پښتو · Beginner 1(a)
Learn to type in Pashto
Home row anchors
Settle both hands on the home row: A S D F for the left, J K L ; for the right.
Physical key labels appear above. پښتو layout labels appear below. These three rows produce 16 of the 23 characters the practice words here use; the rest are reached with a modifier or a dead key.
Learning to type in Pashto
Pashto is written in the Arabic script, whose marks combine with base letters into single written units — so one keystroke is not one character on screen. It also runs right to left.
The thing that surprises people about Pashto is the arithmetic. A word that looks like 3.3 units on screen took more keystrokes than that, because Arabic vowel signs and conjunct forms are typed as separate presses and then rendered together. Accuracy matters more than usual here: an error inside a cluster is not always visible at a glance.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 21 common Pashto words — 23 distinct characters in all, averaging 3.3 written units per word. The lessons come at it from the other end. Nothing is generated on the fly and nothing is padded: each drill is a fixed sequence of the keys that stage has introduced, in an order that starts at the two index fingers and works outwards to the keys you reach for least.
Frequency beats duration in Pashto by a wider margin than in most languages, because what you are building is a composing order and composing orders decay quickly between sessions. Ten minutes daily will take you further than an hour on Sunday.
The distribution is lopsided, which is the useful part. Across the 21 practice words, 23 distinct characters appear — and the single most common accounts for about 16% of every letter typed, with the top ten covering roughly 81%. Drilling the frequent ones first is where almost all of the benefit is.
- Writing system
- Arabic
- Keyboard layout
- Pashto Afghan
- Direction
- right to left
- Mapped characters
- 28
- Practice words
- 21
- Distinct characters
- 23
- Average word
- 3.3 units
Characters that come up most in these Pashto words
- و11
- ا9
- ر7
- ل6
- ه6
- ک5
- م4
- ن3
- ی3
- د2
- ب1
- پ1
Counted across the 21 practice words — the ones worth recognising first.
A short bank. Pashto has 21 practice words here, which is few enough that a long run will repeat them. That is a gap rather than a decision: adding words to a tool whose whole purpose is that people practise typing them needs certainty about Pashto spelling, and a bank with a misspelling in it teaches the misspelling. Corrections are genuinely welcome.
آرام لاسونه اصلي کتار په اسانۍ سره موميRetroflex letters written with a small circle
Pashto uses the Arabic script with a substantial number of additions — letters for retroflex and other sounds that Arabic and Persian do not have, most of them written by adding a small circle beneath an existing letter: ټ, ډ, ړ, ږ, ڼ.
It has one of the larger Arabic-script alphabets as a result, around 45 letters, and a keyboard crowded enough that the standard Afghan layout uses shifted positions heavily.
Pashto is one of two official languages of Afghanistan alongside Dari, and is widely spoken in Pakistan. Its orthography has been standardised more than once and regional spelling variation remains common.
Questions about typing in Pashto
Do I need a Pashto keyboard?
No. Printed Arabic keycaps are sold and they are not worth it for a touch typist: you are trying to learn a map, and a visible map delays that. Select the Pashto Afghan layout in your system settings and use the on-screen guide below instead, which you can turn off once it stops helping.
Which Pashto keyboard layout do these lessons use?
Pashto Afghan, with 28 characters mapped across the standard key positions. Pashto runs right to left, which both the practice text and the cursor respect. The 21 practice words between them use 23 distinct characters. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the physical key and the character it produces together, so you are never reading a layout diagram in one window while typing in another.
What will I actually be typing in Pashto?
Sequences of the keys each stage has introduced — single letters first, then pairs, then short chunks — in Arabic as the Pashto Afghan layout produces it, rather than transliterated into Latin letters. The point of the course is the position of a key rather than the vocabulary. The 21 common Pashto words in the practice bank are what the speed test samples and what the games pull from, once the positions stop needing thought.
Is Pashto hard to type?
Harder than a one-key-one-letter language, and for a specific reason rather than a vague one: marks combine, so a written unit takes several presses in a fixed order. The bank here averages 3.3 units per word with a fairly compact inventory of 23 characters across the practice bank. The keystroke count is higher than the visible length suggests, which is what makes early progress feel slower than it is.
Where should I start with Pashto?
At the beginning of the beginner course, even if you already touch type in another language. The nine stages start on the home row and add keys outward, and the early ones are short. If Pashto is a script you have never typed, the first stage is doing more work than it looks like — it is building the map, not the speed.
How long does learning to touch type in Pashto take?
Longer than a week and shorter than you fear — and it depends far more on how often you practise than on how long each session runs. Short daily sessions beat long weekly ones by a wide margin, because what you are building is recall and recall decays between sessions. The streak counter exists for that reason.
Can I skip ahead to a later stage?
Yes, nothing is locked. It is usually a mistake, though, because each stage assumes the keys before it have stopped needing thought — and a stage practised on top of a shaky one tends to embed the shakiness rather than fix it.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No account, no payment, no trial. Progress is stored in this browser, which is enough until you want it on a second device or on a leaderboard — that is the only thing an account buys, and it is optional.
Also in Pashto: the speed test and typing games.
Other languages written in Arabic: Persian (Farsi), Urdu, Arabic, Kurdish (Sorani).
Other languages whose letters combine as you type: Punjabi, Sinhala. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing the Arabic script: one alphabet, five keyboardsOne script, five layouts. What Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Kurdish each change, why a letter changes shape after you type it, and which of it transfers.
- The number rowNumbers and symbols sit two rows above home, and almost nobody drills them. Which finger takes which digit, and when to use the keypad instead.
- WPM, CPM and KPHWhy a typing word is five characters, how to convert between WPM, CPM and keystrokes per hour, and what net WPM subtracts.