The Republic of Afghanistan is one of the most unstable countries in the world economically and politically, and geographically it is a crossroads at the crossroads between east and west. It was an ancient center of trade and migration, and the country has always played an important role in cultural, economic and political relations in the region. The multinational population of the republic speaks several dialects, but the official languages of Afghanistan are only two - Dari and Pashto.
Some statistics and facts
- "Afghan" translated from Persian means "silence" or "silence". This is the external name of the people, like the word "German" in Russian, meaning that a person does not speak "our way", he is "dumb".
- Both official languages of Afghanistan belong to the Iranian group of the Indo-European language family.
- The Dari language in the country is spoken by about half of the population.
- According to various sources, Pashto is accepted as the official language by 35% -40% of Afghans.
- The third most common in the republic is Uzbek. Almost 9% of citizens speak it. This is followed by Turkmen - 2.5% of residents speak it at home.
Afghanistan is not the most popular country among foreign tourists, but if you happen to be there, keep in mind that no more than 8% of the population speaks English and these people live only in the capital.
Persian trace
The Afghan-Persian language Dari serves as the language of interethnic communication in the country. It is distributed mainly in the north of the country, in Kabul and in some central provinces. Linguistic scholars believe that Dari is an Afghan version of a mixture of Tajik and Persian. In other words, the inhabitants of Afghanistan and Tajikistan are quite capable of understanding each other, but in order to communicate with the Iranians, the Afghans will have to try a little because of the phonetic differences.
Dari has many loanwords from Hindi and Punjabi, Urdu and Bengali dialects.
On the southern borders
Pashto is in use in the southern regions of Afghanistan and in the southeast. It is represented by a large number of dialects, and its speakers are called Pashtuns. The written culture of the Pashtuns began to develop only in the 16th century.
Despite the obvious division of the population into two groups, a sufficient percentage of the country's population speaks two state languages of Afghanistan at once.
