Pashto lessons

[peterlin]

My, you guys are fast! I'll try to keep up.


A. Stäṟay ma she. / ستړی مه شې۔
B. Khwār ma she. / خوار مه شې۔

A. Don't be tired (a calque of xaste nabashid)
B. Don't be miserable (is khwār related to Polish "chory" = 'ill')

Both are formulaic greetings.

A. Tsänga ye? Joṟ ye? / څنګه یې؟ جوړ یې؟
B. Merabānī, khä yäm. / مهرباني، ښه یم۔

A. How are you? Are you OK?
B. Thanks (lit. kindness), I'm good


B. Farānsaway ye? / فرانسوی یې؟
A. Na, Farānsaway na yäm, zä Amrīkanay yäm. / نه، فرانسوی نه یم، زه امریکنی یم۔

B. Are you French?
A. No, I'm not French, I'm American.


A. Zä Päkhto zda kawäm. / زه پښتو زده کوم
B. Ḏer khä! / ډېر ښه۔
A. Zmā hamdoumra zda da. / زما همدومره زده ده۔

A. I'm learning Pashto.
B. (That's) very good!
A. My knowledge is as much as this??? (I think so, too?)

B. Chāy tskhe? / چای څښې؟
A. Merabāni, zä os dzäm. / مهرباني، زه اوس ځم۔

B. (would) you (like to) drink tea?
A. Thanks, I'll be going now.

A. Dä khudāy pä amān. / د خدای په امان۔
B. Pä mäkha-de khä. / په مخه دې ښه۔

A. God protect you (In protection of God)
B. Wellness in your face (Go well, May you face good).

[Rémy LeBeau]

My classes have started again this week so I will be quite busy. I'll post the solutions and notes now, because it might end up getting put off until the end of the week if I don't!

Lesson 2: Solutions

A. Stäṟay ma she. / ستړی مه شې۔
Hello.
B. Khwār ma she. / خوار مه شې۔
Hello.

A. Tsänga ye? Joṟ ye? / څنګه یې؟ جوړ یې؟
How are you? Are you well?
B. Merabānī, khä yäm. / مهرباني، ښه یم۔
Thanks, I am fine

B. Farānsaway ye? / فرانسوی یې؟
Are you a Frenchman?
A. Na, Farānsaway na yäm, zä Amrīkanay yäm. / نه، فرانسوی نه یم، زه امریکنی یم۔
No, I'm not a Frenchman, I am an American (male).

A. Zä Päkhto zda kawäm. / زه پښتو زده کوم
I am learning Pashto.
B. Ḏer khä! / ډېر ښه۔
That's very good!
A. Zmā hamdoumra zda da. / زما همدومره زده ده۔
This is all I know. (1)

B. Chāy tskhe? / چای څښې؟
Will you drink some tea? (2)
A. Merabāni, zä os dzäm. / مهرباني، زه اوس ځم۔
No thank you, I am going now. (3)

A. Dä khudāy pä amān. / د خدای په امان۔
Goodbye.
B. Pä mäkha-de khä. / په مخه دې ښه۔
Goodbye.

(1) Zda seems like the equivalent of a past participle (for example it gets listed as appris and compris in my Pashto-French dictionary), but in sentences when it is used with a possessive, like for example in this sentence, zmā zda, it seems to generally refer to the notion of 'knowledge'. So more literally, in this sentence you could translate it as "My knowledge (of Pashto) is this much".

(2) As in some other languages, you can just use the simple present tense for things like offering food and drinks.

(3) Note how saying "thank you" in this situation acts as a refusal of the offer.

Notes

With regards to verbs, I hope you have noticed the patterns in how verbs are conjugated from their infinitive forms. In the 1st lesson, I pointed out that -äm is the marker for the 1ps and -e is the marker for the 2ps, and it seems like you didn't have any trouble figuring out who the verbs were referring to in this 2nd lesson which is good.

I added 3 new verbs to this text, kawäl (to do), tskhäl (to drink), and tläl (to go). Tläl, as you have seen, is irregular in the present tense. I'm not going to go into this at the moment, but I want you to familiarize yourself with it as it is an important verb. Since you know that -äm is the 1ps marker, you can probably guess that dz is the present stem.

As for the two verbs that are regular in the present tense, kawäl and tskhäl, you can see that kaw and tskh respectively are the present stems. As a general rule (though not a flawless one), to gain the present stem from an independent verb, remove the infinitive marker -äl (which works similarly to -nā in Urdu and -dan in Dari). Then the verb can be conjugated in the present tense simply by adding the appropriate subject markers. The two we have covered so far are -äm (1ps) and -e (2ps), and we will cover more in the following lessons.

Much like Urdu and Dari, the verb kawäl is used extensively to form compound verbs, so needless to say, keeping on top of this verb will help you to use lots of other verbs, or even in cases when you don't know a verb, you can use a noun with kawäl to try and express what you want to say. Even if it is not an actual verb, the chances are that you will still be able to get the meaning across.

The second point that I introduced into this lesson was gender. Pashto has 2 genders, masculine and feminine and luckily they are very easy to get your head around. In this text, I used the terms farānsaway and amrīkanay, and as you can see from my translation above, they both refer specifically to a man. What I wanted you to notice was the marker that made these two words masculine: -ay. This -ay is represented by the dotless ye, which I will also call the 'masculine ye', as when it is used at the end of a word, it is used exclusively to denote that the word is masculine in gender.

If a word ends with a dotless ye, it is always pronounced as "ay", never "ī" as it is in Urdu and Dari (an ī sound at the end of a word is represented by the Arabic ye, or 'hard ye', so if you wanted to say French, as in the French language, it would be written like this: فرانسوي). This "ay" sound at the end of a word is also a marker than tells you it is masculine. This is generally quite useful when it comes to nationalities, as you just add an -ay to the end of the country name for most countries.

Besides this masculine marker, there is one other major one (though, this one isn't actually a 'marker'), which is ridiculously simple: any noun that ends in a consonant is also masculine! Besides this, there is only really one other marker, which is comparatively rare, and that is when a word ends in a schwa (ä), but you won't come across many of them. That is pretty much it for recognizing masculine nouns in Pashto!

Let me know if anything needs explaining more.

[Meera]

Joṟ ye? / څنګه یې؟ جوړ یې؟
[

I am not 100 percent sure but i think you can only say Jor ye to a male. I am not compleatly sure though so I hope Remy can clarify. But I never heard jor ye said to a girl

[Rémy LeBeau]

You are right, joṟ ye refers to a male, as joṟ ends in a consonant, which means that it is a masculine noun. You could, in all grammatical correctness, say joṟa ye, جوړه یې, to a woman, but like you said, this formula doesn't really get used much with women for some reason.

[Meera]

You are right, joṟ ye refers to a male, as joṟ ends in a consonant, which means that it is a masculine noun. You could, in all grammatical correctness, say joṟa ye, جوړه یې, to a woman, but like you said, this formula doesn't really get used much with women for some reason.

Yeah I thought it didn't sound right for a girl. Sorry, Remy I think I asked you before but are you from Peshwar or Afghanistan?

[Rémy LeBeau]

EDIT:

[Rémy LeBeau]

Okay, I am reposting this with some changes because I made some mistakes in the last one. Please take the time to read it as it will clarify a few things that will help a lot a bit later on!

Notes on the 5 Ye of Pashto

Okay, this is one of the most infuriating things about learning this language. The problem is that everyone and his dog has a different idea about which should be used where, and they are transliterated in works in so many different ways that it is impossible to keep up. There is a bit of a sense of uniformity very recently though with Pashto being published by big organisations on the internet, and that, along with over a year of brain-wracking, is what has lead me to use them like this:

The 1st ye is the normal dotless ye: ی. I will also call this the 'masculine ye'

This is the one that should be used to write a ye in the middle of a word, however, for some reason a lot of Pashto texts on the net use the Arabic unicode character 'alif maksura' for this too. In any case, they look the same and I am not using the alif maksura because it traditionally has a specific sound, whereas the dotless ye is used in many languages is known to be flexible in sound.

Whenever this ye comes in the middle of a word, it represents /i:/ (which I am transliterating as ī) or /ay/. However, whenever this ye comes at the end, it will always, always always, without fail be pronounced as the diphthong 'ay'. When this ye is at the end of a word, it also acts as a masculine gender marker, which is why I am calling it the 'masculine ye'.

