BGNPCGN · 1968

Romanization of Pashto (1968)

Authority

bgnpcgn

Year

1968

Source script

Arabic Arab · 160

Destination script

Latin Latn · 215

Language

Pushto; Pashto

Pashto is an Indo-Iranian language and is one of two nationally official languages in Afghanistan and one of five regionally recognised languages in Pakistan. The romanization system presented here may be applied to all Pashto geographical names. Although the BGN/PCGN policy for geographical names in Afghanistan is to apply the BGN/PCGN national system of romanization for Afghanistan (2007), which incorporates Dari elements, when applied to a Pashto geographical name, the romanized results of the BGN/PCGN national system for Afghanistan are the same as those of this Pashto romanization system1 . The Pashto alphabet uses a modified form of the Perso-Arabic script, and contains twelve additional consonants not present in standard Arabic, as well as three additional vowel characters and an additional vowel point. ڼ گ ښ ژ ږ ړ ډ ځ څ چ ټ پ :Consonants ٙ :Point Vowel; ې ۍ ى :Vowels The points used in Arabic to mark short vowels and certain other diacritical marks are not written in Pashto. Consequently, a reference source may sometimes be required to aid correct identification of the standard spellings and proper vowels and elimination of dialectal and idiosyncratic variations. In the interests of clarity, a column showing vowel pointing from Arabic to indicate short vowels has been included in the examples below, alongside the unpointed form that will usually be encountered. However it should be noted that the pronunciation of short vowels will vary. (Note: it is recommended that a font such as Scheherazade, available from www.sil.org, which includes the Unicode extended Arabic sub-range, be used to view this system2 .)

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