I’m not a collector of anything really. I have a couple of scrapbooks, old letters from friends across the globe, and my DVD’s which I’ve slacked on buying new ones recently. Nothing I have is of any value (at least now) and if I were ever to start putting together a collection of something that is, I’d go after stamps. First off, they tell so much about a place in such tiny space. They reveal history, national flowers, popular sports and religion. This web collection of Afghan stamps was fun to click around for a few minutes. They have two of Buzkashi, Islamic stamps and some depicting the Communist takeover. Good stuff and though today’s word isn’t stamp, I offer a closely related one that could be off help when mailing your letters and postcards from Kabul back home.
Today’s word is a Pashto word used in Afghanistan:
khat – letter
Pashto is spoken by 40-50 million speakers in Afghanistan, western Pakistan and northern India. It became an official language of Afghanistan in 1936. Persian or Dari is also an official language. Good example sentences, historical information and links are all found at Wikipedia. Pashto.org has video, music, downloadable dictionaries, software and book lists. Yorku.ca has a long list of words to start along your Pashto learning path for at least a few weeks. Visit the BBCPashto page if you already have some understanding of the language under your belt.
Past Pashto words: mujasemy