Split Discussion: Should Pashto Be Standardised with a Roman Script?

[یاسمینه]

^ Let me ask you few questions.
1. Do you think about transription or transliteration?
2. If you mean transliteration, which version of "زما " would you choose for transliteration, zma, zema, zama? In fact I could give more examples here...

3. How would you treat monophtongization typical for Eastern dialects? Would you take in it into account in transliteration only or in transliteration and transcription?

4. Did you take into account that last migrations in Afghanistan have made that dialects are mixed and some poeple may not realize if they are speakers of X or Y Or Z dialect?

5. You think of "restandardization"... First, Pashto has never had a one standard form. So nothing to "re-". Beside, would you choose arbitrarily one dialect and establish it as a norm of Pashto? Have you thought about social consequences of it?

[Khangul]

Salamoona once again!

YAsameenah dont worry everything is in control. first all you have to do is to vote for our project by clicking in the following link and adding your name:

These grammatical issues and dialects or accents that you are referring to is very simple and i would come up with a full detail of the alphabets. then you can simply find out your own way of reading and writing as long as you can read and write Pashto. The people whom you are talking about will learn as they need to learn Arabic form in order to get educated. So dont worry about this everything is in control as i said above.


just click the following link and add your name I also encourage all those who support this project to participate actively in the voting process. Thanks


Romanized Pashto Wikipedia/supporters - Meta

[Khangul]

Please Vote for Pashto Wikipedia in Romanized form HERE.

[Khangul]

Please Please Please Vote for Pashto based on Latin Alphabets.

[Admin Khan]

Butchering a language might not serve our strategic interest.

[Khangul]

There is no butchering

There is no butchering. in the ancient times Pashto was used in Mekhi written system. Before the arrival of islam and the Arab invasion of the central and south asia Pashto had another written system. The recent writing system was adopted from Perso-Arabic alphabets in Sultan Mahmood Ghaznawi time which was several times changed, then there was a Roshani movement which adopted the Roshani writing system for Pashto language. Khushal khattak used Zanzeeri Pashto writing system which was different. Then Mohammad gul mohmand proposed another writing system. Pashto maraka also proposed another writing system because of the fact that the alphabets were not adequate to encompass all the sounds and vocals that exist in Pashto language. Now a days there are two different written systems in Pashto used, one is called Peshawri style another is Kabuli style. the third that is emerging is Kandahari style where they dont write SHAWEE but instead SAWEE and WOSHEE but WOsee. The linguists and the academics who know Pashto language very well believe that the current alphabets of Pashto does not include all the vovels. Therefore it makes confusion in writing and reading processes. A literate pashtun is not able to read a Pashto text that he/she hasnt seen read it before. These are the facts and if you dont believe test it with yourself.

The reasons that make me in favor of the Pashto writing system based on Latin alphabets are as in the following:

1 Pashtuns can get literate and the litereacy movement will have a faster effect. There is no initial, middle or end form in Latin-pashto system as it is in the existing alphabets for example if you write ځ in the initial, middle and end form you will get ځ، ـځـ، ځـ forms. which makes a greater confusion for those who learn to write this language for the first time.

2. the current alphabets doesnt have all the vocals for Waw, Yaa.

3. Latin-Pashto can be the language of every scientific field since there is a broader support for Left-Right writing system.

4. In computer science the localization process gets easier.

there are many benefits that i can see in having a romanized or latin based alphabets.

[tor_khan]

The linguists and the academics who know Pashto language very well believe that the current alphabets of Pashto does not include all the vovels.

You make many points, but one thing at a time. You mention vowels.

Vowels are sounds that are made with open vocal tracts - allowing you to breathe in your speech.

You say that the current writing system misses some vowels. Please explain, because as I understand it, you cannot speak ANY language without vowels else you would suffocate and die. To my knowledge Pashto doesn't suffer any fewer vowels in the spoken or written system than any other Arabic script based languages.

In general within Arabic script based languages your regular written vowels are ا و ی and also ه. Some of these can also appear as consonant phonemes, I should add. The spread of Islam brought about the more frequent usage of َ ِ ُ to indicate the short vowels (dammah, kasrah, fatah / zabar, zer, pesh).

Zabar, zer, pesh are used to support learners and occasionally to avoid ambiguous pronunciation. They are 'script markers' in this sense and the absence of them does not mean that the vowel sounds do not exist.

What I'd like to see is an example of a piece of text written in Roman Pashto - as this is what you are attempting to promote - that is not dialect exclusive.

[یاسمینه]

What about illiterate Pashruns who are able to "read" simple words because they recognize some words as ideograms? If you change the writting system they couldn't associate a single word.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, your idea requires recognition one dialect as an official one. And this is what I can't understand. How do you want to choose this one dialect? Will you choose your own?
I don't think if there is a survey that would allow you to determine which dialect has the most users.

[Khangul]

Salamoona once again

Again i want to share my resources and the essays that are available which will somehow convince you in favor for Romanized Pashto.

Where the dialects are concerned, For pashto language the standard dialect was the dialect of the national radio television of Afghanistan. Everyone understands that pashto and nobody owns that. That dialect has been in use since the birth of Pashto media in Afghanistan and nobody has any problems with that. For your information its not my own dialect.

Another thing that i would like to answer to Tor Khan is please read the book of Habibullah Tegay a well known Afghan linguist, Its title is Naway Zhabpohana aw Zhabanee Masayel. the Zabar, Zer, Pesh is a big headache in typing, and please show me someone who uses it. Its only used in Quran i havent seen any text where they use Zabar, Pesh, Zer. To be more precise how will you write Shal (means twenty), and Shall (means lam) in Pashto? There are hundreds of such examples that you can read about in one of the Abdulhai Habibi's articles. Also there is a book written by Mohammad Ismail Youn with the title Pakhto Leekanai Samoon. Please read that book and there is also the proposed alphabets that can solve the current problem of the pashto language.

[Khangul]

here is another one

Here is another article written by Abdulhai Habibi which explains the difficulty of writting Pashto.

[کیش]

If your going to get rid of your original alphabet for English letters(nobody uses the term Roman anymore), You might as well abandoned Pashto for all-around English.

[یاسمینه]

Khangul, I learn Pashto.One of the best expert on Pashto (and the best linguists) is my teacher. I agree with you that sometimes it is difficult to read a word if you see it for the first time or don't understand the context. I can even give you more examples. Do you know that دی written with or without dots can have 7-8 meanings? And I know that Pashtuns tend to forget about these dots when they write. But it doesn't change the fact that personally I say that Pashto alphabet should remain the same.

Anyway I think that changing alphabet would cause more harm than we can predict. Plus, even if you think that English (Roman) alphabet is better for vocalization of vowels, I am almost sure it will fail when it comes to consonants.
First, Pashto needs linguistic norm (which is a long process). Then you could think about changing its script.

Languages of Pashto media - Im not an expert but to me it looks like there is no universal Pashto. Of course it is understandable, but each speaker uses his/her own dialect.

[Khangul]

i dont understand what are we waiting for?

Yasmeenah i get your point. I also posted an article written by the late Afghan writer Abdulhai Habibi. and there you can find many examples.

You said that Pashto should be standardized by the linguists. First show me how many linguists does pashto language have?

1. Mojawer Ahmad Zyar
2. Abdul Razaq Palwal
3. ?
4. ?

How many Pashtoons study linguistics and specializing in Pashto field?

Which government is promoting the Pashto language?

Whome shall we expect to bring Pashto into norm?

What is the problem? Who are we waiting for? For how long do we have to wait?

Should we just sit so that others do something for Pashto language?

If we are going to expect the government of Afghanistan and Pakistan to do something in this regard then we are fooling ourselves. There is not any movement that is actively working for the promotion of Pashto language. We know the problem, we should solve it. The current Perso-Arabic based alphabet is not the property of Pashto. Pashto language had a different writting system before the arrival of Islam and even before Mahmood ghaznawi.

I believe that Pashto language not only has a problem with the current alphabets but also there is an anarchy in this language. Everyone follows his/her own dialects and accents where written form is concerned.

I think the young generation of Afghans should try to sit and discuss the issues that pashto language is going through. First they should adopt a new alphabets then they should try to find a standard and tell everyone to follow this new standard.

[afgpower]

are you guys all serious? you guys all already talking about roman script for pashto? maybe ALL pashtuns should first learn to write and read pashto and maybe after this we can talk about this issue. as far as i know only the educated pashtuns in afghanistan can write/read Pashto (not sure if pashtuns on the other side can write/read it). it would be a big achievement for pashto language if all pashtuns actually could write and read it. How do you want to develop a language if 90 % of it's speakers can't even write/read it?

[Khangul]

you say that 90% of Pashtuns are illeterate have you ever wondered why?

One of the reason that they cant read and write is the difficulty of learning the present Alphabets. I have previously mentioned that if a child who wants to learn how to write in Pashto only his name he/she has to learn it by memorizing it and without knowing why his/her name is written that way.

Its because of the fact that the pashto alphabets most of them have 3 forms which is initial form, mid form, end form. which means the character like څ would changes its form according to the placement in a word. This in itself is very confusing for the new beginners and it is time consuming to understand it. In Latin or roman based alphabets you only have 2 forms which is capital and smaller forms and they dont change according to their placements in a word.

First the basic things like adopting the Latin-based alphabets is an important step. Then enabling people to read and write will be the second step which will not be as much time consuming as in the present.