Indo-European · ISO 639-3 pst
Central Pashto Language
Central Pashto is an Indo-European language spoken by about 6.5 million people in 1 country. It is written in the Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts.
Where Central Pashto is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Central Pashto
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Indo-Iranian
- Iranian-Nuristani
- Iranian
- Pashto
- Nuclear Pashto
- Central Pashto
Writing system
Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts
Related languages
About the Central Pashto language
Central Pashto is spoken by about 6.5 million people, which makes it the 159th most spoken language in the world — just behind Northern Thai (6.6 million) and ahead of Southern Sotho (6.4 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Nuclear Pashto group within the Indo-Iranian branch.
Where is Central Pashto spoken?
Central Pashto is used in 1 country. The largest communities live in Pakistan (6.5 million).
Central Pashto is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Central Pashto is written in the Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Northern Pashto, Southern Pashto, Iranian Persian, Northern Kurdish, Tajik, Central Kurdish and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-3 pst.
Frequently asked questions about Central Pashto
How many people speak Central Pashto?
Where is Central Pashto spoken?
What language family does Central Pashto belong to?
Is Central Pashto an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.