Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi influence on pashto

[25tajik75pashtun]

While I know that Farsi has a strong influence on Pashto in terms of every day vocabulary (and by proxy so does Arabic via the Farsi influence) - how much influence have the languages from the subcontinent affected Pashto? How much has Pashto influenced them? There are virtually no sources on these sorts of matters for Pashto sadly so it'll be mostly anecdotal accounts.

[Da Bannu Mazdigar]

Hindi is completely different,You must be talking about hindustani(Urdu+Hindi).

[Badlun]

Ibrahim Khan
I really appreciate your efforts and knowledge. I have also done some courses of Linguistics, especially Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics, Phonology, Phonetics, Syntax, Morphology, Semantics and Pragmatics. I always read your posts with keen interest.

The main difference between Hindi and Urdu is its script. If both would be written in the same script, these would be almost the same languages. I have no problem talking to an Indian in Urdu and he to me in Hindi except some religious terms and political terminology.

As far as the topic is concerned, there is some influence of Urdu or Hindi on Pashto but not necessarily of Punjabi. Pashtuns in Pakistan usually count in Urdu numbers. Words like Acha(ok), theek(correct/right), bhai(brother), relations names like bhabi(sister in law) etc are unfortunately very common. I hate these words and I am always for pure Pashto words and terms without mixing Persian and Urdu or even English.

[Badlun]

[MENTION=1034]Badlun[/MENTION],
I am interested in Pure Pashto too. If your interested in successful language reforms you should read on Ben Yehuda (who paved the way for Modern Hebrew) and Ataturk's Language Reforms (who bought old Turkish words back into vogue). Both programs were initiated for nation building.

I have been reading Zeyar's Neologisms and some info of affixes, and came to the conclusion Pashto is extremely flexible for "creation" of words having modern currency. Compare this to say the work of Ben Yehuda who went through an extremely difficult process of coining new words for Hebrew which was very inflexible and he had to rely on other Semitic languages such as Arabic; Modern Hebrew is still a Westernised register of ancient Hebrew.

The main issue is the official status of a language. Pashtuns do Pashto(ghairat/nang) on everything except Pashto(the language). Pashtuns kings like Lodhis and Suris even Abdalis and Zahirshah used only Persian, never Pashto.

Today there are about 40 Millions of Pashtuns in Pakistan but Pashto has no official status in Pakistan. In Afghanistan it does have an official status but in real terms only in Jalal abad and Kandahar, not in Kabul.

People like Ben Yehuda and Ata Turk had official support and their langauges had official usefulness. Unfortunately Pashto lacks this.

Till the time Pashto is not made compulsory for jobs, media, commerce, politics, culture etc, purification of Pashto will have little impact. Let us compel our political leadership to give Pashto a real official status.