The 2nd ye is the ye with two vertical dots: ې. This is also known as the soft ye

This can come in the medial or final position and is always pronounced as /e:/, a long vowel, which is being transliterated in my lessons simply as 'e'.

The 3rd ye is the Arabic yā: ي. This is also known as the hard ye

This ye will only occur at the end of a word and is pronounced as /i:/. I am transliterating this in my lessons with ī.

The 4th ye is the ye which has a little tail: ۍ. This is also known as the feminine ye

Again, this ye will only occur at the end of a word and is pronounced as /əy/. I am transliterating this in my lessons with äy. This ye at the end of the word, acts as a feminine gender marker, kind of like a counter-part to the dotless 'masculine ye'.

The 5th and final ye is the ye with a hamza: ئ. This is also known as the verbal ye

This ye, as in other languages that use the Arabic script, serves the purpose of breaking up vowels. However, in Pashto it also takes on a second, more specific function. As you might have guessed by it's name, this function relates specifically to verbs; in it's specific 'verbal' capacity, it appears only at the end of a verb stem. This makes roughly the same sound as the feminine ye, but from what I can gather, as the feminine ye is gender specific, this ye serves as a gender-neutral way to write that sound in verbs. This is important because this sound is used as a 2pp subject marker, and since the 2pp does not distinguish gender, you can't write this with the feminine ye. So this is where this 'verbal ye' comes in.

As we go through the lessons more and more, you will begin to understand the logic behind having so many of them, and they will actually make things a lot easier!

Amendments to the orthography I am using in these lessons

I was previously using the verbal ye to write 'day' (like this: دئ). However, after consulting articles on BBC Pashto, I have realized that this is an incorrect use of that ye. As the verbal ye serves the purpose of 'de-genderizing' the -äy sound, it doesn't actually make any sense to use it to represent 'day', which is actually the masculine form of the 3ps of 'to be'. Also, as represented by my transliteration, 'day' produces the sound of the masculine dotless ye, so it makes more sense all around to use this ye to represent 'day', and I think that BBC Pashto, written by native Pashto speakers, is a bit more reliable in this respect than my dated learning materials by Westerners who based their works on limited field experience.

I have gone back to change my previous lessons to reflect this change, and I will be writing 'day' in all future lessons as دی.

[Meera]

Amendments to the orthography I am using in these lessons

I was previously using the verbal ye to write 'day' (like this: دئ). However, after consulting articles on BBC Pashto, I have realized that this is an incorrect use of that ye. As the verbal ye serves the purpose of 'de-genderizing' the -äy sound, it doesn't actually make any sense to use it to represent 'day', which is actually the masculine form of the 3ps of 'to be'. Also, as represented by my transliteration, 'day' produces the sound of the masculine dotless ye, so it makes more sense all around to use this ye to represent 'day', and I think that BBC Pashto, written by native Pashto speakers, is a bit more reliable in this respect than my dated learning materials by Westerners who based their works on limited field experience.

I have gone back to change my previous lessons to reflect this change, and I will be writing 'day' in all future lessons as دی.

Yeah I thought دئ looked wrong, I was gonna say something but I thought I was wrong

[Rémy LeBeau]

Lesson 3

A: Dagha tsä shay day? / دغه څه شی دی؟
B: Dā zmā kitāb day. / دا زما کتاب دی۔
A: Dagha kitāb tsänga day? Ghaṯ kitāb day? / دغه کتاب څنګه دی؟ غټ کتاب دی؟
-
A: Dā qalam stā day? / دا قلم ستا دی؟
B: Na, zmā qalam sour day. Dagha shīn qalam day. / نه، زما قلم سور دی۔ دغه شین قلم دی۔
-
Dagha mez dround day. / دغه مېز دروند دی۔
Dagha dround mez day. / دغه دروند مېز دی۔
Dagha ghaṯ mez dround day. / دغه غټ مېز دروند دی۔
-
Hagha ḏākṯär poh day. / هغه ډاکټر پوه دی۔
Hagha saṟay nāpoh day. / هغه سړی ناپوه دی۔
Hagha nāpoh saṟay ḏākṯär naday. / هغه ناپوه سړی ډاکټر نه دی۔

Vocabulary

Dagha - This
Dā - This
Hagha - That
Shay - Thing
Tsänga - How, What sort/What kind
Sour - Red
Shīn - Green
Mez - Table
Dround - Heavy
Ghaṯ - Big
Poh - Intelligent
Saṟay - Man

Notes

This lesson is a bit different. Instead of just one dialogue, I have included two little dialogues and 2 sets of sentences for you to compare. The focus of this lesson is on the demonstrative adjectives, dā, dagha and hagha. Try to gues the difference between the usage of dā and dagha. I have given you all the vocabulary that is present in each of them. I want you to consider how word order can affect the meaning of a sentence, specifically the difference that putting a word before or after a noun can make, and to reflect this in your translations.

[peterlin]

This time I'm the first one to answer, it seems

A: Dagha tsä shay day? / دغه څه شی دی؟
B: Dā zmā kitāb day. / دا زما کتاب دی۔
A: Dagha kitāb tsänga day? Ghaṯ kitāb day? / دغه کتاب څنګه دی؟ غټ کتاب دی؟

A: What is this thing?
B: It's my book
A. What kind of book is this? Is it a big book?

A: Dā qalam stā day? / دا قلم ستا دی؟
B: Na, zmā qalam sour day. Dagha shīn qalam day. / نه، زما قلم سور دی۔ دغه شین قلم دی۔

A: Is this your pen?
B: No, my pen is red. This is a green pen
-
Dagha mez dround day. / دغه مېز دروند دی۔
Dagha dround mez day. / دغه دروند مېز دی۔
Dagha ghaṯ mez dround day. / دغه غټ مېز دروند دی۔

This table is heavy.
This is a heavy table.
This big table is heavy.

-
Hagha ḏākṯär poh day. / هغه ډاکټر پوه دی۔
Hagha saṟay nāpoh day. / هغه سړی ناپوه دی۔
Hagha nāpoh saṟay ḏākṯär naday. / هغه ناپوه سړی ډاکټر ندی۔

That doctor is intelligent.
That man is stupid.
That stupid man is not a doctor.

Try to gues the difference between the usage of dā and dagha.

?
dā - this thing we're talking about/have just mentioned
dagha - this thing here
?

[Rémy LeBeau]

peterlin:

It seems that you picked up the changes in word order quite naturally. I just want to point out something about your translation of dā qalam stā day?.

Notice how the possessive pronoun that usually comes before the noun (stā) is in the position where the enclitic possessive (-de) should be. This actually causes a change in meaning which doesn't exist in Persian, but exists in Hindi and Urdu (and works exactly the same way). By putting the possessive pronoun at the end of the word, it becomes a 'strong' possessive pronoun. The change that occurs is similar to in English: my > mine, your > yours). So the sentence dā qalam stā day?, while it can be expressed as "is this your pen?", more specifically means "is this pen yours?". So there you have it, there are actually 3 ways to express possession in Pashto!

As for dā and dagha, you are nearly there, but you have them the wrong way around. I think this is probably a fault in how I phrased my examples. What I tried to show was that the person who is immediately closer to the object expresses 'this' using dā, whereas the person who is comparatively farther away, though not far away enough to refer to it as 'that', uses 'dagha'. A general rule for using dā is when something is in your hand. So if you look at dā qalam stā day?, even though the pen doesn't belong to the person talking about it, because the pen is (presumably) in his hand for him to be showing it to the 2nd person, it is expressed with dā. Similarly, if you look at the sentences about the table, a table (especially a big, heavy table ) is not something that is 'at hand', so it would be expressed with dagha (though, if you were touching the table to emphasize which table it was, you could use dā). The rules for the usage of the two aren't set in stone and usage varies between speakers, but hopefully knowing this will help you understand more about the contexts that dā and dagha are used in when reading texts.

Also, good job picking up that you don't need to use yaw (1) to mark indefiniteness when using demonstrative pronouns!

[eskandar]

These were easy (if I got 'em right ) - make us work harder Remy! By the way, does anyone want me to black out my answers like peterlin has been doing? I'm too lazy to do it preemptively, but if seeing my answers bothers anyone then I'll start blacking them out.

