Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language of the Indo-European family, spoken in the south and east of Afghanistan, by communities settled in the north, and across the border in north-western Pakistan. It is one of Afghanistan’s two official languages, alongside Dari. A royal decree of 1936 raised it to official status, and the Pashto Academy, Pashto Tolana, was founded the following year.
The word Pashto means more than a language: it also names the Pashtun code of honour, and a well-known saying holds that a true Pashtun is not one who merely speaks Pashto but one who lives by it. Pashto has many dialects, broadly grouped as ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ by how certain sounds are pronounced, yet it remains essentially one language.
It is written in a modified form of the Perso-Arabic alphabet. Written Pashto literature flowered in the 17th century, above all with Khushal Khan Khattak (1613–1689) and Rahman Baba (1650–1715), who are still counted among its greatest poets.