Pashto

Pashto is an Indo-European language used mainly by Pashtuns. In Afghanistan, Pashto is primarily spoken in the east, south and southwest, but also in some northern and northwest parts as result of recent relocation. Pashto is also spoken in North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan Province of Pakistan. In Pashto, most of the native elements of the lexicon are related to other Eastern European languages like Farsi etc. However, a remarkably large number of words are special to Pashto. Post 7th century borrowings came primarily from Arabic. Modern borrowings come from Persian and Hindi-Urdu (In Pakistan). Pashto employs the Pashto alphabet, a modified form of the Arabic alphabet with extra letters added for Pashto-specific sounds. As a consequence of life in areas of rugged terrain, there are many dialects of Pashto language. The two main dialects are soft or southern dialect and hard or northern dialect. Pashto name and pronunciation is used in the south, while Pukhto is used in the north and east.

Dari

Dari belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European Language, and is an Afghan form of Persian. It is also written in an adapted Arabic alphabet and has many words from Farsi and Arabic. For Afghans with different backgrounds, Dari is a common working language. Other names used for Dari are Afghan Farsi, Eastern Farsi and Parsi. Dari was partly used by the Mughals in India.

Khushal Khan Khattak is a famous and well known Pashto poet and is known as Afghanistan's national poet, while the poems of Jalaluddin Rumi have been translated from Dari to countless other languages worldwide.  

In addition, many Turkic languages such as Turkmen and Uzbek are also spoken by approximately 11% of the population

How to greet someone in Afghanistan:

- Dari: "Chotor Asty."
- Pashto: "Pakhair Raghlay"