Languages
Native
Dari (Afghan Persian)
78%
Pashto
50%
Language Samples
سلام، چطور استید؟
Salâm, chetour astid?
Hello, how are you?
سلام، تاسې څنګه یاست؟
Salaam, taase tsanga yaast?
Hello, how are you?
یک، دو، سه، چهار، پنج، شش، هفت، هشت، نه، ده
Yek, do, se, chahâr, panj, shesh, haft, hasht, noh, dah
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
Afghanistan has two official languages: Dari (a variety of Persian) and Pashto, both from the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. Dari serves as the principal lingua franca across ethnic groups and in urban centres, while Pashto is the language of the Pashtun people, the country's largest ethnic group. The nation is extraordinarily multilingual, with Uzbek, Turkmen, Hazaragi, Balochi, and Pashayi among the many other languages spoken by significant communities. Both official languages use adapted forms of the Arabic script and share much vocabulary from Arabic and Persian classical tradition.
Similar Languages
Persian (Farsi)
90%
Tajik
82%
Urdu (loanwords)
30%
Media
The Minaret of Jam in Ghor Province, a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed with Quranic verses in Arabic script — the same script used for both Dari and Pashto.
Did You Know
01
Afghanistan has two official languages — Dari and Pashto — but neither is spoken natively by a majority: many Afghans grow up speaking both alongside their own regional tongue.
02
Dari and Iranian Persian (Farsi) are mutually intelligible and often described as different registers of the same language; the main differences are in accent, some vocabulary, and formal usage.
03
Pashto is notable for its complex system of grammatical gender that shifts not just nouns but also verb conjugations and adjective agreement throughout the sentence.