A: Dagha tsä shay day? / دغه څه شی دی؟
این چه چیز است؟ / What is this thing?
B: Dā zmā kitāb day. / دا زما کتاب دی۔
این کتاب من است / This is my book
A: Dagha kitāb tsänga day? Ghaṯ kitāb day? / دغه کتاب څنګه دی؟ غټ کتاب دی؟
این کتاب چطور است؟ کتاب بزرگی است؟ / What kind of book is this? Is it a big book?
-
A: Dā qalam stā day? / دا قلم ستا دی؟
این قلم تو است؟ / Is this your pen?
B: Na, zmā qalam sour day. Dagha shīn qalam day. / نه، زما قلم سور دی۔ دغه شین قلم دی۔
نه، قلم من سرخ (قرمز) است. این قلم سبز است / No, my pen is red. This is a green pen.
-
Dagha mez dround day. / دغه مېز دروند دی۔
این میز سنگین است / This table is heavy
Dagha dround mez day. / دغه دروند مېز دی۔
این میز سنگینی است / This is a heavy table
Dagha ghaṯ mez dround day. / دغه غټ مېز دروند دی۔
این میز بزرگی سنگین است / This big table is heavy
-
Hagha ḏākṯär poh day. / هغه ډاکټر پوه دی۔
آن پزشک دانا هست / That doctor is intelligent
Hagha saṟay nāpoh day. / هغه سړی ناپوه دی۔
آن مرد نادان هاست / That man is dumb
Hagha nāpoh saṟay ḏākṯär naday. / هغه ناپوه سړی ډاکټر ندی۔
آن مرد نادان پزشک نیست / That dumb man is not a doctor

Interesting that Pashto has the word "shay" for thing (which is from Arabic) rather than an Iranic word. Pashto seems to be much more conservative with its borrowings than Persian, but Persian uses the indigenous word "chiz."

I would think the difference between dā and dagha is that dā is a noun (Sp. esto) whereas dagha is an adjective (Sp. este). Am I correct? And is there a word like hā to go along with hagha?

Edit: From reading your response to peterlin, it seems I was wrong in my assessment of dā and dagha.

[Rémy LeBeau]

Lesson 3: Solutions

A: Dagha tsä shay day? / دغه څه شی دی؟
What is this? [What thing is this]
B: Dā zmā kitāb day. / دا زما کتاب دی۔
This is my book
A: Dagha kitāb tsänga day? Ghaṯ kitāb day? / دغه کتاب څنګه دی؟ غټ کتاب دی؟
What sort of book is it? Is it a big book?
-
A: Dā qalam stā day? / دا قلم ستا دی؟
Is this pen yours?
B: Na, zmā qalam sour day. Dagha shīn qalam day. / نه، زما قلم سور دی۔ دغه شین قلم دی۔
No, my pen is red. This pen is green
-
Dagha mez dround day. / دغه مېز دروند دی۔
This table is heavy
Dagha dround mez day. / دغه دروند مېز دی۔
This is a heavy table
Dagha ghaṯ mez dround day. / دغه غټ مېز دروند دی۔
This big table is heavy
-
Hagha ḏākṯär poh day. / هغه ډاکټر پوه دی۔
That man is intelligent
Hagha saṟay nāpoh day. / هغه سړی ناپوه دی۔
That man is unintelligent
Hagha nāpoh saṟay ḏākṯär naday. / هغه ناپوه سړی ډاکټر ندی۔
That unintelligent man is not a doctor

Notes

Look at the sentence dā qalam stā day?. You both translated this as "Is this pen yours". Notice how the possessive pronoun stā, which is usually placed before the possessed object is in this sentence placed after it. This changes it from a 'weak' possessive pronoun (in the position before the object), to a 'strong' possessive pronoun (in the position after). The difference in meaning between the two types is largely the same as in English: This is my book > This book is mine. This is your book > This book is yours. This is her book > This book is hers.

So you now have 3 ways to show possession: dā zmā kitab day, dā kitāb-me day, dā kitāb zmā day. The first (zmā ____) and second (___-me) are both 'weak' possessives, so would be translated with my, your, ect. Only the last one is a strong possessive so it would be translated with mine, yours, ect.

