Southern Pashto () is a standard variety of the Pashto language spoken in Afghanistan, comprising the Southwestern and Southeastern dialects of Pashto.
South Western
Kandahārí Pashtó (), also known as, Southwestern Pashto, 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).
It is one of the most archaic varieties of Pashto: the Kandahari dialect retains archaic retroflex sibilants, and (in other dialects, they have shifted to ʃ/x and ʒ/g). Kandahari also has the affricates and .
Lexical Variation
According to the "Pashto Dialectal Dictionary ()" published by the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan the following is noted in Kandahar province:
South Eastern
In the South Eastern dialect, and in South Western sometimes change to ʃ and ʒ. Whilst and are generally pronounced.
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. The following has been noted:
Sherani
According to Josef Elfenbein, Sherani Pashto can be classed either as South Western or South Eastern. Word choice can be distinct:
Marwat-Bettani
In Marwat-Bettani the following is noted:
Compare the words
Comparison with Karlāṇi varieties
Marwatwala agrees with other Karlāṇi varieties in the phonetic change in ښ as [ʃ].
Example:
Rendition of ش
It is noted by Yousuf Khan Jazab, in Marwatwala ش can be rendered as .
Example: