“Pashto dialects”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

In the medieval era, a consonant shift took place in the northern parts of Pashtunistan in several phases. This change gave rise to the Northern Pashto dialect, or the hard Pax̌to. The Southern Pashto dialect, or the soft Paṣ̌to, did not experience the consonant shift. During the shift, the retroflex fricative ṣ̌ {{IPA|[ʂ]}} changed to x̌ {{IPA|[ç]}} or to x {{IPA|[x]}}, while ẓ̌ {{IPA|[ʐ]}} changed to ǵ {{IPA|[ʝ]}} or to g {{IPA|[g]}}. The shift was probably complete before the Pashto book Khayr al-Bayān was written by Bayazid Pir Roshan from Waziristan in the 16th century. According to the linguists Georg Morgenstierne and David Neil MacKenzie, after the consonant shift, the distinction between ṣ̌, ẓ̌ and x, g seems to still have been preserved in Northern Pashto in the 16th and 17th century.^[2]

Among the other Eastern Iranian languages outside Pashto, the Shughni (Khughni) and Yazgulyami branch of the Pamir languages also seem to have been affected from the ṣ̌ to x consonant shift. E.g. "meat": ɡuṣ̌t in Wakhi and γwaṣ̌a in Southern Pashto, but changes to guxt in Shughni and γwaxa in Northern Pashto.

Classification

Prestige varieties

Literary standard

Literary Pashto, or High Pashto standard, is the standardized variety of Pashto developed by Radio Television Afghanistan and Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan in Kabul. Its phonetics are based on the Northwestern or Central Pashto dialect, spoken in the central Ghilji region, including the Afghan capital Kabul and some surrounding region. Its vocabulary also derives from Southern Pashto. It has adopted neologisms to coin new terms from already existing words or phrases and introduce them into the Pashto lexicon. Educated Standard Pashto is learned in the curriculum that is taught in the primary schools in the country. It is used for written and formal spoken purposes, and in the domains of media and government.^[3]

Regional standards

There are several regional standard forms of Pashto which have high prestige, and serve as a means of communication between the various tribal communities in those regions.

Southern regional standard

Southern Pashto, also called Kandahari Pashto, is the prestige variety of Pashto in southern and western Afghanistan, and the Balochistan province of Pakistan.^[3]

Northern regional standard

Northern Pashto, also called Eastern Pashto, is the prestige variety of Pashto in eastern and northeastern Afghanistan, and northern part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.^[3] This dialect is almost identical to Yusufzai Pashto.

Yusufzai regional standard

Yusufzai Pashto, also called Peshawari or Northeastern Pashto, is the prestige variety of Pashto in central, northern, and eastern parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

Transitional dialects

In an intermediate area of Pashtunistan, mainly Ghilji, transitional dialects or mixings are found. For example š/ṣ̌/ҳ/xəja “woman”, and špaž/ẓ̌/γ̌/g “six”.^[6]

Phonetic differences

The differences between the standard varieties of Pashto are primarily phonological, and there are simple conversion rules.^[3] The morphological differences between the standard varieties are very few and unimportant. Two of the key phonemes whose pronunciation vary between the different Pashto dialects are ښ and ږ. The southern dialect of Kandahar is considered to be the most conservative with regards to phonology. It retains the original pronunciation of these two phonemes as voiceless and voiced retroflex sibilants, respectively, and does not merge them into other phonemes unlike the northern dialects.^[4]

The dialects spoken by the tribes from the Karlani confederacy of Pashtuns are lexicologically different and very varied. Moreover, the Karlani dialects have a tendency towards a change in the pronunciation of vowels. Depending on the particular dialect, the standard Pashto [a], [ā], [o], [u] may change into [ā], [â/å/o], [ȯ/ȫ/e], [i], respectively.^[6] In the Karlani dialects of Waziristan, Bannu, and Tani (southern Khost), which follow the vowel shift to the greatest extent, these four vowels normally change into [ā], [o], [e], [i], respectively.

The nine phonemes represented in the column headings below show key phonetic differences between the dialects. Five of them are consonants written in the Pashto alphabet, and four are vowels written in the Latin script; sounds are transcribed in the IPA:

Lexical comparison

In general, the Karlani dialects, both in southern and northern varieties, show more vocabulary differences than the non-Karlani southern and northern dialects. However, the most distinctive of the Pashto dialects is Wanetsi. Although Wanetsi follows the normal phonetic rules of the southern dialects near it, it is still greatly different from them in lexicon:

Examples of sentences showing the difference between Wanetsi and the regional standard Kandahari:^[7]

Overview