[15] A national language of Afghanistan,[16] Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south, and southwest, but also in some northern and western parts of the country.

The exact number of speakers is unavailable, but different estimates show that Pashto is the mother tongue of 45–60%[17][18][19][20] of the total population of Afghanistan.

[27] Other communities of Pashto speakers are found in India, Tajikistan,[28] and northeastern Iran (primarily in South Khorasan Province to the east of Qaen, near the Afghan border).

[29] In India most ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) peoples speak the geographically native Hindi-Urdu language rather than Pashto, but there are small numbers of Pashto speakers, such as the Sheen Khalai in Rajasthan,[30] and the Pathan community in the city of Kolkata, often nicknamed the Kabuliwala ("people of Kabul").

[35] Persian, the literary language of the royal court,[36] was more widely used in government institutions, while the Pashtun tribes spoke Pashto as their native tongue.

King Amanullah Khan began promoting Pashto during his reign (1926–1929) as a marker of ethnic identity and as a symbol of "official nationalism"[35] leading Afghanistan to independence after the defeat of the British Empire in the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919.

[39] The Pashto Tolana was later incorporated into the Academy of Sciences Afghanistan in line with Soviet model following the Saur Revolution in 1978.

[40] Although officially supporting the use of Pashto, the Afghan elite regarded Persian as a "sophisticated language and a symbol of cultured upbringing".

[35] King Zahir Shah (reigning 1933–1973) thus followed suit after his father Nadir Khan had decreed in 1933 that officials were to study and utilize both Persian and Pashto.

In British India, prior to the creation of Pakistan by the British government, the 1920s saw the blossoming of Pashto language in the then NWFP: Abdul Ghafar Khan in 1921 established the Anjuman-e- Islah al-Afaghina (Society for the Reformation of Afghans) to promote Pashto as an extension of Pashtun culture; around 80,000 people attended the Society's annual meeting in 1927.

[62] Some linguists have argued that Pashto is descended from Avestan or a variety very similar to it, while others have attempted to place it closer to Bactrian.

[66][67] Compare with other Eastern Iranian Languages and Old Avestan: Strabo, who lived between 64 BC and 24 CE, explains that the tribes inhabiting the lands west of the Indus River were part of Ariana.

[74][75][76][8] Abdul Hai Habibi believed that the earliest modern Pashto work dates back to Amir Kror Suri of the early Ghurid period in the 8th century, and they use the writings found in Pata Khazana.

[78][79] Nile Green comments in this regard:[80] "In 1944, Habibi claimed to have discovered an eighteenth-century manuscript anthology containing much older biographies and verses of Pashto poets that stretched back as far as the eighth century.

Some of those who wrote in Pashto are Bayazid Pir Roshan (a major inventor of the Pashto alphabet), Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba, Nazo Tokhi, and Ahmad Shah Durrani, founder of the modern state of Afghanistan or the Durrani Empire.

Nouns and adjectives are inflected for two genders (masculine and feminine),[83] two numbers (singular and plural), and four cases (direct, oblique, ablative, and vocative).

[67] As noted by Josef Elfenbein, "Loanwords have been traced in Pashto as far back as the third century B.C., and include words from Greek and probably Old Persian".

[94][self-published source][97][98] There is a lot of old vocabulary that has been replaced by borrowings e.g. پلاز plâz[99] 'throne' with تخت takht, from Persian.

[108][109][110] In Latin transliteration, stress is represented by the following markers over vowels: ә́, á, ā́, ú, ó, í and é.

The following table (read from left to right) gives the letters' isolated forms, along with possible Latin equivalents and typical IPA values:

"According to David MacKenzie, there is no real need to develop a "Standard" Pashto:[113][failed verification] "The morphological differences between the most extreme north-eastern and south-western dialects are comparatively few and unimportant.

An excerpt from the Kalām of Rahman Baba: زۀ رحمٰن پۀ خپله ګرم يم چې مين يم چې دا نور ټوپن مې بولي ګرم په څۀ Pronunciation: [zə raˈmɑn pə ˈxpəl.a ɡram jəm t͡ʃe maˈjan jəm t͡ʃe dɑ nor ʈoˈpən me boˈli ɡram pə t͡sə] Transliteration: Zə Rahmā́n pə xpə́la gram yəm če mayán yəm Če dā nor ṭopə́n me bolí gram pə tsə Translation: "I Rahman, myself am guilty that I am a lover, On what does this other universe call me guilty."

[114][115] An example of a proverb: اوبه په ډانګ نه بېلېږي Transliteration: Obә́ pə ḍāng nə beléẓ̌i Translation: "One cannot divide water by [hitting it with] a pole."

خړ / خړه xәṛ/xə́ṛa [grey] List of colors borrowed from neighbouring languages: Pashtuns use the Vikrami calendar:[116]