Pashto is one of the national languages of Afghanistan which is also spoken by a significant
minority in Pakistan. An archaic language of the Iranian family it offers a vocabulary of
extraordinary variety and interest. As well as retaining many words inherited from Old Iranian
and ultimately from proto-Indo-European Pashto has also absorbed a great deal of foreign
vocabulary from Classical Greek to Persian and modern Indian.Georg Morgenstierne's
Etymological Vocabulary of Pashto published in Oslo in 1927 was the first work to explore
these multiple relationships in a systematic and comprehensive way. Soon after its publication
Morgenstierne began collecting material for a revised and expanded version but thisremained
unfinished when he died more than half a century later in 1978.After the lapse of another
quarter of a century it is at last possible to present the long-awaited New Etymological
Vocabulary of Pashto a completely new work compiled from Morgenstierne's handwritten notes by
three leading scholars in the field of Iranian linguistics. In all essentials it remains
Morgenstierne's work though considerably augmented by additional references which take into
account the greatly increased information available today on modern Indo-Aryan as well as on
Middle Iranian languages such as Bactrian and Khwarezmian. This work supersedes Morgenstierne's
earlier Etymological Vocabulary of Pashto and will take its place beside the same author's
Etymological Vocabulary of the Shughni Group (Reichert Verlag 1974) as a standard modern work
of reference on the history of the languages of Afghanistan.Complete indexes of all words cited
from Iranian Indo-Aryan and other languages help to make the contents accessible to those who
are not specialists in Pashto or other Iranian languages.
