Pashtun has a rich culture and long history spanned over thousands of years. They are believed to be descended from Aryan and reside in areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are also known as Pathan especially those who reside in Pakistan. Pathan culture is known for hospitality, honor, tribal loyalty, and bravery. Pashtun has a distinct culture and Pashto is their native language. It is their primary cultural identity marker.
Language is central to a culture. It’s the medium to carry the values, traits, art, traditions, etc. of culture to the next generation. Those essential elements to preserve and transmit a culture will be lost without it.
Role of Pashto Language in Understanding Pashtun Culture
In a social community, language and culture are used to share beliefs, traits, customs, realities, and actions. This results in a dependent relationship between language and culture.
Language is a “system of speech, manual or written symbols” enabling humans to share, interpret, communicate, play, or identify themselves.
Culture can be defined as “a group of people’s characteristics and patterns of behavior”. Language, customs, and arts are the basic categories used to characterize culture. But culture is much more than that it shapes our thinking, communication, and perception of our surroundings, called our cultural perspective.
Let’s see how learning Pashto helps in comprehending Pathan culture.
Learning Paralanguage
Paralanguage is a “non-lexical part of a culture’s language”. It’s a wide term, encompassing body language, sound, or voice pitch. Paralanguage differs depending upon the people we are surrounded with. We pick those expressions, behaviors, and intonations from them. Learning Pashto includes paralanguage and avoiding miscommunication as non-verbal communication constitutes 70% of communication.
Interaction with Subculture Social Groups
Learning Pashto will help you communicate with individuals from subcultures. This lack of barriers will help in learning, about different occupational and cultural subsets. The variations within a language are due to differences in social and occupation. Individuals generally belong to a social group that includes their parents and immediate family. They learn the dialect and communication styles along with behavioral traits, attitudes, and characteristics of that subculture. These details can only be explored if you can extensively communicate in the language and explore these social groups.
Signaling Cultural Change
A language change signals a shift in culture’s values. Culture and language are related inextricably. One cannot learn culture without language and vice versa. Losing a piece of culture results in losing language. Knowing Pashto will help us comprehend the surrounding culture and the changes happening. Language isn’t only a tool to communicate cultural values but plays a role in their development and evolution.
Reading Books on Culture & History
Books are a great source of information on culture and history. By learning the language, we can access and consume the available knowledge. It helps to see the past and present of culture and language and observe their evaluation over time. In short centuries’ worth of knowledge on culture is now available to us.
Travel Independently
Traveling is a great tool to explore the culture of an area and knowing the language means experiencing it directly. Learning the Pashto language enables communication with native speakers. A skill that is useful while traveling in Pashto-speaking areas. You will be able to travel freely by asking locals directly for help and directions. Travel like this will provide a full immersion experience in culture.
Learn Pashto
There are many ways nowadays to Learn Pashto such as traditional classes, tutors, online apps, and online Pashto classes. Traditional classes for Pashto aren’t available to everyone but only in big cities. Thus, people from small cities, towns, and villages can’t access them. Access to well-educated and experienced tutors nearby for Pashto is also hard. Online Pashto apps are great but lack direct interaction between teacher and student. Learning Pashto online solves all these issues because
∙ They are available for everyone, from anywhere at any time.
∙ They only hire well-qualified and extensively experienced Pashto tutors after testing.
∙ They provide one-on-one classes with students.
learning Pashto online is a great way to learn conveniently. Many online academies including Learn Pashto Academy provide online Pashto classes.
Conclusion
Learning Pashto will immensely help you comprehend the Pathan culture. Language and culture are intricately linked. Knowing a language will enable you to read books, interact with locals, and understand paralanguage and social subcultures. All these elements will help you on your journey to understand Pashtun culture better.
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