Pashto-English/English-Pashto Dictionary & Phrasebook

This is a very helpful resource book for those learning the Pashto language, soldiers serving inside Afghanistan and civilians going to Afghanistan for work. The Pashto is romanized for easy non-native speaker's reading. Besides the dictionary, the book has helpful phrases and other miscellaneous handy materials like numbers, Afghan calender months, week days, family members, etc. I wish the author had published a separate version in which the Pashto was printed in its native script for better pronunciation and learning to those who can read the Arabic script languages.

Very little information about Pashto is available for English speakers, and so it's great to see that this book doesn't have a slipshod, "better-anything-than-nothing" approach, as might be feared. Once you have learned some grammar elsewhere (e.g., in the great series of materials by the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC), this book will prove to be a useful, portable resource. With 232 pages and measuring only 3.75" x 7", there are 5000 word entries in both English-Pashto and Pashto-English directions; although the words are given only in a Romanized transcription (no Pashto script), this little book is packed with even more information, including sections on greetings, useful phrases, and travel tips.