The difference between dā and dagha revolves around the distance from the speaker to the object. As a general rule of thumb, if you are talking about something that is in your hand or you are touching, you can use dā, however if something is close and not something that can ever be considered 'at hand', you would use dagha. So for example, if you were talking about a room you were standing in, you would say dagha ārāma koṯa da (this is a quiet room), using dagha as opposed to dā.

Also note that when using demonstratives, indefiniteness isn't marked. There are a few instances in this text where you can see I have translated with indefiniteness. You will notice that they follow the pattern of demonstrative + adjective, for example dagha dround mez day, dā ghaṯ kitāb day. So if you see an adjective preceding the noun it refers to before a demonstrative (dā, dagha, hagha), then you can assume that it is indefinite.

Finally, all of these demonstratives can also be understood as 'it'. I used one example of this in the sentence: Dagha kitāb tsänga day? Ghaṯ kitāb day?. Unfortunately, there isn't really any kind of solid rule I can give you for this, it is a matter of just getting used to distinguishing between how they are used.

eskandar:

They will be getting harder soon, don't worry! I'm just trying to tackle things individually at the moment (hence the slightly bland texts that conspicuously only deal with masculine, singular things ), but once you start putting them together it can be quite hard to distinguish what is what due to the similarities between them. I hope that if I hammer each of the points in separately then it will be easier to recognize each of them when they are all used together.

I didn't know shay was from Arabic, I thought that it was a Punjabi loanword from ਸ਼ੈ, shai.

[eskandar]

They will be getting harder soon, don't worry! I'm just trying to tackle things individually at the moment (hence the slightly bland texts that conspicuously only deal with masculine, singular things ), but once you start putting them together it can be quite hard to distinguish what is what due to the similarities between them. I hope that if I hammer each of the points in separately then it will be easier to recognize each of them when they are all used together.

I didn't know shay was from Arabic, I thought that it was a Punjabi loanword from ਸ਼ੈ, shai.

Sounds good - I didn't meant to criticize your teaching style. You've been doing an excellent job and I'm really enjoying learning Pashto! Yes, shay is definitely from Arabic شيء originally, though it's been borrowed into Hindi-Urdu (شے "object, item"), Persian (شی a very obscure word with the same meaning), Turkish şey, and apparently Punjabi as well! It's possible that Pashto borrowed it from Punjabi, Hindi-Urdu, or Persian, though most likely it's a direct loan from Arabic.

[Rémy LeBeau]

Lesson 4

Mahmoud: Amir, Ahmad, dā saṟay John day. / امیر، احمد، دا سړی جان دی۔
Amir: Day Päkhto pohegī? / دی پښتو پوهېږي؟
Mahmoud: Ho, Päkhto pohegī. / هو، پښتو پوهېږي۔

Ahmad: John, tä ham zda kawounkay ye? / جان، ته هم زده کوونکی یې؟
John: Na, zä mālim yäm. Tāso zda kawounkī yäy? / نه، زه معام یم۔ تاسو زده کوونکي یئ؟
Ahmad: Ho, moung zda kawounkī you. / هو، مونږ زده کوونکي یو۔

John: Tāso khä mälägrī yäy? / تاسو ښه ملګري یئ؟
Mahmoud: Ho, moung ḏer khä mälägrī you. / هو، مونږ ډېر ښه ملګري یو۔

Vocabulary

Pohedäl - To understand
Zda kawounkay - Student (male)
Mälägray - Friend (male)

Notes

Some new stuff here that I haven't put in the vocab list. Mainly consists of new personal pronouns and subject markers, try and figure out what each one is. Also I have introduced plural forms of some masculine nouns here, try and figure out what it is that changes masculine singular nouns here to their plural forms.

[peterlin]

Mahmoud: Amir, Ahmad, dā saṟay John day. / امیر، احمد، دا سړی جان دی۔
Amir: Day Päkhto pohegī? / دی پښتو پوهېږي؟
Mahmoud: Ho, Päkhto pohegī. / هو، پښتو پوهېږي۔

M: Amir, Ahmad this man is John (this is John)
A: Does he understand Pashto?
M: Yes, he understands Pashto

Ahmad: John, tä ham zda kawounkay ye? / جان، ته هم زده کوونکی یې؟
John: Na, zä mālim yäm. Tāso zda kawounkī yäy? / نه، زه معام یم۔ تاسو زده کوونکي یئ؟
Ahmad: Ho, moung zda kawounkī you. / هو، مونږ زده کوونکي یو۔

A: John, are you a student as well?
J: No, I'm a teacher. Are you (pl) students? (masc.pl.)
A: Yes, we're students.

