Indo-European · ISO 639-3 pus · ps
Pushto Language پښتو
Pushto is an Indo-European language spoken by about 53 million people in 4 countries. It is an official language of Afghanistan. It is written in the Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts.
Where Pushto is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Pushto
About the Pushto language
Pushto (پښتو) is spoken by about 53 million people. It belongs to the Indo-European language family.
Where is Pushto spoken?
Pushto is used in 4 countries. The largest communities live in Pakistan (40 million), Afghanistan (17 million), United Arab Emirates (290,933) and Iran (141,419).
Share of the population that speaks Pushto: Pakistan 16% (40 million), Afghanistan 43% (17 million), United Arab Emirates 2.9% (290,933) and Iran 0.2% (141,419).
Pushto is an official language in 1 country: Afghanistan.
Writing system and status
Pushto is written in the Perso-Arabic and Latin scripts.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are English, Hindi, Spanish, Bengali, Urdu, Portuguese and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 ps, ISO 639-3 pus.
Frequently asked questions about Pushto
How many people speak Pushto?
Where is Pushto spoken?
In which countries is Pushto an official language?
What language family does Pushto belong to?
What is Pushto called in Pushto?
Is Pushto 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.