Editing Pashto (section)

=== Criticism ===
There is no actual Pashto that can be identified as  "Standard" Pashto, as Colye remarks:<ref name="Coyle 2014"/>
{{Blockquote|text="Standard Pashto is actually fairly complex with multiple varieties or forms. Native speakers or researchers often refer to Standard Pashto without specifying which variety of Standard Pashto they mean...people sometimes refer to Standard Pashto when they mean the most respected or favorite Pashto variety among a majority of Pashtun speakers."|title=Placing Wardak among Pashto Varieties|source=page 4}}
According to David MacKenzie, there is no real need to develop a "Standard" Pashto:<ref>{{Cite journal|last=MacKenzie|first=D. N.|date=1959|title=A Standard Pashto|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/609426|journal=Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London|volume=22|issue=1/3|pages=231–235|jstor=609426|issn=0041-977X}}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=February 2025}}
{{Blockquote|text="The morphological differences between the most extreme north-eastern and south-western dialects are comparatively few and unimportant. The criteria of dialect differentiation in Pashto are primarily phonological. With the use of an alphabet which disguises these phonological differences the language has, therefore, been a literary vehicle, widely understood, for at least four centuries. This literary language has long been referred to in the West as 'common' or 'standard' Pashto without, seemingly, any real attempt to define it."|title=A Standard Pashto|source=page 231}}