John: Tāso khä mälägrī yäy? / تاسو ښه ملګري یئ؟
Mahmoud: Ho, moung ḏer khä mälägrī you. / هو، مونږ ډېر ښه ملګري یو۔

J: Are you (pl.) good friends (masc.pl)?
M: Yes, we are very good friends

masc sg -> masc pl
-ay -> -ī

[eskandar]

Mahmoud: Amir, Ahmad, dā saṟay John day. / امیر، احمد، دا سړی جان دی۔
امیر، احمد، این مرد جان است / Amir, Ahmad, this is John (lit. 'this man is John')
Amir: Day Päkhto pohegī? / دی پښتو پوهېږي؟
او پشتو می‌فهمد؟ / Does he understand Pashto?
Mahmoud: Ho, Päkhto pohegī. / هو، پښتو پوهېږي۔
آره، پشتو می‌فهمد / Yes, he understands Pashto

Ahmad: John, tä ham zda kawounkay ye? / جان، ته هم زده کوونکی یې؟
جان، تو هم دانشجو هستی؟ / John, are you also a student?
John: Na, zä mālim yäm. Tāso zda kawounkī yäy? / نه، زه معام یم۔ تاسو زده کوونکي یئ؟
نه، من معلم هستم. شما دانشجو(یان) هستید؟ / No, I am a teacher. Are you (pl.) students?
Ahmad: Ho, moung zda kawounkī you. / هو، مونږ زده کوونکي یو۔
آره، ما دانشجو هستیم / Yes, we are students

John: Tāso khä mälägrī yäy? / تاسو ښه ملګري یئ؟
(I can't seem to word this right in Persian) / Are you (pl.) good friends?
Mahmoud: Ho, moung ḏer khä mälägrī you. / هو، مونږ ډېر ښه ملګري یو۔
(Same problem) / Yes, we are very good friends.

Undefined vocabulary (guesses)

Ho - yes (I'm guessing it's the informal yes)
Ham - also, too
Mālim - teacher
Tāso - plural 'you' (شما)
Yäy - you (pl.) are
Moung - we
You - we are

Is 'tāso' a plural you (can be used for any number of people), or a specifically dual you as in the Arabic 'antuma'? Forming the plural of masculine nouns seems pretty simple, just change the 'ay' ending to 'ī', right?

[Rémy LeBeau]

Lesson 4: Solutions

Mahmoud: Amir, Ahmad, dā saṟay John day. / امیر، احمد، دا سړی جان دی۔
Amir, Ahmad, this (man) is John.
Amir: Day Päkhto pohegī? / دی پښتو پوهېږي؟
Does he understand Pashto?
Mahmoud: Ho, Päkhto pohegī. / هو، پښتو پوهېږي۔
Yes, he understands Pashto.

Ahmad: John, tä ham zda kawounkay ye? / جان، ته هم زده کوونکی یې؟
John, are you also a student?
John: Na, zä mālim yäm. Tāso zda kawounkī yäy? / نه، زه معام یم۔ تاسو زده کوونکي یئ؟
No, I'm a teacher. Are you all students?
Ahmad: Ho, moung zda kawounkī you. / هو، مونږ زده کوونکي یو۔
Yes, we are students.

John: Tāso khä mälägrī yäy? / تاسو ښه ملګري یئ؟
Are you good friends?
Mahmoud: Ho, moung ḏer khä mälägrī you. / هو، مونږ ډېر ښه ملګري یو۔
Yes, we are very good friends.

Notes

I slipped something in here that I forgot to put into one of the previous lessons; the use of day to mean 'he'. The usage here is pretty simple, use day if the person is visible, and hagha if he is not. So for example, you could say day zmā mālim day, for your teacher perhaps standing across the room, or even across the street, whereas if you are talking about him and someone asks John tsok day? You would reply using hagha; Hagha zmā mālim day. However, take note that whereas hagha is gender-neutral, day is masculine gender specific.

