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Southern Pashto (Pashto: جنوبي/سهيلي پښتو) is a standard variety of the Pashto language spoken in Afghanistan, comprising the Southwestern and Southeastern dialects of Pashto.^[2]

Southern Comparison

غوږ

Ear

South Western [Kandahar]

Pashto pronunciation: [/ɣwaʐ/]

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South Eastern [Quetta]

/ɣwaʒ/

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South Western

Kandahārí Pashtó (Pashto: کندهارۍ پښتو), also known as, Southwestern Pashto,^[3] is a Pashto dialect, spoken in southern and western Afghanistan, including the city of Kandahar.

Kandahari Pashto is spoken in Kandahar, Helmand, Ghazni, most of Urozgan, Farah, and Nimruz, southeastern Ghor, the districts of Murghab, Ghormach, Muqur, and Jawand in Badghis, and parts of Zabul, Paktika, and Herat provinces of Afghanistan. It is also spoken in parts of the provinces of Razavi Khorasan and South Khorasan in Iran, where they numbered roughly 120,000 (in 1993).^[4]

It is one of the most archaic varieties of Pashto: the Kandahari dialect retains archaic retroflex sibilants, /ʂ/ and /ʐ/ (in other dialects, they have shifted to ʃ/x and ʒ/g). Kandahari also has the affricates /t͡s/ and /d͡z/.^[5]

Lexical Variation

According to the "Pashto Dialectal Dictionary (Pashto: پښتو لهجوي قاموس)" published by the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan the following is noted in Kandahar province:^[6]

South Eastern

In the South Eastern dialect, /ʂ/ and /ʐ/ in South Western sometimes change to ʃ and ʒ. Whilst /t͡s/ and /d͡z/ are generally pronounced.^[7]

In all 3rd-person pronouns 'h' is not articulated. And distinction in 'he' and 'she' pronouns is not noted.

Kākaṛi

Kākaṛi is classed as Southeastern dialect.^[8] The following has been noted:^[9]

Sherani

According to Josef Elfenbein, Sherani Pashto can be classed either as South Western or South Eastern.^[11] Word choice can be distinct:^[12]

Marwat-Bettani

In Marwat-Bettani the following is noted:^[13]

Marwat Words

مېړګی [pony]

/meɽ.ɡaˈɪ/

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بغور [cheek]

/ba.ɣwəˈr/

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Compare the words

Comparison with Karlāṇi varieties

Marwatwala agrees with other Karlāṇi varieties in the phonetic change in ښ as [ʃ]. ^[15]

Example:

Rendition of ش

It is noted by Yousuf Khan Jazab, in Marwatwala ش can be rendered as [s].^[14]

Example: