Indo-European · ISO 639-3 pbt
Southern Pashto Language
Southern Pashto is an Indo-European language spoken by about 15 million people in 5 countries. It is written in the Perso-Arabic script.
Where Southern Pashto is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Southern Pashto
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Indo-Iranian
- Iranian-Nuristani
- Iranian
- Pashto
- Nuclear Pashto
- Southern Pashto
Writing system
Perso-Arabic script
Related languages
About the Southern Pashto language
Southern Pashto is spoken by about 15 million people, which makes it the 87th most spoken language in the world — just behind Modern Greek (1453-) (15 million) and ahead of Northern Kurdish (15 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Nuclear Pashto group within the Indo-Iranian branch.
Where is Southern Pashto spoken?
Southern Pashto is used in 5 countries. The largest communities live in Afghanistan (3.7 million), Pakistan (3.7 million), Tajikistan (3.7 million), Turkmenistan (3.7 million) and Iran (120,000). More than half of the population speaks it in Turkmenistan — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Southern Pashto: Afghanistan 9.2% (3.7 million), Pakistan 1.5% (3.7 million), Tajikistan 36% (3.7 million), Turkmenistan 64% (3.7 million) and Iran 0.1% (120,000).
Southern Pashto is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Southern Pashto is written in the Perso-Arabic script. 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, Central Pashto, Iranian Persian, Northern Kurdish, Tajik, Central Kurdish and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-3 pbt.
Frequently asked questions about Southern Pashto
How many people speak Southern Pashto?
Where is Southern Pashto spoken?
What language family does Southern Pashto belong to?
Is Southern 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.