I also introduced into this text the 'regular' marker for the 3ps. Day and da are irregular forms and they don't apply to other verbs. When verbs are conjugated in the 3rd person in the present tense, with the exception of to be, they are always gender neutral and take the ending -ī.

Tāso and moung were the new pronouns introduced in this text, and they mean you pl. and we respectively. As with many Indo-European languages, tāso is often used when talking to a single person to show respect. The subject markers for these are -äy for tāso (represented by the special genderless 'verbal ye' ئ) and -ou for moung.

The verb pohedäl is actually formed from two parts, poh (knowledge) and kedäl (to become), and this is why the stem varies a bit from the infinitive form. Eventually these changes will become pretty predictable, kind of like when a verb in Dari ends in خ before the infinitive marker, you can tell that it will change to a ز in the stem, for example گریختن would become می‌گریزم.

Pashto has a few plural forms that are quite specific, but I chose to introduce this one first because to me it seems like the simplest one. To turn any masculine noun that ends in the -ay marker into a plural, just change the -ay marker to -ī.

eskandar:

Ho is actually the formal way to say yes, the more informal way is aw, which is also used by Kabuli Dari speakers. Thankfully, there is no dual in Pashto! You can use tāso with any number of people.

[eskandar]

I see. Interesting that it's formal in Pashto whereas a similar word (Armenian ha, Azeri hə, Baluchi han, and ha or haN in most Indic languages with which I'm familiar, etc.) is informal in so many other South Asian and Middle Eastern languages.

[Rémy LeBeau]

Lesson 5

This lesson is going to be a bit different because I couldn't really work out a way to show these things in context, so I am going to explain first and then give examples.

Last time i covered one of the masculine plural noun forms, which basically requires you to change any masculine noun that ends in the masculine marker -ay, to -ī. For example, last time we had zda kawounay (male student) > zda kawounkī (male students). For reference purposes, let's call this form 'masculine plural 1', or MP1.

If you are going to inflect a noun with an adjective to MP1, in some cases you also have to inflect the adjective. First however, it is probably easier to understand what doesn't need inflecting. Think back to how to recognize whether a word is masculine or feminine; the largest number of masculine words are masculine because they end in a consonant. With those masculine adjectives that end in a consonant, there is no inflection required. Compare these examples:

Hagha mashhour saṟay day. / هغه مشهور سړی دی۔
He is a famous man.
Moung mashhour saṟī you. / مونږ مشهور سړي یو۔
We are famous men.

Leaving aside these masculine adjectives that end in consonants, there are also adjectives that end in the masculine marker -ay. These are the ones that require inflection, and much like their counterparts in Urdu, it is an extremely simple process. The pattern of inflection for these adjectives will follow the pattern for masculine nouns that end in -ay, so the marker will become -ī. Compare these examples:

Zä naway zda kawounkay yäm. / زه نوی زده کوونکی یم۔
I am a new student.
Moung nawī zda kawounkī you. / مونږ نوي زده کوونکي یو۔
We are new students.

Zä bahranay ḏākṯär yäm. / زه بهرنی ډاکټر یم۔
I am a foreign doctor.
Moung bahranī ḏākṯärān you. / مونږ بهرني ډاکټران یو۔
We are foreign doctors.

In two of these examples you have probably noticed I am using another form of plural, which is -ān, for example in ḏākṯärān. This is the 2nd masculine plural form, which I will refer to as MP2. The rules for usage of this form are pretty straightforward. MP2 is used for any animate noun ending in a consonant. So unlike nouns and adjectives ending in the marker -ay, which share the same pattern of plural inflection, nouns and adjectives ending in consonants follow separate patterns: adjectives that end in a consonant are not inflected to show plurality, whereas animate nouns that end in a consonant are. Go back and look at the examples above where I have mixed both types of masculine nouns and adjectives in the same sentences. They each follow their own rules independently of the noun or adjective that they are attached to.

If anything isn't clear just let me know and I'll go into more detail about the specific point with more examples. There is a new pronoun and person marker here, you'll probably be able to guess it straight off since there is only one which we haven't covered yet. Think about in which circumstances it would be used, taking into consideration the usage of other pronouns.