Pashto (Afghanistan)
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Pashto
Pashto, also known as Afghani, is the first language spoken by approximately 75% of the population in Afghanistan (2009 CIA World Factbook). It is one of the two official languages of Afghanistan (the other is Dari). Pashto is an Indo-European language spoken primarily in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. There are approximately 60-70 million Pashto speakers worldwide. The Afghan National Anthem must be in Pashto according to the Constitution. There are 15 known dialects of Pashto; Southern Pashto is spoken mainly in Afghanistan.
Syntax
Pashto is a subject-object-verb language.
Adjectives come before nouns.
Nouns and adjectives are inflected for masculine & feminine, singular & plural, and direct, oblique I, oblique II, & vocative.
For past tense of all verbs, transitive verbs agree with the object of the sentence (it is an ergative language).