Pashto alphabet
The Pashto alphabet is transliterated vis-à-vis Perso-Arabic scriptural denotation with additional glyphs added to accommodate phonemes used in Pashto.
History
Roshani script
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 to represent, like the ⟨s⟩ in pleasure, for which modern Pashto uses ژ instead. Modern Pashto uses the letter ږ to represent the sound , but for that sound, Pir Roshan used a letter looking like ·د. His letter ڊ to represent has been replaced by ځ in modern Pashto. He also used ڛ, an obsolete letter from the medieval Nastaʿlīq script, to denote the letter س only in the isolated form. The Arabic ligature ﻻ was also used. Two of his letters, پ and چ, were borrowed from the Persian alphabet.
1958 congress in Kabul
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.Form
Pashto is written in the Arabic Naskh. It has several letters which do not appear in any other Arabic script. The letters representing the retroflex consonants and are written like the standard Arabic te, dāl, re and nun with a small circle attached underneath : ړ, ډ, ټ, and ڼ, respectively. The letters ښ and ږ look like sīn and re respectively with a dot above and beneath.The letters representing and look like a ح with three dots above and an hamza above; څ and ځ.
Pashto has ی, ې, ۀ, and ۍ for additional vowels and diphthongs as well.
Pashto uses all 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet, and shares 3 letters with Persian and Urdu in the additional letters.
Letters
Pashto has 45 letters and 4 diacritic marks. The Southern, Central and Northern dialects of Pashto are included.Historical letters now in disuse
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. Such shape of the upper element of the letter is hard to find in modern fonts.Since the time of Bayazid Pir Roshan, ڊ was used for, which was still used in the Diwan of Mirza written in 1690 CE, but this sign was later replaced by ځ.
Another rare glyph for is ج֗, a ج with the same dot above.
Diacritic marks
The four diacritic marks are:| Diacritic | Unicode | Name | Translit. | IPA | Latin |
| َ | U+064E | zwar | a | a | |
| ٙ | U+0659 | zwarakay | ə | ə | |
| ِ | U+0650 | zer | i | i | |
| ُ | U+064F | peš | u | u |
"Ye" letters
| Letter | Pashto name | Unicode name | Transliteration | IPA | Position in a word | Example |
| ي | klaka ye | ARABIC LETTER YEH | y, ī | , | can appear anywhere | يم yəm |
| ې | pasta ye | ARABIC LETTER E | e | middle or end | يې ye | |
| ی | nārīna ye | ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH | ay when following a consonant | end | ستوری storay | |
| ی | nārīna ye | ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH | y when following a vowel | end | دوى duy | |
| ۍ | x̌əźīna ye | ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH TAIL | əi | end | وړۍ waṛəi | |
| ئ | fāiliya ye | ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE | əi | end | يئ yəi | |
| ئ | fāiliya ye | ARABIC LETTER YEH WITH HAMZA ABOVE | y | middle | جدائي judāyī |
Indications
- If ى follows a consonant in a word, it indicates the word is masculine singular and in the direct case.
- ۍ always indicates the word it occurs in is feminine.
- 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.