Postpositions in Pashto

Postpositions in Pashto Posted by Sayed Naqibullah on Feb 11, 2013 in language

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.

About the Author:Sayed Naqibullah

Sayed Naqibullah speaks Pashto and Dari as his native languages. Since 2004 he has been teaching Dari and Pashto and working as cultrual advisor to NGO workers, foreigners who live, work, or are visiting Afghanistan. Sayed has worked as a linguist for several companies that produce language course-ware. He has worked as a guide, interpreter and translator of a number of NGOs working in Afghanistan. Sayed is also a blog writer on Afghan culture and languages. He is the author of a Dari language textbook called “Dari as a Second Language”.

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Muddassir Khan:

You guys are making a great effort.. Well done 🙂

My accent is slightly different than yours. .. Am a yousafzai from mardan but its close enough to what you write..

Best of luck!
Muddassir Khan