Pashto alphabet

Excerpt from Khayr al-Bayān, written in Pashto in Nastaʿlīq script in 1651. The book was originally written by Bayazid Pir Roshan in the 16th century

In the 16th century, Bayazid Pir Roshan from Waziristan invented the Roshani script to write Pashto. It had 41 letters:

28 of his letters came from the Arabic alphabet. He introduced 13 new letters into the Pashto alphabet. Most of the new letters he introduced i.e. ګ ,ښ ,ړ ,ډ ,څ ,ټ and ڼ are still written in the same form and are pronounced almost in the same way in modern Pashto. The sound system of the southern dialect of modern Pashto preserves the distinction between all the consonant phonemes of his orthography.

Pir Roshan also introduced the letter ږ (rē with dot below and dot above) to represent /ʒ/, like the ⟨s⟩ in pleasure, for which modern Pashto uses ژ instead. Modern Pashto uses the letter ږ to represent the sound /ʐ/ (northern dialect: /g/), but for that sound, Pir Roshan used a letter looking like ·د (dāl with central dot). His letter ڊ (dāl with dot below) to represent /d͡z/ has been replaced by ځ in modern Pashto. He also used ڛ (sīn with three dots below), an obsolete letter from the medieval Nastaʿlīq script, to denote the letter س (representing /s/) only in the isolated form. The Arabic ligature ﻻ (lām-alif) was also used. Two of his letters, پ and چ, were borrowed from the Persian alphabet.

In August 1958, Pashtun intellectuals held a congress in Kabul, Afghanistan, with the goal of standardizing the Pashto alphabet. During the congress, a number of standardizations were proposed in the use of the modern Pashto alphabet.[1]

Pashto has 45 letters and 4 diacritic marks. The Southern (S), Central (C) and Northern (N) dialects of Pashto are included.

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• ^1 In the beginning of a word, آ (alif with madda) represents the long vowel /ɑ/ in words borrowed from other languages (e.g. آغا – āğā, a title).[2] In the beginning of a word, the alphabet ا (alif) represents the consonant /a/, e.g. اسپه – aspa, "mare".[3] In the middle or end of a word, ا represents the long vowel /ɑ/ which is following a consonant (e.g. کال – kāl, "year"; and نيا – nyā, "grandmother").[4][5] In the beginning of a word, the alphabet Alif can also be used with a diactric mark [often not written] e.g. اِ (alif with a zer) as in اِسلام – Islām, "Islam (the religion)".[6]
• ^2 Ten letters, ق ف ع ظ ط ض ص ح ﺫ ث, appear only in loanwords which of Arabic origin through Persian borrowings. Eight of these, ع ظ ط ض ص ح ﺫ ث, represent no additional phonemes of Pashto, and their pronunciation is replaced with other phonemes.
• ^3 ح /h/ tends to be omitted in pronunciation when at the end of a word, e.g. اصلاح is always pronounced as [isˡlɑ].
• ^4 The letter ړ represents /ɺ̢/ if it is not at the final position of a syllable; if it is final, it represents /ɻ/.
• ^5 The phoneme /f/ ف occurs only in loanwords. It tends to be replaced with /p/ پ.
• ^6 The phoneme /q/ ق occurs only in loanwords. It tends to be replaced with /k/ ک.
• ^7 It is also common to write the letter ک as ك.
• ^8 It is also common to write the letter ګ as گ.
• ^9 In informal texts, ی as well as ې, ۍ and ئ are sometimes replaced by the letter ے, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In some official texts, edited till to the middle of the 20th century, the ے corresponds only to ې, while ۍ and ئ (if only the grammatical use of the latter is not lacked) are used as in official typing nowadays.
• ^10 ی represents /ai/ when it is following a consonant (e.g. لرګی – largay, "wood"), and represents /j/ when it is following a vowel (e.g. دوی – duy, "they").
• ^11 The letter ئ represents /j/ after a vowel, e.g. جدائي – judāyī, "separation".
• ^12 It is also common to write ﺉ with the hamza over the right side of the letter – ٸ.
• ^13 The letter ۀ is only represented at the end of a word, e.g. تېرۀ – terə, "sharp". The vowel /ə/ when present between consonants is unrepresented by the ۀ alphabet, e.g. ننوتل – nənawatəl, "to enter".
• ^14 Pashtuns tend to omit or not pronounce the letter غ and some words, e.g. consider the following words; دغه = دا، دغوی = دوی، دغه هومره = دومره، دغلته = دلته، هغلته = هلته، دغه سی = داسی

The superscribed element of the letter ځ in earlier varieties was not hamza-shaped, but was very similar to little kāf of the letter ك.[7] Such shape of the upper element of the letter is hard to find in modern fonts.

Since the time of Bayazid Pir Roshan, ڊ (dāl with subscript dot) was used for /d͡z/, which was still used in the Diwan of Mirza written in 1690 CE,[1] but this sign was later replaced by ځ.

Another rare glyph for /d͡z/ is ج֗, a ج with the same dot above.

The Pashto diacritic marks: zwarakay, pēš, zēr, and zwar

The four diacritic marks are:

• The diacritic marks are not considered separate letters. Their use is optional and are usually not written; they are only occasionally used to distinguish between two words which would otherwise appear similar.
• In Arabic loanwords, the tanwin fatha (ً) can be used, e.g. مَثَلاً – masalan, "for example".

• ^1 If ى follows a consonant in a word, it indicates the word is masculine singular and in the direct case.
• ^2 ۍ always indicates the word it occurs in is feminine.
• ^3 If ئ occurs at the end of a verb, it indicates the verb is in second person plural form. Note, that sometimes the grammatical ئ was lacked either in the typing as in the alphabet and replaced with the ۍ.