Pushto, Pakhto, Afghan, and other variations) is the native language of the Pashtun people who live in parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. It is a member of the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. The earliest records of Pashto writings date from the sixteenth century. In 1936, Pashto became the national language of Afghanistan. Today, it continues to be one of Afghanistan’s official languages, along with Dari. The Pashto language is also used as the working language in local parliaments in some provinces of Pakistan.

But why learn Pashto? Why not take on something more practical?

Learning Pashto is probably one of the more practical languages to learn. Many speakers of romance languages believe that the commercial languages — say, Italian, French, or Spanish for example — are the ones they should spend their time mastering. They are the most applicable for business and global enterprises. And besides, they are the closest to the alphabet we already know. They share familiar cognates and roots, so it just makes sense to focus our attention on the mainstream languages.

But does it really? Why should one language be any more important than another?

As is generally the case with most things, that which is easiest is probably less scary to confront. We believe we can do it. With the the more popular languages, we are imbued with tenacious confidence and belief in ourselves that we can improve quickly. We think we can see the palpable grooves of progress and that they will pay off somehow, somewhere.

This blog’s goal is to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone. It will bring clarity to your misconceptions. We obviously encourage learning any and all languages, so simply interpret this blog as our enthusiasm for charting new territory instead of trying to demolish the ground we already stand on. Our wish is to expose you to a culture that very few people take the time to investigate, and that in doing so, you will unearth a new side of yourself that you will come to love.

Perhaps the most understated reason to learn Pashto is for cultural appreciation and awareness. Spoken widely throughout Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries — regions that the United States has been invested in quite heavily with regards to political, militaristic, and economic endeavors — Pashto carries immense social power and action potential. It is a language so critical to a foreign people’s survival in a faraway, alien land. If we wish to be truly connected with the cultures with which we interact so frequently and intensely, communication and cultural understanding should be the best places to start.