Pushtu language
Pushtu (پښتو; also known as Afghan, Pushto, Pashto, Pashtoe, Pashtu, and Pukhto) is the language spoken by the ethnic Afghan otherwise known as the Pashtun people who inhabit Afghanistan and the Western provinces of Pakistan. Its ISO 639 codes are ps and pus. Pushtu is presently classified in the East-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It has approximately 17 million speakers.From the time of Islam's rise in Central Asia, Pushtu has used a modified version of Perso-Arabic script. In recent years, however, because of the Internet, it has become increasingly popular to write Pushtu in the Latin script.
It is alongside Persian, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, spoken largely in the south, east and a few provinces in the north. It is spoken by more than 70% of the Afghan population who are of the Pashtun tribe, as well as by ethnic Pashtuns who live on the other side of the disputed Durand Line in present day Pakistan. The language is believed to have originated in the Kandahar/Helmand areas of Afghanistan. It has some Arabic and Persian words incorporated in it. Persian often dominates over Afghan/Pashto in Afghanistan in everyday government use since the capital was moved to Kabul from Kandahar in the 18th century.