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

[afgpower]

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.

lol? maybe the reason for this illeteracy is because of the lack of school and education in pashtun areas? ever thought about that?

ur explanation really doesnt make any sense.......

[Khangul]

Maybe my explanation doesn't make sense for you because we both are Afghans by origin and we try to explain things in English. The reason why there is so much illiteracy could be whatever one can think of. but right now this is not the matter of discussion here. You are trying to take the discussion to another direction. We are discussing here for the topic If Pashto should be standardized with Roman script? we are not here to discuss literacy or illiteracy and its reasons, its statistics etc.

[Khangul]

Here is the proposed alphabets

Here i Post the proposed alphabets by Dr. Mujawir Ahmad Zyar. You can find the same alphabets in Pakhtu Leeklarkhud.

[یاسمینه]

Khangul, attachment is not readable

[یاسمینه]

Ok, I checked in the Pakhtu Leeklarkhud. So on the p. 10 I see proposed alphabet and it looks like the one proposed by prof. Manfred Lorenz in 70's in Lehrbuch Des Pashto, p. 18-19. This book is awailable in our kitabtoon.

[Khangul]

Its a png file format. and i can see it in this forum. For the first time when in 1936 Pashtu language was given the national and official language status in Afghanistan, one year later in 1937 a German linguist was given invitation to come and make some reforms in the Pashto alphabets and it was at that time when Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Lentz came to Afghanistan and he proposed the first Pashto alphabet based on Latin writing system. for further information please go to the following link:

Ein Lateinalphabet für das Paschto

by Wolfgang Lentz, Berlin 1937.

[Khangul]

Some useful links:

پښتو ليکلارښود

Romanization System for Pashto

Approved Romanization System

A Standard Pashto

Standardization policies

Ein Latinalphabet fur das Paschto

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGN/PCGN_romanization

Central Pashto language

[Khangul]

Why Romanization of Pashto?

At first we need to go parallel with the Perso-Arabic based writing system but later, once the new alphabets' use get popular, then the Perso-arabic form will be dropped automatically as it happened in Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan. But it depends on the Pashtuns how they perceive this change. I am sure that religious clerics will strongly oppose it and consider it a non-Islamic move but, i have to say that it is nothing to do with Islam and religion. Think how many can speak and write Arabic if we compare it with English language. I think in Afghanistan one will find more people interested to learn English than Arabic. If a person is going to be a good Muslim he/she will be if he is in America or Afghanistan or somewhere else where they don't even have Arabic language or writing system. I think this has nothing to do with religion. Again the spoken language is the same but the written form changes as it did when Alexander came to Afghanistan, at that time Pashto had another written form, The same happened with Arabs invasion of Afghanistan.

First think of the LTR order in computer science. There are lots of software that still doesnt have the RTL support for arabic language.

The same in field of science. you can easily write ax^2 + bx + y = 23 rather than writing س + ش = ۳۲ as an example in Algebra. in the field of Medicine you use many short abbreviations for longer names but how will you use abbreviation with the current writing system.

Think of physics, chemistry and other fields that already got standards in latinized form.

Think of the learning process a child who never learned how to write pashto will have to learn three faces of one alphabet the initial phase (example ځـ), middle phase (example ـځـ) and the end phase (ځ) to recognize the alphabet. This process of learning in itself takes much more longer time than only learning one alphabet or character that represents a sound.

Think how many of the 2nd and 3rd generation afghans live abroad, i mean outside Afghanistan. lets say at least 1 million Afghans (just pretend). Among these lets say 300000 young afghans have got education in the countries out of Afghanistan lets say the non Arabic or middle eastern countries. Since they are either born outside Afghanistan and never learned to read and write in Arabic, how will you use these resources for the future Afghanistan. Isn't it just easy for them to write Pashto with the same latinized/romanized Pashto alphabets than writing in Arabic? They already can speak Pashto/Dari at some extent and understand it but they cant write it. These are our generations who are educated and can be used as good resources for the future of Afghanistan only if they get some kind of love for their homeland.

There are many benefits. Yes there is a problem with the books. There are thousands of Pashto books how are we going to convert them into romanized form? The solution has been made simple by the computer. A programmer can build up a software where they only scan the books, the books are converted into the text, another computer program automatically converts the existing Pashto into the Latinized form. There already exists software with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) function that supports Pashto language and converts scanned Pashto documents into Pashto text. A php programmer can simply make a transliteration software which converts easily can do the job within matter of minutes. This all needs people who are devoted to do something for the future generations.

Mustafa Kamal Ataturk was a great leader. and you'll come to this point once you travel to turkey and see that country's development. He changed the Turkish alphabets, a very fundamental step in the language reform and later the reform of the whole nation. Anyone who thinks by this his/her Islam is in danger then believe me his/her Islam is already weak, and even if we change the alphabet or not his/her Eman is in danger.

Please Vote For Paxto Wikipedia Project in Wikimedia this project will go ahead parallel with the current Perso-Arabic writing system Pashto wikipedia.

[Khangul]

A very interesting article to share with you.

Here i wanna share a very interesting information about Pashto with you.


Orthography and Phonemes in Pashto

[Khangul]

Pax̌to

Here is the Paxto keyboard layout.

[Khangul]

Hey Mr. you represent yourself. There is no we and all that you are saying is not true.

[یاسمینه]

Shadowgoverner, I am not a fan of this idea either. But if you are going to blindly criticize this idea, don't forget that this idea was invented by a famous Pashtun linguist who wrote many dictionnaries and books about Pashto language. How many Pashtun linguists you know? How many professors of Pashto language do you know? If you want to criticize it, first you should read about assumpions of this idea and then find more reasonable arguments that "its attack..." Your presence in this thread seems to be the attack on our discussion.

[یاسمینه]

Well now you sound more reasonable We all have right to express our opinions. The problem is the way we do this.
I know some Pashtuns who like this idea and those who doesn't. I also try to see pros and cons.

Anyway thank you for clarification.

[DaMalakandGhar]

Romanized script is the need of the hour. We must do away with the ridiculous Arabic or camel script to borrow the word from Toramana the great and adopt the flexible and efficient Roman script to expedite the importation of knowledge into Pashto.

Khangul, there may be an initial resistance to this idea from those that have always opposed change and progression, but I am hundred percent sure that once Pakhtuns see the usefulness of Roman script for Pashto, they will not even look at the Arabic script a second time. I predict, the romanized script will find instant acceptability with younger computer savvy Pashtun generation that likes an easy medium for interaction with information technology.

As for Mullahs, Islamists, terrorists, etc., when did this abhorrent lot favor science, technology, knowledge expansion, etc? All the modern technology and systems be that type-writer, radio, TV, loud-speaker, schools, etc. were initially vehemently opposed by Mullahs and their ilk. Only when a technology finds a wider acceptance, does the Mullah and Islamist adopt it. Let those that want to live in the stone-age be where they are. Let the others go ahead.

[Khangul]

dear yasmeena
its nice of you to say that you are not a fan of this idea.
this script supports roman supremacy upon Afghans and it gives the representators of this script a trojan horse into the Afghan language and at the same time it deprives pashtuns from reading the Quran and understanding and their own script.

you will be surprised how many pashtun writers i know,how many poets,professors and politicians,most of them are family/subtribe members.

it doesnt matter if some linguist proposed this idea who was a Pashtun,thousands oppose this and that why his proposation wasnt considered.

Our elders created this script for us which works just fine,what is the need for amking it roman?

Shadogoverner your argument is not quite mature. Roman and Latin script have always had supremacy over Arabic after the golden Islamic period. It is hundreds of years ahead in terms of development and achievements that these two scripts have had.

One of the fact is far more Pashtuns can read English than Arabic or actually Quran. If someone wants to be a good Muslim he/she will have individual efforts. By making the Latin/Roman based script common in use does not state that Pashtuns stop reading Quran. It is the only interpretation of pan-Arabic individuals who would bring again religion in non-religious issues or the ones that totally does not relate to the religion. Think of a Muslim in Malaysia, Indonesia, central Asian countries. Do you consider them non-Muslim just because their script is different than Arabic? As i said before the present script is not Pashto language's script it was adopted in the reign of Sultan-Mahmood Ghaznawi, while some say that it was made by Bayazeed Pir Rokhan later in the 18/19 century. Long before Pashto was written in different writing system as Khroshti, aramic, greek, etc.

It doesnt matter how many Pashtun writers or academics you know or you might have relation with. You will always find persons who oppose an idea and also people who are in favor of an idea. What we are trying is discussing the possibilities and I am going to write using the roman script from now on, and if someone is stamping me with a non-muslim just because i adopt another script for my Language Pashto then he/she might be a non-muslim himself/herself. I am also going to teach anyone who is interested. One day this one person will turn up as a community. Those who dont wanna do this they have a choice of their own. No body is going to force them. We cant just follow our elders in some matters that we see we dont have any kind of positive change in it. There are many things our elders didnt want to do or didnt have access to do, they didnt use computers, electricity, other fascilities, but we have access to all this. It is not suitable to say that our elders didnt have electricity then lets turn off the lights. Our elders didnt think of a change to the script because they were born in the same house, they got elders and they died in the same house without travelling to a non-muslim country and learning of their ambitions and hard work that they are doing for their countries.

History is also a good witness of the facts that Pashtun scholars were banished from the homeland by the majority of dark minded people only because of the ideas of change and guidance towards the light of knowledge. then after years when the new generations got knowing from non-Afghan/non-Pashtuns about the banished scholars, then they traveled to their graves and dig their bodies out and brought them back to the country and were proud of bringing the dead scholars to the homeland. This was the case of Sayed Jamaludeen and many scholars before like Avicina Balkhi. Like Abdul Qadir Bedil as they know it by the name Dehlawi. As Maulana Jalaludeen Mohammad balkhi the latest case Abdul Rauf Benawa.

Dear friend take a white sheet of paper, make a line and divide the sheet in two with that line on one side write down all the positive things that can be expected and are with the Roman script on the other side of the line write down all the negative things that could happen and that makes you worried. then take the picture of that sheet or simply scan it and post it here as attachment. I am willing to answer all your worries and questions regarding this script.

Pə məxa də x̌a, Roɣ aw ǰoṛ wosə